At a statewide Extension meeting, the PIE Center and National Public Policy Evaluation Center revealed a pilot program to help Extension faculty converse about important agricultural and natural resources issues and policies.
Conversation Starters debuted to a crowded room at the annual Extension Professional Associations of Florida conference in Ponte Vedra Beach. PIE Center Director Tracy Irani, NPPEC Director Alexa Lamm and Assistant Professor Joy Rumble presented the interactive session in which Extension faculty had to quickly inform someone posing as a county commissioner or U.S. senator about an impaired water body.
“Folks had to think on their feet,” Lamm said. “They experienced how difficult it is to take a lot of information and put it together in a way that a decision maker can understand and ask questions about. At the end, everybody was really excited about the potential of this new project.”
The initial Conversation Starters briefs discuss water policies and practices as well as how to talk with decision makers. The informative briefs are research-based documents that present complex issues in easy-to-understand, short pieces that Extension faculty can use to converse with clients about potentially contentious issues in an unbiased manner, said Lamm, a former Colorado Extension agent. She is currently an assistant professor and Extension specialist in the UF/IFAS Department of Agricultural Education and Communication.
“As a former agent, I know that sensitive issues can be intimidating to discuss,” she said. “Conversation Starters are meant to be a way that Extension agents can read about up-to-date agricultural and natural resource issues in a few minutes so they know something about the issue when someone brings it up in conversation.”
The PIE Center and NPPEC collaborated with experts in the UF Water Institute and UF/IFAS Center for Landscape Conservation and Ecology to develop the water factsheets, which include results from the PIE Center’s public opinion survey.
State residents and PIE Center stakeholders routinely identify water as one of the most pressing issues in Florida, according to PIE Center Director Tracy Irani, so water was the logical topic to examine with Conversation Starters.
“Even though we are surrounded by water on three sides, we’re finding that in this state, water is a resource to be concerned about,” Irani said. “There’s a greater and greater understanding that this resource needs to be conserved and that policymakers and Extension professionals have a role to play in that.”
The faculty members gathered feedback from Extension faculty after the presentation and will finalize the materials in time for an official launch in early 2014.
