|
|
About UC IPM
2006 Program Review
Purpose of the program review
Review recommendations: Executive Summary
Members of the review panel
Purpose of the program review
The University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources
has a policy of regularly reviewing its statewide programs. The 2006
review of UC IPM was intended to assess its productivity, effectiveness,
and efficiency and to evaluate its achievements over the past ten years.
This review was also intended to determine the appropriateness of the
program’s strategic plan for the next five years and to consider
its continuation as an ANR statewide program.
Specifically, the review team
- Critiqued the strategic plan, especially in regard to its vision
and ways the program might ensure leadership.
- Evaluated the program areas with respect to function and impact,
identifying strengths and areas needing improvement.
- Evaluated the grants programs in terms of process, priorities, and
impact.
- Evaluated the program’s outreach efforts, including conventional
and emerging technologies.
- Evaluate the collaboration, communication, and leadership within
the program and with ANR, related programs, and other states.
- Assessed the adequacy and suitability of the program’s financial
and human resources, including organization and leadership.
Review recommendations:
Executive Summary, from the Program Review
Report, November 2006
At the request of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources
a review of the University of California Statewide Integrated Pest Management
Program was conducted October 24 – 26, 2006, in Davis, CA. This
report represents the findings of the nine member review team made up
of stakeholders and University faculty representing the interests of
the agricultural and nonagricultural sectors, regionally and nationally. Observers
of the review process indicated that this team was one of the most well
prepared and engaged review teams they had ever experienced. Given
their interests in the success of the UC IPM Program they also have expectations
that their recommendations will be given serious consideration and implemented
as thoroughly as possible. The report is organized into four sections;
Introduction/Context; Responses to the Seven Objectives of the Review;
Major Recommendations; Proposed UC IPM Organizational Chart.
Overall the review team finds the UC Statewide IPM program to be functioning
very well, achieving its stated mission, and responding to the needs
of California. The Program has had enormous positive impact on the state
of California – helping to protect the environment and reducing
risks to human health. The Program is highly valued by the agricultural
community and considered to be the “gold standard” for IPM.
The IPM Advisors are seen as invaluable partners to the Cooperative Extension
advisors in the counties and to the AES researchers on the campuses.
UC IPM publications are recognized and valued worldwide for information
ranging from the basic principles of IPM to specific recommendations
for control of pests. The UC IPM Program is clearly the leader in promoting
the development and implementation of IPM.
In the context of a rapidly changing world, with increased globalization,
urbanization, and new and pressing environmental issues, the UC IPM Program
is poised to build on its strengths and reputation to contribute even
more to the needs of the state of California and beyond. With expansion
into the urban sector, the Program will be contributing to the needs
of all of California’s citizens and thereby make IPM a household
word. This will reflect extremely well on the University of California,
an institution clearly engaged in generating and delivering new knowledge
that is relevant and that ensures a healthy environment and safe and
abundant food supply for the citizens of California and the world.
The panel provided responses to each of the seven Objectives of the
review and generated a series of major recommendations, which are provided
in this Executive Summary that follows. Additional minor recommendations
are imbedded in the full report.
Major recommendations
- Organizational Issues
The issue of organizational structure came up repeatedly during the
review and is an issue that needs to be addressed to prevent stagnation
and allow Program expansion into the urban arena. See also the Organizational
chart found on the last page of the full report.
- Integrate Publications
and Information Systems functions under a single unit with one
Associate Director of Communications (existing FTE) to improve workflow
and manage projects more efficiently. At
present these units are separated physically and institutionally
and this leads to serious inefficiencies.
- Create an Associate Director
of Strategic Program Development position (existing FTE)
to focus on expansion of UC IPM programming, with emphasis
on the urban arena. In addition, this position will be responsible
for oversight of the IPM Grants Program and will ensure coordination
with any other grants initiatives such as the Pierce’s Disease
and Exotic Pest programs.
- Create an Associate Director for Agricultural and Urban Advisors
position (existing FTE). This Associate Director would ensure
that the IPM Advisors act as a unit to maximize mentoring, shared
expertise, and articulation of statewide goals and would be responsible
for evaluation of all IPM Advisors in conjunction with the County
Directors, designing clear merit/advancement guidelines, and ensuring
excellent communication between IPM field staff and office staff.
- Create two Project Directors positions (non
UC IPM FTE), one each to manage the Pierce’s Disease and Exotic Pests
Research Programs. This is seen as an effective and efficient means to
ensure high quality review of proposals and a means to distribute the grants
management workload beyond UC IPM.
- There is an urgent need to consolidate the UC IPM Program into
a high quality workspace. The review panel considered the current
situation, especially as it applies to the Publications and Information
Systems groups, as unacceptable due to the many inefficiencies
and lack of opportunity for true teamwork.
- Strengthen UC IPM’s
role in the merits and promotions process for all UC IPM Program staff.
There are inconsistencies and inequities in who provides oversight and
input into merits and promotions that needs to be corrected.
- Prioritization and Strategic Planning
Refill the Director for the UC IPM Program position as soon
as possible. It will be important that the administrative demands
on the new Director be reduced so that he/she is able to effectively
position the program to best contribute to major policy and funding
opportunities. It will also be critically important that the nature
of the Director’s appointment be clearly articulated to ensure
success in hiring and retaining the best possible candidate for
the position.
- Move aggressively into urban areas through augmentation
without compromising agricultural areas. Expansion into
the urban arena would help address a multitude of pest management
issues facing millions of California’s citizens, help
raise public awareness of the value of UC IPM and make the
UC System more relevant to the people of California. The
recommendation to move into the urban arena was the most
consistent and strongest recommendations heard by the review
panel and included the creation of a Research and Extension
Center, (much like the model of the Kearney Research Center
for agriculture) for Structural IPM.
- Delay expansion into Natural areas and focus emphasis
on Agricultural and Urban areas. Although the panel saw
the value of expansion into Natural areas, the needs in the
urban sector where clearly more pressing and with limited
resources viewed as the most important area for expansion
at this time.
- Develop a re-staffing plan with time lines
to minimize gaps in programming due to retirements. With
a number of staff approaching retirement, there is a critical
need to put into place a plan to minimize disruption of the
excellent successful programs currently in place. Potential
solutions include phased retirements or post retirement mentoring
arrangements to ensure smooth transitions in programming
as new staff come on board.
- Re-create a UC IPM Program Policy Advisory Committee (PAC). The
review panel recommends the immediate re-establishment of the
PAC, which should consist of both internal (UC) and external
stakeholders representing both urban and agricultural interests.
The PAC will provide feedback to the Program, help set priorities,
and assist in the evaluation of the Program’s ability
to meet its goals. The PAC can also build support for the Program
by assisting in development, fundraising, and collaboration
with external stakeholders.
- Incorporate a measure of the economic/environmental
problems that are being assessed (engage social scientists/economists). The
review panel suggests that UC IPM use some of their limited
grants funds to partner with social scientists or economists
to develop improved methods of impact assessment, which could
feed back into more targeted and effective delivery of program
services.
- Address UC IPM’s relationship to the national
IPM roadmap. Significant
effort was invested in the development of a national vision
for IPM and the UC IPM Program should align its mission and
vision with the national roadmap.
- Evaluation
- Identify funding
for evaluation and impact assessment of IPM programs. The review panel considered the need
for improved evaluation and assessment of impacts to be extremely
important and thus recommended that specific funding be sought to
support this effort.
- Building on Strengths: Responding to the needs of California
- Partner
with counties to create 4 Urban IPM Advisor positions (e.g., structural,
landscape). The need for expansion into
the urban sector was considered paramount for the UC IPM Program
and an efficient means to accomplish this was by partnering with
the counties to create new urban IPM advisor positions located
strategically across the state.
- Fund a grants program for agricultural
and urban issues at $1.5M/year. A
fully funded grants program for both agricultural and urban issues
was seen as being critical and synergistic to the overall success
of the UC IPM Program. The UC IPM Program is providing an increasingly
important role in generating the applied research needed to keep
California agriculture competitive at a time when the applied research
mission activity within ANR at the campus level is declining. The
panel heard repeatedly that the UC IPM grants program has an outstanding
reputation and that extremely high quality technical information
is being generated. In addition, the grants program facilitates
interactions and networking with Specialists, AES faculty, and
Advisors. The average grant size should be raised to $50,000 per
year to cover the increasing cost of graduate students and technical
support.
- Create 10 Associate IPM Advisor positions
over the next 2 years. As
the number of CE Advisor positions in the ANR pool decline, the
idea of joint appointments between the CE and IPM Advisors appears
to be an excellent option. Such joint appointments are relatively
inexpensive and expand the influence of the UC IPM Program and
allow for new peer collaborations and partnerships at the county
and regional levels. The review panel was quite impressed by the
CE Advisor/IPM Advisor from Kern County who has become the first
example of such an association.
- Other recommendations, but not specific to the UC IPM Program
- ANR should hire a pesticide application/technology
specialist (outside of UC IPM Program). UC IPM research grants, IPM advisors,
and others within UC have done a great job developing alternatives
to pesticides, improved pest monitoring methods, economic thresholds
and have helped determine the most effective but selective treatments
that might be used in various situations. However, the whole system
is breaking down in some cases because growers do not have sufficient
information to apply treatments correctly.
- Address marketing, printing and distribution
issues with ANR Communications Services. The review panel was concerned about
the limited relationship between UC IPM and Communication Services.
For example, in several cases UC IPM has been approached by commodity
groups to produce specific manuals but when the products are printed,
there is no formal process by which UC IPM is consulted in relation
to determining optimal print run size and marketing strategies.
This is a lost opportunity for ANR.
- The low pay scale for UC Advisors needs
to be addressed. Given
their greater roles in applied research along with their important
roles as educators, this issue needs to be addressed.
Members of the Review Panel
- Michael Hoffmann (Chair), Director, Cornell University Agricultural
Experiment Station
- Mark Cady, Program Director, Biological Farming & Sustainable
Cotton Project, Community Alliance with Family Farmers
- David Duncan, Branch Manager, Pest Management
and Licensing Branch, California Department of Pesticide Regulation
- Thomas Gordon, Professor, Department of Plant
Pathology, University of California, Davis
- Joseph G. Morse, Professor, Department of Entomology, University
of California, Riverside
- Debbie Raphael, Toxics Reduction/Green Building Program
Manager, Department of the Environment, City and County
of San Francisco
- Philip A. Roberts, Professor, Department of Nematology, University
of California, Riverside
- Gary Van Sickle, Research Director, California
Tree Fruit Agreement
- Jeffrey A. Wyman, Professor, Department of Entomology, University
of Wisconsin, Madison
Top of page
|
