Follow up responses from Jon Chorover's ADR presentation

[Agriculture, Life and Veterinary Sciences, and Cooperative Extension Weekly Bulletin]

Colleagues,

Jon Chorover received two additional questions after his time ran out at yesterday's Associate Dean for Research presentation. His responses are below in blue.

Q: What do you see as the role of the Arizona Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension in fostering the vision you have laid out, land grant and beyond? ~ Brett Blum

As I discussed in the beginning of my talk, CALES Research is supported by a three-legged stool that includes the 10 academic units, AES and CES, and this tripartite relationship is central to the land-grant mission that our college, in particular, has at its core.  The AES is critical infrastructure of a 21st century CALES research mission as it enables faculty, staff, students and partners to pursue research that requires organism to plot to landscape scale experimental manipulations on actual landscapes while having access to essential personnel and laboratory facilities to conduct the research. The CES is what enables our research to connect directly with the communities that depend on our research as a component of the land-grant mission, and it is a built in mechanism for the kinds of community-engaged research and co-creation of knowledge that are central to what it means to be a land-grant university.  Hence, CES and AES are two legs of the three legged stool that includes also CALES academic units and their research faculty (with both additional instructional or extension appointments).

Q; Under Dean Sander, one individual (Colin) covered current ADR duties and Experiment Station. Now we have fewer faculty, but have two upper level administrators for addressing both campus Research and Experiment Station.  Do you see yourself being able to do both of these duties if the new Dean sees that as being a more efficient model? ~ Russell Tronstad

I am certainly open to discussing and modifying the scope of my duties and responsibilities with the new Dean if they seek to make changes to our administrative structure.  While your question implicitly suggests an administrative expansion in the newer structure that we currently have, I would suggest that the assignment of a single Director of AES actually decreased the number of AES administrative folks because previously, each AES site had its own director.  This enabled Colin Kaltenbach to provide distant oversight of the AES facilities without having to be frequently on site for management purposes.  Most recently, MAC had Bob Roth, YAC had Kurt Nolte, CAC had Steve Husman, Vet Diagnostic Lab had Greg Bradley, and V-V had Dave Schafer. All were faculty members working as administrative directors or "unit heads" at AES sites. When Jeff Silvertooth was CES and became AES director, there was a shift away from "unit heads" at AES locations in favor of staff operating as functional superintendents with facilities oversight reporting to a single administrative leader (Jeff Silvertooth, then Mitch McClaran, and now Brett Blum).


[image0]
Jeff Ratje
Sr. Associate Vice President, Finance Admin Operations
Agriculture, Life and Vet Sciences & Cooperative Extension
THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

Forbes, 314c
PO Box 210036 | Tucson, AZ 85721
Office: 520-621-1468
jmratje at arizona.edu<mailto:jmratje at arizona.edu>
www.compass.arizona.edu<https://www.compass.arizona.edu/>


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