Dr. Ashurst has been a Federal Coach for USDA's Children, Youth and Families at Risk (CYFAR) Professional Development and Technical Assistance (PDTA) Center since January 2019. This is a multi-state subcontract with the University of Minnesota and Pennsylvania State University as the national leads. During the reporting period, Dr. Ashurst had a contract for 45% of her time as a federal coach. She was assigned to oversee grants in Vermont, Rhode Island, Maryland, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Alabama. She was also assigned in May 2024 to new awards in Iowa and a new joint institution grant between California and Maryland. Ashurst facilitates monthly Zoom meetings with every state. She completed required face-to-face site visits with personnel from all states during the CYFAR Professional Development Event in Minneapolis, MN and  site visits with Rhode Island, Maryland, North Carolina, Nevada, and Alabama during the reporting year. Grants are required to have a Year 1 site visit and a Year 3 site visit but many site visits were delayed due to the pandemic. All of the states Dr. Ashurst coaches are now caught up on site visits. Deliverables as a federal coach include helping to implement, facilitate and evaluate online trainings based on identified needs; track best practices through Extension nationally; develop materials on underrepresented/underserved audiences; promote Extension enrollment; present at annual national professional development events; attend twice per year face-to-face meetings of PDTA personnel; attend twice per month virtual meetings of national coaches; attend once per month virtual meetings with the coach coordinator at Penn State; consult with and provide oversight to 6-9 grants in other states through: new grantee orientation; monthly contacts; 2 site visits during 5-year grant cycles; monthly newsletter distribution; resource and innovative idea sharing; grant networking; support for hiring and retention and community partner involvement; sustainability toolkit; Common Measures use and refinement; support with logic model refinement, Return on Investment data, short and long-term outcome data, and sustainability data; core competencies for working with vulnerable audiences; annual executive summaries to USDA/NIFA.

Through this federal role, Dr. Ashurst works with Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and USDA to:

Goal 1 - Build upon established systems to further identify, incorporate, and leverage internet technology to facilitate communication and sharing of promising and evidence-based practices among Land Grant University (LGU) institutions, Extension, and Sustainable Community Projects (SCPs).

Goal 2 - Support efforts to engage and improve outcomes for vulnerable populations and educating on inclusion, diversity, equity, and access for underserved and underrepresented populations.

Goal 3 - Advance a comprehensive training plan that uses strategic outreach, professional development, technology and collaboration to support the adoption of promising CYFAR practices across the greater LGU and Extension communities.

Goal 4 - Use a continuous quality improvement process to review and strengthen program evaluation, data collection, and reporting practices across all aspects of the Center’s work. In particular, systems will be created to address grantees’ and stakeholders’ needs for comprehensive collection/reporting of quality data.

Goal 5 - Capture how CYFAR grants are leveraging federal funding to report on Return-on-Investment (ROI) and success in sustaining post CYFAR funding.

As a result of this federal role, Dr. Ashurst represents the University of Kentucky at the national level. She meets with administrators and community partners from all over the country. She is exposed to a large number of ideas and people in a multi-disciplinary and collaborative environment that focuses on positive community change and community capacity building for underserved audiences through Extension. She also became a coach mentor to a newly hired CYFAR federal coach in June 2023 and has now completed a year of mentoring during the onboarding process.