My job as the Professional Development Specialist is work with all new hires in Family and Consumer Science Extension and to help mentor for several years in their career.   I am available to help with all FCS Extension agents and value the relationship/trust I have built.  In a normal extension year we hire and host training on campus four times per year.   Due to Covid-19 this past year we did two in person trainings and I have continued the other training in a zoom meeting setting.  We have six new hires and I have worked with all of them at different times over the past year.   Four of these I did a county office visit and the other two I held a zoom meeting.  One of the new hires sent me this quote on my work with her in the first year.  “Sally has been instrumental in every step of my new-agent onboarding process over my first year with Extension. She went out of her way to get to know me at orientation and took the time to visit me at the county office and go over FCS strategies for success. She was kind and understanding and made me feel welcome and safe to ask questions. She was also extremely helpful with the Plan of Work process, especially when the typical in-office collaboration with coworkers was not as readily available due to COVID-19.”

Second part of my work is to break any barriers between the county and state levels.  I want agents to know who the state staff are and to feel comfortable in working with each of them.   This past fall at a state wide conference we held round table discussions.   During this time specialist and agents could meet each other and discuss state/county needs.   Positive evaluation results were specialist had a direction in what was needed and could develop programs and agents learned of new programs they could offer.  Many positive comments were related to this session and one quoted “we need this type of session more often to keep connected.”   I have continued to be a sounding board on ideas, plan of work resource, and overall person when you don’t know where to turn.  I have had many emails and conversations on just telling agents to keep doing the good work and asking them to submit success they are having during these abnormal times of work.