Virginia State University Tapped by APLU and USDA-NIFA to Join National Team Responsible For Sharing the Value/Impact of Land-Grant Universities
Virginia State University College of Agriculture’s Director of Marketing & Communications, Michelle Olgers, was one of two 1890 land-grant university (LGU) agricultural communicator professionals selected to serve on the 14-person National Impact Database (NIDB) writing and editing team this year.
For two days in New Orleans on February 11th and 12th, the team reviewed all 380 2021 impacts submitted by U.S. LGUs and developed web stories and summary fact sheets from them. These stories and summary sheets, as well as a forthcoming impacts video, demonstrate the value and collective impact of the nation’s LGU mission areas of Cooperative Extension and food and agricultural research. The team’s stories, summaries and video are used on a daily basis by USDA-NIFA when reporting to Congress and the USDA Office of Management and Budget. They also use them, as does the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU), the 1890 Universities Foundation, and other organizations and government entities, to help share LGU impacts with the media, on social media and with important stakeholders on state and federal levels. Additionally, Extension and research faculty rely on this information to learn of impacts their peers are making in other states, in order to discover potential collaborations that could lead to greater, multistate impacts.
Communication professionals on the NIDB writing team represented: Colorado State University, Fort Valley State University, LSU AgCenter, Michigan State University, Oregon State University, Purdue, University of California, University of Connecticut, University of Maryland, University of Wyoming and Virginia State University. The NIDB project is a joint initiative of APLU’s ECOP and ESCOP committees and USDA-NIFA.