Youths not only participate in Extension services but also can be equipped as facilitators to extend information about a critical topic to new audiences. Our interdisciplinary team of Extension professionals created a program to equip youths as peer educators, increase youths' awareness and understanding of a new topic (local foods), promote…

This paper examines the feasibility of developing a new Master Volunteer training program to help communities adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change. Traditional models of volunteer training programs, such as the Cooperative Extension Master Volunteer peer-to-peer learning model, are based in part on Diffusion Theory. The existing…

Purpose: This paper is one of seven in this volume elaborating upon different approaches to quality improvement in education. This paper aims to delineate a methodology called Implementation Science, focusing on methods to enhance the reach, adoption, use and maintenance of innovations and discoveries in diverse education contexts.…

The University of Minnesota Extension Center for Youth Development made an organizational decision in 2011 to invest in a system-wide approach to implement youth program quality into the 4-H program using the Youth Program Quality Assessment (YPQA) tool. This article describes the four key components to the Minnesota Youth Program Quality…

STEM education has become essential in the United States, and agriculture allows for a great opportunity to teach STEM education in a fun, hands-on manner. The Virginia Southern Piedmont Agriculture Research and Extension Center (SPAREC), in partnership with King Arthur Flour, has created a program that reinforces what is taught in the classroom…

As early-career Extension educators challenged by societal, structural, agricultural, and fiscal trends, we designed a multiyear educational program to support the diverse needs of emerging specialty crop producers in northwest Michigan. This article presents outcomes of that program. We explore how Extension professionals can develop impactful…

Purpose: This paper explores the concept of peer-to-peer learning (P2PL) in the context of North-European small-scale forest owners. The aim is to develop a framework for initiating new and evaluating already existing forest owners' P2PL communities. Design: Previous studies of peer-learning are used to determine and justify eight dimensions for…

A statewide youth and adult train-the-trainer model that integrates workforce readiness and entrepreneurship can have a profound effect on young people's academic performance, interest in college, and overall youth development. Participants in workforce and entrepreneurship programs develop personal resources that have value in school, in the…

This article describes two methods for use in program development and refinement. Problem mapping and forcefield analysis are explained with a real-world example about parenting education. Both methods are visual and consider multiple causes and effects of a problem. The methods are effective for clearly thinking through a problem, identifying…

Adolescents are an understudied, but meaningful, population when it comes to food safety education. With the proliferation of pathogenic microbes and changes in eating habits of Americans, today's youth are more at risk of contracting a foodborne illness than previous generations. Hands On: Real World Lessons for Middle School Classrooms provides…

The document contains the final performance report of an outreach project designed to stimulate and develop increased specialized services for children, 0 to 4 years old, who have handicaps and who reside in the rural counties of Missouri and to demonstrate the efficacy of utilizing a state university extension service as a model of outreach…

This project explores a number of external degree models that could be offered to non-credentialed persons who are providing (or who want to provide) human services to older persons in New York State. Although the project was carried out in New York, the models could be applied in other settings as well. The initial motivation for the project had…

The way in which the University of South Florida (USF) developed its Open University is discussed in this report. Implemented in 1972, the Open University meets the needs of working students, many of whom live a considerable distance from one of the campuses. Annual enrollment today exceeds 7,000, and the pattern of growth indicates a need for…

This report presents a description of University College, Memphis State University (MSU). Created in 1975, this small, nontraditional college has prospered in the context of a large, state, urban university. It offers nontraditional students a way to create and finish individualized and interdisciplinary degree programs. Faculty can develop new…

Since South Carolina's Title V Community and Resource Development (CRD) project is limited to one small rural county (Williamsburg) affording careful documentation, this paper explicates South Carolina's CRD process via a social action model. This project, then, is described in terms of the following model components: (1) community initiative…