This business meeting of the Joint Policy Council on Agriculture and Higher Education (JPC) was held in Room 6114 of the UC Office of the President Building in Oakland, 1111 Franklin Street, on April 1, 1999 from 9:30 a.m. - 1 p.m.

Attending: Warren Baker, Cal Poly SLO; W. R. "Reg" Gomes, UC; Steve Olson for Robert Agrella, Santa Rosa JC; Sharon Fleming (attended until 10 am) for Robert Berdahl, UC Berkeley; Mark Burrell, JPC Advisory Board Chair (arrived 10:15); Tom Dickinson for Manuel Esteban, CSU Chico; Bill Feddersen, Mt. San Antonio College; Ray Orbach, UC Riverside; Mark Bender for Maria Sheehan, Modesto Junior College; Wayne Bidlack for Robert Suzuki, Cal Poly Pomona; Larry Vanderhoef, UC Davis; Provost Michael Ortiz for John Welty, CSU Fresno.

Staff/others present: John Gutierrez, JPC Coordinator.

A copy of the final agenda is attached.

1. Introductions and Welcome: Introductions were made, particularly for the benefit of new member Bill Feddersen. He and Maria Sheehan of Modesto JC were recently appointed to the JPC by Community College Chancellor and JPC member Tom Nussbaum. These appointments completed the agreement made last year to have equal representation of and budgetary support from all three higher education segments.

2. Report from the Committee on Cooperation in Education: Mark Bender, chair of the agriculture and environmental science department at Modesto JC, and new ex-officio member of the Committee on Cooperation in Education by virtue of President Sheehan's appointment to the JPC, reported on behalf of the deans' committee.

Articulation was the highest priority issue of the deans' committee over the past year. Mark reported that tremendous progress has been made in articulation, in no small part due to the support of the deans' committee and the JPC. Mark administers a community college grant on behalf of Modesto JC aimed at improving articulation, both among the California Community Colleges (CCC) and with JPC member institutions from the California State University (CSU) and University of California (UC). The CCC Agriculture Course Articulation Numbering System grant provides funds for travel and expenses so that meetings can be held among articulation officers of community colleges. The deans' committee also agreed to support the grant effort by providing travel funds so that CSU and UC articulation officers could participate.

These meetings have led to articulation agreements on sets of course outlines in five subject matter areas: animal science, plant science, environmental horticulture, agricultural business and mechanized agriculture. Courses that fit the course outlines agreed upon are assigned a common number that identifies it as a fully transferable course. These articulation agreements result in students being able to transfer seamlessly between community colleges and universities, confident that if they take agriculture courses prescribed by the agriculture course numbering system, the credits are fully transferable among participating colleges and universities.

Course outlines have been largely agreed upon in the five areas specified among the community colleges, the JPC member CSU schools (Chico, Fresno, Pomona and San Luis Obispo), and the primary UC undergraduate agriculture school, UC Davis. (The JPC members encouraged Mark to also include UC Berkeley and UC Riverside in this process to the extent it is applicable. Although colleges may or may not offer courses that fit the numbering system outlines, the incentive for them to do so is obvious, since it permits agriculture students to attend their institution with confidence they can transfer easily.

The JPC members were very pleased with the progress in articulation that Mark reported, and asked Mark to report this to the JPC Advisory Board at its next meeting, to which Mark readily agreed.

2.a. Mark Bender is applying for two more CCC grants through Modesto JC to carry this articulation progress further. One proposes to extend the course numbering system to the subject matter area of environmental sciences/forestry/natural resources. The other proposes to review agriculture courses that fulfill general education requirements at CCC, CSU and UC; to align those courses with the statewide standardized ag curricula referred to above; to develop new statewide standardized courses in the area of general agriculture; and lastly to articulate statewide the agriculture general education courses with CSU general education courses and the Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum. This second grant proposal highlights the fact that many students take courses in agriculture/natural resources to fulfill general education requirements. This grant, if implemented, will allow students to take agriculture/natural resource general education courses with confidence they are acceptable for general education credit statewide. This will reinforce the prevalence of agriculture/natural resources in general education and will support ag literacy efforts in higher education.

Mark requested a letter of support from the JPC for each grant application. The JPC unanimously agreed to provide such letters signed by co-chairs Gomes and Baker.

3. JPC Conference and Follow-up: Mark Burrell, who chairs the conference planning committee, gave an overview of planning for the first JPC Conference, May 26, 1999 in Sacramento. What at first appeared to be an unfortunate conflict between the JPC conference and the Great Valley Center's (GVC) conference turned out to lead to a promising opportunity to expand the potential audience of our conference, and to cooperate with an organization that has similar objectives with respect to California agriculture. The decision to hold the conference in conjunction with the Great Valley Center's conference was made at the invitation of Carol Whiteside, GVC president.

While the group discussed the program and publicity efforts, discussion primarily focused on what the follow-up to the conference will be, that is, how the conference is to advance the work of the JPC on select issues in support of agriculture. The four issue papers identified some of the major issues in the four areas identified by the Advisory Board: water, food safety, the agriculture/urban interface, and tools of production (including chemicals, labor, machinery).

These papers are the background for the conference, and will be presented there. Conference participants will have opportunity to comment on the issues in the papers and to offer suggestions. However, the group judged that, due to the relative unfamiliarity of the conference participants with the JPC effort and their fleeting involvement at the conference, they would be less well-suited to the task of winnowing the list of issues for the JPC's focus than the Advisory Board. Therefore the JPC decided the task of further narrowing the list of issues is better left to the Advisory Board at their next meeting following the conference in June (date to be determined). Then the JPC will follow up the Advisory Board's deliberations with their own at a meeting they will try to arrange in July.

Discussions led to four criteria that must obtain for it to be a suitable candidate for the JPC's focus. Suitable issues are:

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These are the criteria the JPC believes are pertinent in shaping their decision to select an issue or issues for their focus.

The other obvious concern expressed by the group was how to obtain funding to support collaborative efforts to address the issue(s) selected. There are three potential sources of funding support the JPC intends to explore: private foundations; the agriculture industry; and state funding. Meetings were held by JPC leaders with UC President Atkinson (January 1999) and CSU Chancellor Reed (November 1998) to obtain their support for future fundraising efforts with private foundations. Both executives agreed to sign letters in support of those efforts. It was UC President Atkinson who raised the possibility of state funding support in his meeting with JPC leaders. Atkinson stressed that this funding must not be of the zero-sum variety, that is, that it must not detract from current agriculture program budgets in higher education. But he thought this possible. Mark Burrell has in mind three private foundations that may support JPC activities: the Kellogg Foundation, the Irvine Foundation, and the Packard Foundation. These fundraising efforts will occur after the conference when the JPC has developed proposals to address the issue or issues it selects.

4. Budgetary Matters: Co-Chair Reg Gomes reported that the budget arrangement has been satisfactory to serve the JPC's activities, adding that there is a current surplus. The JPC agreed to maintain the current budgetary arrangement, which is for a $200,000.00 annual budget (July 1through June 30 fiscal year), with support divided equally among each segment, CCC, UC and CSU.

Scheduling of JPC meetings: In response to a request for meetings scheduled well in advance, the JPC agreed to schedule one annual meeting the fourth Thursday of March, and to hold other meetings as needed, with the caveat that the practice of not holding meetings unless there is something that merits one is to continue. It was also agreed to continue holding one meeting jointly with the advisory board annually. Mark Burrell was asked to raise this at the next AB meeting in order to facilitate it.

Advisory Board participation at conference: It was stressed that it is important for the advisory board members to participate in the conference. It was agreed that Co-Chairs Gomes and Baker will send a letter to them urging their participation, and that Mark Burrell also will do so.

UC Ag Issues Center: President Baker observed that the JPC and the AIC may potentially overlap, and that the JPC should remain in contact with the AIC to assure that we work cooperatively. The group agreed.

JPC Membership: John Gutierrez reported on a meeting of the CSU Stanislaus Ag Partnership he attended at their invitation as a representative of the JPC. There is an effort to establish an endowed chair in agriculture at CSU Stanislaus and to expand their agricultural offerings to students, in cooperation with local community colleges, including Modesto JC. Representatives of CSU Stanislaus expressed interest in participating in the JPC somehow. In this context, CSU Humboldt was mentioned as having been interested previously. It was agreed that CSU Stanislaus and Humboldt representatives should be made aware of the JPC Conference, but for now, there appears to be no need to consider expanding the JPC's membership.

April 1, 1999 (9:30 a.m. - 1 p.m.)

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