Shortly after Jack Payne became vice president for ISU Extension and Outreach, President Geoffroy set these four mission critical objectives for Extension.
1. Budgets and Finances. Conduct a careful assessment of the overall financial health of Extension and take the steps necessary to ensure that the revenues and costs are in alignment and that all past financial commitments are completed.
2. Continuing and Distance Education. Significantly grow the university’s overall continuing and distance education program; establish specific growth targets and a timeline for achieving them. Develop ways to create C&DE offerings in areas with high market demand. Disentangle the Continuing and Distance Education (C&DE) budgets from the rest of Extension and set C&DE up as a completely separate business enterprise with the goal of making C&DE completely self supporting, without subsidy from state appropriations or tuition revenues other than those generated by C&DE.
3. Decentralized Faculty and Staff Appointments. Develop a plan to bring greater central control over faculty and staff extension appointments that are currently distributed within the university’s academic units. This could involve collecting salary monies from dispersed extension appointments that become vacant to create a reallocation pool to ensure that future appointments are well-aligned with the university’s overall Extension priorities.
4. University Priorities of Increasing Enrollment and Enhanced Taxpayer Support. Enhance the role of ISU Extension in student recruitment and in building taxpayer and legislative support for the university with the goal of having every ISU Extension employee serving as an effective ambassador for the University and all of its programs. Options to explore include having a highly visible student recruitment display in every extension office and ensuring a visible ISU presence in every local parade or other major community event.