Catching Up with CALS — March 5, 2025

Dean's Message — Good Advice

The CALS Dean’s Advisory Board (DAB) comprises some of the most influential names in Idaho’s agricultural and life sciences industries, representing the broad diversity of the college and its stakeholders. The knowledge these leaders offer is helping CALS accomplish truly incredible feats — such as our recent Niche.com ranking as America’s 13th best college of agricultural science. My goal for DAB is to give members reason to view their service more as an opportunity than an obligation. Board members attending our biannual meetings have the rare chance to socialize and share ideas with decision-makers involved in producing, processing and regulating the state’s major commodities. They also help ensure that our work has real-world value, addressing the greatest challenges affecting industry partners and Idaho communities.

Advisory boards are of little use unless the advice they dispense is heeded. I’m pleased that DAB is a true sounding board for CALS, weighing in on crucial topics such as undergraduate enrollment, the college’s performance and priorities for faculty positions. DAB includes 10 members of our CALS administrative team and 20 volunteers representing industry, alumni and individual CALS academic unit advisory boards. “One of the greatest values of the Dean’s Advisory Board is the variety of individuals that come together for meetings and the synergy that is created from their presence and input,” said Barbara Petty, associate dean and director for UI Extension. “They are truly leaders in their area of expertise and industry, and they are people of influence in their social networks. They hold us accountable for the work we do and have provided the support needed to move the college forward, tackling large projects for the betterment of the state.”

Members of the DAB share their knowledge of the industry and help us set a course. They’ve also proven to be passionate about CALS and have supported our ambitions through their time, treasure and talent. They’re all well positioned to help educate lawmakers about the importance of our efforts in agricultural and life sciences, research and development. They also generate crucial stakeholder support for our research, initiatives and campaigns.

During the winter DAB meeting, we came up with an impressive list of examples of times when board suggestions resulted in important changes within CALS. Here are but a few of those examples:

• DAB member Margie Watson, with J.C. Watson Co., has been a longtime champion of improving our facilities at the U of I Parma Research and Extension Center. She and Rick Waitley, DAB chairman and president of Association Management Group, were instrumental in orchestrating many industry groups to unify around advocacy and fundraising toward construction of the new Idaho Center for Plant and Soil Health at Parma. Waitley oversaw planning of a listening session about the project in Parma in 2018, attended by a large group of area producers, industry representatives and DAB members, who conceptualized the facility and positions that would be important to staff. The 9,600-square-foot facility was dedicated in February 2024 and includes laboratory space for research in nematology, pomology, plant pathology, microbiology and hops quality.
• DAB members have been vocal about the need for CALS to emphasize research on regenerative agriculture. We’re now pursuing a faculty position specializing in that area.
• DAB members vocalized the need for an associate director of the Idaho Agricultural Experiment Station. Juliet Marshall (Extension specialist, holder of the Potlatch Joe Anderson Endowed Professorship in Wheat Agronomy and former chair of the Department of Plant Sciences) was recently appointed to this position.
• DAB members are not afraid to weigh in on issues/conflicts that negatively affect the success of CALS both on and off campus.
• Recognizing the need for Idaho to have a research dairy operating at the scale of the state’s commercial dairies, we’re building the Idaho Center for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (CAFE), which will include the nation’s largest research dairy, in Rupert. DAB member Rick Naerebout, CEO of Idaho Dairymen’s Association, has been invaluable in raising awareness about the need for the facility and seeing it to fruition. Several other past and present DAB members have also been outstanding advocates for CAFE. We should be milking cows at CAFE by the spring of 2026, thereby solidifying our presence in the Magic Valley, which is Idaho’s food processing hub.
• DAB member Zak Miller, CEO of Idaho Farm Bureau Federation, and Naerebout are both serving on the search committee to select a new J.R. Simplot Endowed Dean of CALS, who will take over when I retire in June. They’ll lend an important industry perspective to the process of identifying a new dean with the right attributes. It’s also worth noting that past DAB board members served on the search committee that hired me in 2016.

View a complete list of DAB board members. With their help, CALS is moving the needle in its mission to create a healthy environment, an abundant food and energy supply and successful communities. When we succeed, the entire state shares this success.

Michael P. Parrella

Dean
College of Agricultural and Life Sciences

By the Numbers

University of Idaho Extension 4-H Youth Development hosted the annual 4-H Know Your Government Conference over President’s Day Weekend in Boise. Participants had the unique opportunity to learn about state government, the judiciary and the press through firsthand experiences, including mock legislative hearings and mock trials, in the very rooms where actual policies are made and judicial rulings are rendered. The conference drew 165 youth representing 32 counties and 1 Extension reservation program. Furthermore, 25 4-H volunteers, 11 Extension 4-H professionals and 9 College of Law students with the Idaho Agricultural Law Society helped run the event. Joining youth at the Know Your Government Breakfast were 12 senators, 12 state representatives, 9 University of Idaho administrators, 4 county commissioners, 2 judges, 2 tribal government officials, 1 Idaho Supreme Court justice and 1 Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Our Stories

Stripe Rust Concerns

A University of Idaho cereals pathologist is advising the state’s grain farmers that conditions appear optimal for pressure from a fungal disease that can devastate crop yields, known as stripe rust.

Initial symptoms of stripe rust include small chlorotic lesions on leaves, followed by the emergence of light-orange pustules from these lesions, each containing thousands of spores. Pustules develop parallel to leaf veins forming stripes.

Professor Juliet Marshall, associate director of the Idaho Agricultural Experiment Station, offered an outlook for stripe rust and other diseases affecting wheat and barley during the East Idaho Cereals Conference, which University of Idaho Extension hosted Feb. 5 at the Shoshone-Bannock Hotel and Event Center in Fort Hall.

Read the full story

Improving Poverty Awareness

Southwest District Health (SWDH) has afforded greater flexibility to clients who arrive late to appointments ever since staff completed a poverty competency training program facilitated by University of Idaho Extension.

The health district has also placed greater emphasis on helping clients navigate the application process to pay for services on a sliding scale based on income.

The recent changes at SWDH are among the many examples of how UI Extension’s poverty competency training program is eliminating barriers for Idahoans experiencing poverty while opening service providers’ eyes to the importance of assisting the population with empathy and flexibility.

“We recommend this training. It’s a powerful reminder of the humanity of every person we serve and challenges us to view our systems and policies through the lens of someone experiencing poverty,” said SWDH Clinic Manager Rick Stimpson. “The greatest realization was understanding how deeply poverty affects every aspect of a person’s life, including decision-making, time management and the ability to meet expectations, like being on time for clinic appointments.”

UI Extension’s poverty training program was funded with a $100,000 Extension Collaborative on Immunization Teaching and Engagement (EXCITE) grant, which spanned from August 2023 through last November. An interagency agreement between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture created EXCITE, which is managed through the Extension Foundation, to address health disparities among rural and other underserved communities. UI Extension’s EXCITE team leaders — Joey Peutz, Extension educator for Payette County; Lindsey McConnell-Soong, EXCITE program manager, and Tasha Howard, Extension educator for Canyon County — were trained as certified poverty coaches by Communication Across Barriers, a consulting firm devoted to breaking the cycle of poverty in America.

McConnell-Soong, Howard and Peutz have worked closely with SWDH and the South Central Public Health District, where they’ve trained 132 staff members to adapt poverty-informed outreach strategies for improving vaccination rates. Lack of transportation, lack of healthcare access, poor access to healthy food and other barriers can make it difficult for people experiencing poverty to lead a healthy lifestyle.

The initial training provided to the two health districts spurred a wave of interest among other Idaho entities that work with people experiencing poverty and recognized the value in better serving the population. Using internal Extension dollars to continue and grow the program, 11 additional Extension professionals from throughout the state have been trained as poverty coaches. The coaches started a Poverty Competency Task Force, which meets monthly, and they’ve helped deliver poverty competency training to more than 300 people from other organizations that work with people experiencing poverty, such as St. Luke’s Health System, Serve Idaho, Southeastern Idaho Public Health and the Western Idaho Community Health Collaborative, UI Extension programs such as 4-H’s AmeriCorps team, Eat Smart Idaho and the Digital Economy Program have benefited from the expanded training workshops, which can range from one to eight hours in duration.

“We want everyone in Extension to have a good handle on how poverty impacts the work they do and how the work they do impacts poverty in our state,” McConnell-Soong said.

The Extension Foundation, a national organization that works to help Cooperative Extension programs make a greater impact on local communities, received additional funding to hire four regional positions for three years to continue offering statewide immunization education programs. UI Extension has applied to field one of those positions.

UI Extension’s first EXCITE program, funded with a one-year, $26,000 grant, entailed collaborating with health partners to address educational gaps pertaining to the COVID-19 vaccine. Concurrently, UI Extension received a two-year, $200,000 competitive grant through EXCITE to offer mobile adult immunization clinics at workplaces, with Extension professionals meeting with workers before, during and after clinics to provide education about immunizations.

UI Extension is currently working on a fourth EXCITE project, funded with a $125,000 grant that runs through the end of August, to develop a new workshop specifically focused on poverty competency training for immunization outreach.

The EXCITE projects are included in a new, professionally produced video highlighting UI Extension’s many contributions to improving the health of Idahoans.

“Extension is about health. Whether you’re talking about forestry or crop production or immunization education, there are connections with the health of Idahoans,” McConnell-Soong said.

Making Finance Fun

Enter a middle school or high school classroom and start lecturing about budgeting and credit scores and eyes will glaze over almost immediately.

Introduce pirates, zombies, ninja warriors, the Wild West and outer-space adventures into the equation, however, and drab financial lessons become heroic quests to thrill any class or youth group.

Luke Erickson, a University of Idaho Extension personal finance specialist based at the Caldwell Research and Extension Center, has had children hooked on financial literacy since 2013, when he began creating custom video games that transport youth to financial fantasy worlds. 

Read the full story

Faces and Places

Associate Professor and UI Extension Potato Cropping Systems Weed Scientist Pamela Hutchinson retired from U of I on Feb. 28 after more than 28 years of service.

UI Extension Educator Julie Buck retired from U of I on Feb. 28 after 10 years of service in Bingham County.

The Carmelita Spencer Foods Laboratory is collaborating this semester with Paradise Creek Regional High School in Moscow on a program through which FCS students taking Food and Nutrition 492 are teaching the Teen Cuisine Eat Smart Idaho curriculum to 10 high school students. The high school students will visit the foods lab for six weeks to gain hands-on food preparation experience, and the collaboration will provide the FN 492 students the opportunity to teach a nutrition education curriculum.

An early childhood education graduate, Brittney Anderson, ’20, who is a preschool special education teacher with Coeur d’Alene School District 271, was chosen as the Northwest Specialty Hospital and Coeur d’Alene Regional Chamber Education Committee’s Elementary Teacher of the Month for December 2024.

Juliet Marshall, a professor of plant sciences and associate director of the Idaho Agricultural Experiment Station, was featured in a panel discussion of experiments on fusarium head blight, otherwise known as scab. The panel discussion was included in Scabinar 2024, along with other presentations focused on management of the disease affecting wheat and barley and its associated mycotoxin deoxynivalenol (DON), by experts from several agencies and institutions. Those who watch a recording of the forum and pass a Scabinar quiz may earn one continuing education unit credit in integrated pest management. Marshall also served on the event’s organizing committee.

University of Idaho Extension hosted a pair of recent workshops, organized by Xiaoli Etienne, associate professor and Idaho Wheat Commission Bill Flory Endowed Chair in Commodity Risk Management, to train farmers on how to market their crops and manage price risk. UI Extension Specialist Pat Hatzenbuehler helped Etienne run the Feb. 27 workshop in Pocatello. Hatzenbuehler and UI Extension Specialist Hernan Tejeda participated in the Feb. 28 workshop in Twin Falls. The Idaho Wheat Commission and the U.S. Department of Agriculture contributed funds toward hosting workshops in all four Extension districts within the state. Prior workshops were hosted in June 2024 in Ririe and in October 2024 in Lewiston. An additional workshop to be hosted in the Boise area is being planned. Participants learned how to define success in crop marketing, how to develop an effective marketing plan, how to understand basic marketing and price tools, how to time marketing decisions, how to conquer marketing fears and details of the 2025 grain market outlook. “The information you both presented and the handouts were great,” Soda Springs malt and seed barley farmer Craig Corbett said of the Pocatello workshop. “All producers should have been in attendance to hear what you presented.”