Ohio has three national NACDEP award recipients

Last week (June 9-12) many Ohio State University Extension Community Development professionals traveled to Asheville, North Carolina for the 15^th Annual NACDEP Conference, ‘Homegrown to New Heights.’ The 3+ day event included mobile workshops, scholarly presentations, a variety of committee meetings, and networking receptions. Here are some highlights of our CD colleagues in action:

• On Monday, David Civittolo presided over the annual business meeting and provided an update on a number of key initiatives that were part of his 2018-2019 term as president. Also as part of the business meeting, Nancy Bowen provided a NACDEP treasury update. Later in the afternoon, Brian Raison led the north central regional meeting as the regional board representative.
• Tuesday included scholarly presentations by Nancy Bowen (Understanding and Applying IMPLAN in Extension Community Development Work) and Eric Romich (Assessing Potential Peak Energy Demand Strategies in Agriculture), with award-winning poster presentations by Brooke Beam (Immersive Virtual Reality Programming for Extension) and Brian Raison (Leadership for Operations & Support Staff: Unlock Their Potential as Coaches and Mentors) later in the day.

After Tuesday afternoon’s mobile learning workshops, three of our colleagues were recognized at the evening awards banquet: Becky Nesbitt (Distinguished Career Award); Brooke Beam (Cross Program Award - Using Virtual Reality in Educational Programming), and Meghan Thoreau (Educational Technology Award - Scholastic High School Drone Racing League Program). These individuals and Amanda Osborne (Educational Materials Award - Produce Perks Toolkit for Farmers Markets) were also north central regional winners.

• Our contributions on Wednesday wrapped up with a scholarly presentation by Meghan Thoreau (The Importance of Millennials in the Workplace).