APRIL 2012

During April, the educational media team worked on publications covering topics that might be considered spring-like, such as seasonal produce, good nutrition, nature tourism and wildlife recreation. Here’s a list of them:

• Coloring Our Plates with Vegetables and Fruits

• Irrigation Monitoring with Soil Sensors

• Measuring Air Quality in Rural Areas

• Fairy Ring Prevention and Control

• Coloring Our Children’s Plates with Vegetables and Fruits

• Cooking Well with Diabetes

• Special Food Needs (D-1284)

• Economics of Wildlife Recreation in Texas (E-323)

• Marketing and Nature Tourism (Adventure, Agritourism, Fishing and Hunting) (E-324)

• Texas Well-Owners Network

• Keys to Managing Poultry Litter

Team members also: edited and uploaded a “Dinner Tonight” video on Sausage Skillet Supper to YouTube; helped develop a script for a rainwater harvesting video to be produced this summer; worked on the Wounded Warrior video series; revised the Cooking Well with Diabetes disk and delivered 20 copies; and outsourced production of 300 disks for Buckskin Brigades camps.

 They also compiled a list of 164 online courses currently offered by Texas AgriLife Extension Service faculty.

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Members of the Web team were busy this month too. They set up sites live in the new WordPress theme:

• Corpus Christy Center: ccag.tamu.edu
• Bexar county office: bexar-tx.tamu.edu
• pulse.tamu.edu
• ipm.tamu.edu
• texasdairymatters.org
• today.agrilife.org

They created a new responsive theme for Master Naturalists and made it available for chapters across the state; beta tested AgriLife Today with members of the media relations team; and are working on sites for the Beaumont Center and communities.tamu.edu.

Projects in progress are:

• FAZD
• College Giving site
• Research site redesign (agrilife.org/research-test)
• WFSC
• HUB vendor feedback page
• Borlaug plant genomics/biotech website
• telp.tamu.edu
• agrilife.org/txipm
• Animal science department
• Peanut.tamu.edu

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The media relations team had a busy month as well. During April they produced several news articles, including:

• Auvermann awarded Superior Service by AgriLife Extension
• AgriLife Extension’s Bexar County office ‘abuzz’ May 18 with Beekeeping Basics
• AgEco Team Superior Service Award
• Dr. Pablo Pinedo is looking to see if there is a difference in longevity of dairy cattle based on breed
• Vernon bunch’s Superior Service Award
• Jerri Hamar Superior Service Award
• Former student did botanical drawings which inspired a line of floral clothing and accessories, all are on exhibit at the Benz School of Floral Design
• Jon Green’s Superior Service Award
• Travis Miller gives insight into what Texans are facing after the drought of 2011
• Kim Adcock’s Superior Service Award

The Superior Service award stories will be posted to the website only, but will be available for local news media.

In addition, team members: wrote a brief to provide media support for a proposed voluntary veterinarian audit/training program led by Extension in partnership with the veterinarian school; attended the TEEM (Texas Extension Emergency Management) meeting; presented a drought JIC overview for the TEEM meeting; helped with the Sonora Station’s first “Neighbor Meeting Neighbor” program to assist “old” landowners and “new” landowners to meet and to learn about the station; served as “secret” judge for the district 4-H photo contest; and helped plan another meeting of the Agricultural Communicators in the High Plains commodity communicators meeting next month in Lubbock.