Investing in Professional Development & Workforce Training Several respondents noted Extension’s opportunity to partner with private industry and energy specialists & practitioners to expand our climate and extreme weather program offerings and services. There’s an especially rich economic opportunity with technical training and workforce development in this area - this should be explored as an important and fruitful path forward. Furthermore, Extension is currently operating with a very “shallow bench” of experts in climate change, energy, and extreme weather, and respondents would like to see investments in building this internal depth of expertise. ● “One thing we could probably do is train Extension e ducators in this knowledge to raise their level of awareness, because I'm not sure how many of them are even aware. So you know, in- services, to try to build the number of people and the coverage throughout the state that could address these kinds of issues directly with their communities... and with the agricultural community, with whomever is in their county who is starting to raise their level of awareness. I think that's what I would suggest, that we really build our human infrastructure with Extension. ” (R15) ● “So I think that raising Extension’s position in this as an educational institution... and like I say, increasing climate literacy and getting people to understand that the media has objectives, fossil fuel companies have objectives, you know all those institutions and organizations have objectives, alright, and I have objectives that are 100% educational. That's the way we retain our credibility and I think that if we can convince people of that we will get some funding where we can carry out this education.” (R16) ● “One thing I’d love to do more now is really work with more communities in the region to get them enrolled in the [program] and look into the different certification levels that they can get , and that opens up their community to receiving additional points on grant applications. So there is some reason for communities to buy in, even if they don’t necessarily explicitly believe in climate change.” (R02) ● “ We don't have an Extension specialist at the (ORG/PARTNER) who's working in this area , and the energy faculty at the university, we don't really have somebody who can meet that need. And often, I end up going to non-governmental organizations who are a little more skilled at conveying that kind of information, having those sorts of dialogu es.” (R06) ● “Not just within Extension, but also I work with a lot of climate and weather professionals and to increase their literacy in terms of agriculture. You know the states that I work in and other areas, a lot of the weather and climate communities, those professionals serve the agricultural community but they don't necessarily understand it. And so being able to increase their literacy, I think, is also just as important and something that Extension can do too. So I feel like it goes both ways.” (R10)
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