Dr. Harold Martin officially returned to North Carolina A&T — the institution that is both his alma mater and square one for his distinguished career as a university administrator — as chancellor on June 8. TV station WFMY’s online news delivery cache still has the entire 27-minute Board of Trustee’s announcement and Dr. Martin’s acceptance available. Pay close attention and you’ll hear an accolade about the SAES-connected North Carolina Research campus about 7 ½ minutes (7:24) into the video clip.

The week prior to his return to A&T, Martin was invited by North Carolina Public Radio to be part a panel that discussed “HBCUs: The Next 100 Years”  on a UNC Radio program, “The State of Things,” that originally aired on June 2.  That program too is still accessible online, and one of the more interesting questions the panel fielded during the program’s call-in segment concerned the decision to locate North Carolina’s first school of veterinary medicine at N.C. State instead of at A&T.

• The National Science Foundation (NSF) will be accepting proposals until July 23 for its Faculty Early Career Development Program which supports professional development for assistant professors currently without tenure, but whose appointments are tenure-track or the equivalent. Applicants must also have doctorates. The NSF typically awards 425 Faculty Early Career Development Program grants each year. Most of these grants offer more than $400,000 for five-year projects, except for grants to biological sciences faculty, which must have budget requests of $500,000 for their five-year projects. Award-winning proposals will successfully exemplify the role of teacher-scholar with research objectives that integrate furthering an educational concentration within a context of organizational mission. Career development planning should be omnipresent and creative in proposals. The July 23 deadline applies to applicants in the biological, computer, engineering, economic, environmental and life sciences. There is an earlier deadline, July 21, for applicants in other disciplines.

• Until July 10, the Center for Poverty Research at the University of Kentucky will be soliciting proposals from junior faculty with full-time academic appointments who have received their doctorates in the past seven years. The Center’s “Young Investigator Development Grants” program is going to recognize three proposals with grants of up to $7,500 each. The Center is looking for social science research regarding low-income populations — including child and family well being, and the economic status of disadvantaged and under-represented populations. Preference will be given to proposals that address poverty in the South.

President Barack Obama’s memoir, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, is on the summer reading list at a number of colleges and universities, so SAES faculty and staff who see friends or family with a copy they may be able to borrow should keep in mind that the book is also A&T’s "Text in Community" selection for the 2009-10 academic year. Faculty, staff and students will be encouraged to read and discuss President Obama’s memoir, and incorporate the book into coursework and extracurricular activities.

Dreams from My Father was first published in 1995, after Obama had graduated from law school, but before he began his political career. It was then re-released, with a revised introduction, following his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Dreams from My Father has been singled out by Time magazine as the “best written memoir ever produced by an American politician,” and the book also received Great Britain’s Galaxy British Book Award for Biography of the Year. Among the book’s major cross-disciplinary topics are race, culture, education and family relationships. For those who can’t get a loaner from friends or family this summer, used copies in the $4 range are available at some online retailers.

USDA now has funding support available for ideas for new farm products. A new round of “Value-Added Producer Grants” will eventually funnel about $18 million to products and projects that increase farm revenues by expanding the customer base for farm commodities. The grants will help farmers, cooperatives, producer groups or business ventures that include producers, get a toehold on value-added activities. The applications are due July 6.

The Agricultural Research Program will be hosting a highly select group of high school students from June 29 until July 24: the 20 high school juniors and seniors selected for the 2009 Research Apprentice Program (RAP). Sixteen of the 20 students selected for the 2009 RAP come from North Carolina. Two students from Maryland and one each from Alabama, Virginia and South Carolina fill out the geographic mix. This summer’s RAP students will go home with a taste of college life and a month of scientific guidance that they will receive from working one-on-one with a member of the SAES research faculty. The entire SAES faculty and staff is invited to attend the grand finale for the 2009 RAP on Friday, July 24, when the research apprentices will present overviews of their projects from 9 a.m. to noon at Webb Hall. The RAP students will be making poster presentations and discussing what they learned while working with their SAES mentor scientists.

The A&T Honors Program will kick off its new “University Honors Lecture Series" this coming fall semester. The series will feature lectures and programs presented by A&T faculty, community leaders, writers and artists, and local scholars in an effort to expose students to new ideas, present research, celebrate diversity, nurture leadership, and encourage civic participation.

A&T faculty from all disciplines who are interested in presenting a lecture or program (approximately 50-60 minutes) on research that they are currently conducting may contact Karen Favreau, academic program coordinator in the Honors Program, at 285-2030.  While many of those in attendance will be A&T honors students, the programs will be marketed to the entire A&T community and beyond. According to Favreau: “Presenting a program as part of the series is a great way to connect with highly motivated students, meet faculty from other institutions, and make the A&T and the greater Greensboro community aware of the new knowledge you are creating.”

On July 1, the North Carolina Biotechnology Center begins taking grant applications for proposals with cost projections of up to $75,000 for projects that will strengthen biotechnology research and development at academic institutions and other non-profit involved in research. The door that opens July 1 closes Sept. 23 - the deadline for pre-proposals. Among the areas of specific focus on the Biotechnology Center’s wish list for project proposals are biotech applications for food safety, nutritional and natural products, and also projects that will have specific applications in agriculture.

In late March, the National Science Foundation announced a partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that will consolidate nearly $50 million in funding support for solutions to the critical challenges facing agriculture in developing countries. The project acronym, BREAD, stands for “Basic Research to Enable Agricultural Development” and there is a proposal stipulation for “a clear and well-defined connection between the outcomes of the proposed research and its direct relevance and potential application to agriculture in the developing world” that sets BREAD apart from traditional NSF programs. There is also going to be a program focus on research proposals that address “major constraints to the productivity of crops important to smallholder farmers.” It’s anticipated that 10 to 20 grants, ranging up  to $6 million, will be funded for FY 2010. Letters of intent are due no later than Aug. 5, and full proposals must be submitted by Sept. 9.

Eight specialists with The Cooperative Extension Program at A&T will be finishing up a trilogy of training programs for members of the Extension field staff on June 30 at the Mountain Horticultural Crops Research and Extension Center in Fletcher. As at the previous programs (at A&T June 23 and at Wayne Community College June 25) Drs. Keith Baldwin and John O’Sullivan will be covering the nuances of launching or expanding initiatives for connecting consumers to locally grown foods;  Dr. Niki Whitley will be discussing parasite control in livestock through integrated pest management methods; Dr. Michelle Eley will be leading a community leadership track that will emphasize relationships between Extension and other organizations; and Drs. Joshua Idassi and Jimo Ibrahim will be covering some agro-forestry and Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), including medicinal and culinary herbs. The training program — which will begin at 9 a.m. and wind up at 4 p.m. — is open to all members of the Extension field faculty working at county Extension centers in western North Carolina.

The Farm Aid non-profit organization founded in the 1980s by Willie Nelson and other musicians has continued to provide financial support for family-owned farms for more than two decades. Last year Farm Aid distributed more than $468,000 to organizations supporting family farms and small-scale agriculture, and the organization has set an Aug. 1 deadline for applications for its next funding cycle. Farm Aid typically makes grants ranging from $1,000 to $20,000 to farm support agencies and community action groups that put together proposals for assisting farmers in making the transition to production practices that are sustainable as well as profitable. or new approaches to marketing.

The economic downturn has given an added lure to North Carolina’s annual sales tax holiday (12:01 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 7, until 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 9, in 2009), and computer equipment retailers are cautioning customers planning to take advantage of the sales tax holiday that it may be wise planning to order equipment in advance to ensure they don’t find the cyber cupboards bare the first week of August. The tax exemption is good for computer equipment retailing for less than $3,500, so equipment just under that cap will probably be most in demand. Other back-to-school considerations in the sales tax holiday legislation are school instruction materials of less than $300; computer supplies of less than $250; school supplies of less than $100; and clothing and footwear retailing for less than $100.

Dr. Ralph Noble of the Department of Animal Sciences is assisting Operation Spring Plant (a nonprofit that provides technical and financial assistance to minority-owned and limited-resources farmers. The partnerships will be hosting one of six national listening sessions that USDA has scheduled for getting feedback from small-scale producers on the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). The listening session that the chair of the SAES’s Dept. of Animal Sciences and Operation Spring Plant are coordinating will be at the McKimmon Center on the N.C. State University campus in Raleigh on Thursday, June 25. Registration will start at 8 to 9 a.m. and the session itself will run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The Raleigh listening session is part of a second wave of six sessions that complements seven sessions in May and early June that were held at locations across the U.S. Although preregistration isn't required, livestock producers and other individuals planning to attend are nonetheless asked to preregister by sending USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) an e-mail or by giving the agency a call at 301–734–0799.  Preregistration is an especially good idea for those who are planning to present questions or concerns at the listening session. (In the subject line of the e-mail, please give your own name or your organization’s name, and indicate that you’ll be attending the Raleigh listening session. In the body of the message, give your name and organization name and indicate that you’d like to present comments or concerns at the listening session.)

The registration deadline is Aug. 10 for a free one-day (8 a.m. to 4 p.m.) “Innovation in Instruction” conference at Elon University on Aug. 20. The conference focus will be on such relatively recent considerations for instructors as Facebook, Twitter, Wikis and other new media. The conference also will explore the new educational dynamics facing university faculty as traditional methods, centered on texts and talk, are giving way to the new technologies and teaching methods.

“Save-the-date” postcards for Small Farms Field day on Thursday, July 16, at the University Farm are ready for distribution.  Please feel free to pass along a printout or a .pdf to farmers and farm support agencies that might be interested in a quick look (8:30 a.m. to noon) at recent developments in horticultural, poultry, fruit and vegetable research.

Cooperative Extension agents, professionals from other agricultural support agencies and small-scale farmers are all welcome and there is no registration fee. Highlight items on this year’s program include test plots of: specialty vegetables growing on various mulches; raised-bed vegetable production without tillage; Asian eggplant (used in Chinese and Thai cuisine); Scotch bonnet peppers; cover crops; and amaranth greens. The Field Day itinerary also includes overviews of pasture-raised swine and poultry research. Other researchers who have been working to put the Small Farms Field Day program together are Drs. Ralph Noble, Willie Willis, Sang-Hyon Oh, Keith Baldwin and M. R. Reddy. The planning team also includes Teo Barrios of the University Farm staff, and Rickie Holness, an Extension associate, who is coordinating the 2009 Field Day at the University Farm. (Everyone planning to attend Small Farms Field Day should keep in mind that because of potential biosecurity concerns about the spread of swine flu, it’s going to be a good idea to check the SAES Web page before departing for any program or activity at the University Farm in the months ahead.)

Dr. Lizette Sanchez-Lugo, an SAES assistant professor in Family and Consumer Sciences and the interim director of the University’s Institute for Public Health, was one of 100 instructors and doctoral-level students in nutrition, food science, pharmacology and other health-related disciplines accepted for the National Institutes of Health's Dietary Supplement Research Practicum in early June. Experts from the NIH, and federal regulatory agencies and research institutions led participants through five days of intensive study of the substances that can supply additional vitamins, minerals and other nutrients to the human diet.

Few documents come out of academia that don’t include a couple of paragraphs that are listings — a list of equipment, a list of collaborating agencies, course listing, etc. If you see that you’ve got a long listing (five or more entries) that’s horizontal, with entries separated by commas or semicolons, there are a lot of good reasons to convert it to a vertical list, with each entry on one line and introduced with a bullet or asterisk. Readers tend to skim listings instead of reading each entry closely, and a vertical listing makes it unmistakably clear that it’s text that can be skimmed. Vertical lists also work well on Web pages — an important consideration for almost every document these days.

Here are a few guidelines for vertical lists: 

Use a colon — not a dash — to introduce the list.

Number vertical lists when the entries are part of a sequence, but when no sequence of actions is involved use bullets.

Sequential:
All students planning on attending the Career Expo should:
1. Pre-register two weeks in advance.
2. Update their resumes and make 25 copies the week before the Expo.
3. Dress in their best business attire on Expo day.

Non-sequential:
Students attending the Career Expo should bring along:
• At least 25 copies of their resume
• A printout of their registration form
• Their university ID card
 
When bulleted items are sentences, capitalize the first letter of each and use appropriate end punctuation. When they consist of single words or phrases, lowercase is best.

In a bulleted list, the bullet takes the place of punctuation (such as commas or semicolons) between items in a list. Don't put periods or semicolons at the ends of bulleted entries that are not sentences.

When bulleted items are sentences, capitalize only the first letter of each word. And even when the entries on a bullet listing are short phrases instead of sentences, it’s best to capitalize only the first word. 

Keep bulleted listings consistent. If some of the entries are sentences, make all of them sentences. If most entries begin with verbs, begin all entries with verbs.

Indent your bulleted list from text that comes before and after. Consider the density of the surrounding copy and whether your list might get lost, even with the bullets.

If you’ve got a sequential list and enumerate it, use numbers, not letters.

There’s no need to put numbers in full parenthesis, or to put a close-parenthesis after the period following the numeral.