While COVID caused most of the world to distance, the pandemic drew Virginia’s 1890 and 1862 land-grant institutions closer together

By Michelle Olgers, Virginia State University College of Agriculture Director of Marketing & Communications

Within the land-grant system, Virginia’s 1890 institution, Virginia State University (VSU), and its 1862 institution, Virginia Tech, have a solid working relationship. Perhaps that’s because unlike many other states in the 1890 region, VSU and Virginia Tech committed themselves many years ago to having one Virginia Cooperative Extension, with each institution funded and managed to jointly administer the program.

Despite this stronger-than-usual working relationship between an 1890 and 1862 institution, all has certainly not been rainbows, butterflies and unicorns. And it still isn’t. But the unprecedented challenges the Coronavirus pandemic brought to our doors in March pushed the Virginia Cooperative Extension system off its business-as-usual trajectory, resulting in the two universities working closer together—in previously unprecedented ways. This new, more collaborative pathway is one that both institutions believe will ultimately benefit our staff, faculty and most importantly, the diverse publics we serve.

At the start, as we began to understand the severity of the Coronavirus situation, leadership teams from each institution, headed up by 1890 Extension administrator, Dr. M. Ray McKinnie and 1862 Extension director, Dr. Edwin Jones, began meeting daily by Zoom. District directors, program leaders, marketing directors and other leadership positions from each institution participated daily in making decisions about closures, safety, signage and more that could work across the system. To share the outcomes of these daily meetings, a daily email was sent to all Extension staff and faculty at both institutions signed jointly as “Ed and Ray.”

To enhance these communications, Drs. Jones and McKinnie adapted a previously conducted quarterly Zoom meeting led by Dr. Jones, known as “Ask Ed Anything,” into a weekly Zoom meeting called “Ask Ed & Ray Anything.” All staff and faculty were invited to participate and to submit their questions up to a day before. During the meeting, the two Virginia Extension leaders would respond to the questions accordingly, give updates, share concerns and offer words of encouragement.

This strong, amicable and efficient united front demonstrated daily in emails and in weekly Zoom meetings sent a strong reminder throughout Virginia’s Extension system that we are, indeed, one organization that works together to solve problems. To date, our daily meetings have become weekly, and our weekly Zoom meetings have stretched out to every other week,

but the united front our leaders demonstrate and the collaborative problem-solving between the two institutions shows no signs of letting up or diminishing.

With new and increased messaging and with our countless face-to-face programs quickly becoming virtual ones, it may come as no surprise that each institution’s communications department shifted into overdrive. Taking the approach that duplication of efforts is wasteful and recognizing the fact that their 1862 staff and faculty had the same Facebook Live, Zoom and other technological challenges as our 1890 ones, the two communications departments worked together to: assist with messaging; develop tool kits and instructions for virtual programming; and problem-solve for a centralized public events calendar (needed more than ever now that programming was occurring virtually, outside the confines of counties and available to everyone). Additionally, the marketing teams launched a new weekly Extension staff and faculty Zoom digital empowerment training program on topics like Facebook Live, Canva, capturing analytics, videoing with a mobile phone and more. Communications staff from each institution continue to present on the topics they have expertise in.

Meanwhile, the Coronavirus was the impetus for the Virginia Master Gardener program, led by Virginia Tech, to develop a new weekly Zoom to Facebook live series. Through this new, stronger collaboration between the two institutions, the Master Gardener communication coordinator reached out to VSU’s communication department for advice. This is because VSU was one of the first adopters of Facebook Live to deliver Extension programming that was traditionally done face-to-face. As a result, it was the VSU communication team who helped name and market the Get Gardening! program, which subsequently continues to feature many VSU Extension specialists and Small Farm Outreach Program agents. Additionally, each episode is co-hosted on VSU’s College of Agriculture Facebook page, which has led to Virginia Tech Extension staff and faculty inviting VSU to co-host many other Facebook Live programs on its Facebook page. This level of virtual program collaboration between VSU and VT is unprecedented.

Increasingly, the 1890 and 1862 Extension leadership is trying to identify ways to work smarter, not harder, by reducing the amount of duplicative efforts performed by each institution. Though this conversation started before the pandemic, it is exemplified by the fact that together we jointly decided that Virginia Tech’s Extension website would house and update all of the Coronavirus Extension information and resources, while VSU’s Extension website would feature a prominent banner at the top of its homepage announcing those resources, but when clicked on, would direct visitors to the VT page.

Similarly, already in the works was an initiative for VSU to house and update all of the Extension emergency preparedness news and resources. In this case, VT’s website will direct visitors to click through to the VSU page to access these resources. The level of efficiency realized by this approach has been enormous, while not impacting on the website user experience.

Coronavirus led Virginia Cooperative Extension leadership to realize more than ever the need to re-evaluate how best to deliver on its mission “to bring university-based, scientifically-proven information to diverse audiences to help them improve their quality of life.” Though the land of

rainbows, butterflies and unicorns still eludes us, the pandemic has brought us several steps closer. It’s evident by our current successes that continuously working together to identify new directions and smarter ways to collaborate will better serve the people of Virginia, not only during the pandemic, but long afterward.