2022 Northeast Joint Summer Session Meeting Agenda

Sunday, June 5-Tuesday, June 7, 2022
Theme: Innovation

Expected Outcomes:

  • Build and strengthen relationships between Northeast NEED, NERA, AHS, APS, agriculture communicators, and CARET members.
  • Employ innovation as a theme to explore areas of mutual interest and collaboration.
  • Frame a “Northeast Agenda”, a plan that exploits the unique attributes of the Northeast and its contributions to agriculture and informs the region’s academic programs, experiment stations, Cooperative Extension services, and regional advocacy efforts. 

Sunday, June 5

12:00 p.m. — Registration Opens

1:30 p.m. — Optional Tour: Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment

7:00 p.m. — Welcome Reception: Speaker: Lauchlin Titus presents “Flavor of Maine”

Monday, June 6

7:00 a.m. — Registration

  • Display Set-Up
  • Breakfast

8:30 a.m. — Welcome and Introductions: University of Maine President, Dr. Joan Ferrini-Mundy

9:00 a.m. — Innovation Round Robin: The DNA of Innovation

Entrepreneurs, academics, and business leaders will present short stories that assist in the identification of the DNA of innovation and how the employment of innovation in academic leadership leads to institutional change and quality improvement.

  • Artificial Intelligence Meets Agriculture — Diane Rowland, University of Maine, and Alina Zare, University of Florida
  • Engineering Innovation: Jason Bolton — University of Maine
  • Controlled Environmental Agriculture-Implementation of a Vision — Tim Schartner, Rhode Island Grows, LLC

10:00 a.m. — Participant Networking: Meet and Greet

10:20 a.m. — Innovation Open Space

Working in small groups, participants will collaborate with colleagues from around the region to develop new relationships, identify innovative leadership strategies and initiatives, and map a playbook for innovation. Participants will be challenged to extend thinking beyond their own institutions.

  • Facilitator: Ali Mitchell Dunigan, NEED

12:00 p.m. — Lunch

1:00 p.m. — Innovation Takeaways

2:00 p.m. — Break

3:00 p.m. — Post-Pandemic Leadership and Employee Engagement

This session will be dedicated to a discussion and work session on innovative strategies used by leaders to engage employees during and after the pandemic. The shifts in moving to and from remote working have profoundly changed social capital employed in work settings.  What does the science tell us about re-engaging and navigating the social challenges in a peri- or post-pandemic world? How did and how will you lead your organization? In this session, we’ll use Microsoft’s “The New Future of Work 2020” as a guiding document.  

  • Facilitator: Rick Rhodes, NERA                        

4:15 p.m. — Meeting Adjourns

5:00 p.m.— Lobster Bake, Peaks Island

  • Walk to the Peaks Island Ferry (7-minute walk) or ride (transportation provided) to the Ferry

Tuesday, June 7

7:00 a.m. — Breakfast

8:00 a.m. — Section Meetings: NEED, NERA, AHS, APS, CARET,  Communicators

10:00 a.m.  — Networking Break

10:30 a.m. — Section Meetings Continued

12:00 p.m. — Lunch

1:00 p.m. — NIFA Update

2:00 p.m. — Joint NEED, NERA, AHS, and CARET Meeting: “Innovation and the Northeast Agenda”

The meeting will conclude with a work session dedicated to the “Northeast Agenda.”  Participants will be asked to consider ways to innovatively increase the visibility of Northeast academic, Extension, and research programs through lenses of collaboration, connectivity, and consistency.

  • Facilitators: Ali Mitchell Dunigan, NEED, and Rick Rhodes, Nera

4:30 p.m.  — Happy Hour and Networking!