October 19, 2005
University of Illinois Extension Annual Conference, Springfield Hilton Hotel

Welcome to Springfield!

Welcome to our state capital.
 
Welcome to a city central to our state and plunk in the center of our state.

I drove from Champaign-Urbana today, a 90-mile hop. Many of you traveled much farther. From Elizabeth, way up north near Wisconsin, Sara Hankemeier drove 235 miles. Paul McKnight came from Metropolis, far south on the Ohio River.

That’s a long haul, even for his town’s self-proclaimed heroic son, Superman -- about 250 miles. And from the state’s other metropolis, Chicagoland, Willene Buffet crossed 200 miles to be here.

Miles are easy to calculate. Other distances are harder to measure. The height of joy. The depth of feeling. How, then, can we measure the long stretch University of Illinois Extension has traveled since its inception nearly a century ago? This journey cannot be calculated neatly in miles. It must be gauged by something less tangible—progress.

You are among the thousand people who make the Extension what it is—engaged, dynamic and responsive. You are vital to Illinois, a state bordered by water but carried by the flow of events and the aspirations of its citizens—people you know better than I do, because you live with them, in Pekin and Wheaton and Vandalia. From the lush beauty of the Land Between the Rivers to the lakeside majesty of the City of Broad Shoulders, yours are the hometown faces of the University of Illinois.

You live where education meets its greatest test, the test of applying what is learned through academic pursuit to solve problems, improve communities and make real people’s lives better.

You take the distance out of learning. You bring it home.

Extension is here because our ancestors embraced education as a national necessity. Illinois’ native son, Abraham Lincoln, was president when the Morrill Land Grant College Act became law in 1862. It bestowed acreage on which to build colleges dedicated to “teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts.”
 
In that dry language was kindled a new spirit. From this spirit grew the bonds between federal and state government that led to the Smith-Lever Act of 1914. That Act set out a tall order.

First, distill knowledge gathered through research and experience into its fundamentals. Second, express that knowledge in ways that people on Main Street will comprehend and use. Third, provide this refined knowledge to places far removed from the university campus.

These new educators had one more charge.  Their students were not enrolled in college. They were instead neighbors. Few educators have a charge as far-reaching as yours.

What would the authors of the Smith-Lever Act think of your accomplishments? They would be awestruck, for Extension has carried its original emphasis on agriculture and home economics to new heights. Today, its mission extends from the home front, where nutrition and health and schooling are paramount, to the home office, where entrepreneurs are nurtured, to the hometown, where the nation’s next leaders are reared.

Extension is far larger than the sum of its parts. I know sums, I’m a mathematician. Extension has some large numbers to its credit.

You have repeatedly secured funding in an age that favors more visible projects, like a bridge or a building. Yet in the last 10 years, local and state appropriations for Extension have nearly doubled. Voters in 86 Illinois counties have embraced tax levies specifically for Extension. This is robust support, and you have earned it.

The authors of Smith-Lever might be confounded to hear that Chicagoland’s Cook County Extension has won a $5 million special appropriation. They might wonder why is Extension in the city? Because that’s where the need is. In Chicago and our other cities, Extension’s 4-H programs are guiding young people through their turbulent years by sponsoring summer day camps, lifting people with disabilities past their limitations, and sending city kids to experience country life under an exchange program.

Encouraging good citizenship is one of Extension’s most vital activities. The people of Illinois turn to Extension’s local councils as a trusted place to voice their needs and to get help. Good citizenship is in the very fiber of 4-H programs, which stress ethics and character as personal necessities. Through its local councils and 4-H, Extension advances one purpose crucial to the University of Illinois—ensuring that democracy is encouraged, understood and practiced fairly. Extension’s local councils are a place where democracy works in its purest form.

Today, Extension appears to be going in two directions at once—within the university and far beyond the university. Extension began as a cooperative between town and gown. But with its many offices and its direct connection to the people of the state, Extension sometimes has felt more tied to the town than the gown.

And within the university there has sometimes been skepticism about Extension, a sense that you are not full-fledged members of the university family.

That, I’m glad to say, is changing. I promise you that today, you are all being looked at differently. You are not the Rodney Dangerfield of higher education. You are not the university’s stepchildren. You are integral to its mission and you are leading by example.

On campus, we recognize the need to more often draw inspiration and ability from one department into another to solve the many-layered problems our society faces. Your years of experience in challenging real world problems in real time, assembling knowledge from multiple sources then implementing solutions, is a model of action for the entire university.

On the virtual frontier that stretches around the world, Extension operates hundreds of web sites. One site, the Urban Programs Resource Network, is actually a collection of 205 sites. More than 3,700 other sites link to this network, attracting people from 188 countries.

Each month, the urban programs network notches 3.8 million hits.

Imagine that: 3.8 million hits! How’s that that for a student body?

I’d like to introduce you to someone living on an Extension web site. We share a name, Herman, but that’s about all. I’m Richard Herman, chancellor. My online namesake is, well, a worm -- Squirmin’ Herman.

He’s not the best looking Herman around, but he has his good points. He wrote an autobiography, explaining that he was an immigrant from Europe. He has five hearts. And he says even a worm finds some things are just too gross to eat for supper.

I like Squirmin’ Herman. He’s buoyant and articulate. He invites you to learn about him. Squirimin’ Herman teaches school children the lingo of biology, the life cycle of a backyard creature, and why we all need to attend to our good Earth. Squirmin' Herman is the embodiment of Extension’s ability to make knowledge accessible by taking university research, tailoring it to a specific audience, then making it readily available.

Squirmin’ Herman reminds us that Illinois is a rich agricultural state. But even Illinois farmers have many times had to reinvent themselves in order to thrive. When farmers asked Extension to help them explore new directions for their businesses, Extension gave them a database detailing how the food supply system was created, where certain foods were grown,  how close markets were for various crops. Extension showed farmers where old skills could be applied to realize new solutions. Extension showed farmers new opportunities to grow.

Extension elevated that original database into a tool kit called Market Maker. Anyone can use it to see where food is grown and how it is distributed. Entrepreneurs who are down on the farm or seeking a stake in a city neighborhood have equal access to knowledge through which they can claim opportunity.

The result is applied knowledge and applied excellence. Today, at the University of Illinois, we are recognizing that our history of excellence is the ticket to greater achievement. We are re-thinking our ambitions—and we are raising them. I believe that in the next decade Illinois will come to stand among the most preeminent universities in the nation.

We have a tradition of excellence.

We have people of excellence.

We have you!

Through your work, you lead the university in instilling in people the spirit of community and civic commitment. Every day, Extension shows that doing well and doing good are pieces of a single fabric. Extension is doing well, and it certainly is doing good.

Both are testaments to your heartfelt and hard work.

So, as you head home tomorrow—back to Effingham, or to Carthage, or all the way to the pretend Superman’s very real Metropolis—you may calculate the miles, then predict how long your trip will take. You may beat the clock and get home early.

But that wouldn’t surprise me. That’s Extension—out front, ahead of the times.

Thank you.