Author: Michelle Gaston

You Can Name Our Blog

We’d like your suggestions for a new name for our urban Extension blog. We will be moving the Extension in the City blog from u.osu.edu over to our website and have an opportunity to name the blog. Each week we add four articles and send them out in the news digest. The blog entries range from happenings in your county to national news impacting your work in urban communities. You are also welcome to submit peer-reviewed articles that you can count as creative works.

If you have an idea for the blog name, please send it to Michelle Gaston.6@osu.edu by October 15.

Webinar: Green Infrastructure, Urban Planning and Design, and the Urban Heat Island

Jean-Michel Guldmann
Department of City and Regional Planning

Green Infrastructure, Urban Planning and Design, and the Urban Heat Island: Mitigation Strategies in the Era of Climate Change

October 7, 2020  *  4-5 p.m.
CarmenZoom: link to be distributed via email to registered participants

Nested within the global warming problem, the urban heat island (UHI) is a specifically local warming problem that is becoming critical in most metropolitan areas of the world. Columbus and Beijing will be used as a case study settings of the phenomena. He will illustrate how expanding greenery at both ground level and on building roofs can reduce temperatures and how the UHI varies across seasons including the dual beneficial role of vegetation, reducing temperatures in the summer, but increasing them in winter.

The Ohio State University Emeritus Academy Lecture Series

Registration Link

A Beginner’s Guide to Intersectionality

Across outcomes in education, health, housing and nearly every other aspect of daily life in the United States, race is the single-most predictive indicator of one’s success. Racism is pervasive in government, non-profit and private systems and the policies, practices and procedures that create and uphold those systems and institutions. Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones defines racism as “a system of structuring opportunity and assigning value based on the social interpretation of how one looks (which is what we call “race”), that unfairly disadvantages some individuals and communities, unfairly advantages other individuals and communities, and saps the strength of the whole society through the waste of human resources.” Follow this link to learn more.

Sourced from: CitiesSpeak

Need an Outlet for Your Creative Work? Try This!

Are you looking for a place to post creative work that can count toward your promotion? We would love to host your article on the Extension in the City blog and feature it in the news digest (currently sent weekly).

Here’s what you need to do:

  • Create the content and include a catchy title.
  • Word count should be approximately 300-500 words.
  • Contain science-based content with at least two references cited in the resource section.
  • Include at least one quality, copyright-free photo (include alternate text).
  • Have content reviewed by at least one of your peers (and note reviewer at the end of the article).
  • Turn in peer-reviewed article one week prior to publication date.

Follow this link to sign up to contribute an article. Articles are due one week prior to publication.

Direct questions to Michelle Gaston.6 or Amy Michaels.97.

Registration is Now Open for Leadership in the City

Are you interested in Extension in urban areas and ready to improve your knowledge, skills, and results?

The Leadership in the City course will help you learn about leadership, networks, innovation, and management. The 5-month online program will prepare you, as an Extension professional, to be relevant locally, responsive statewide, and recognized nationally.

The goal of this comprehensive professional development program is to improve the knowledge, skills, and results of university Extension professionals working in large cities. You will connect with peers from around the country to engage in critical thinking and creative problem solving to become better prepared to be relevant locally, responsive statewide, and recognized nationally.

The program was developed based on a foundation of entrepreneurial theory and urban Extension practice and will build upon existing leadership experiences, management training, and Extension professional development.

You will learn from experienced leaders; apply what you learn in your city, region, or state; engage in critical thinking and creative problem solving; and participate in online collaborative learning. Each competency-based module incorporates interactive digital delivery and the flipped classroom model for active learning and engagement.

Upon completion of the course, you will be better prepared to:

  • Evaluate, illustrate, and build upon their four dimensions as an entrepreneurial leader (traits and drivers; competencies and experiences).
  • Navigate as a leader working in the urban and university contexts.
  • Implement elements of entrepreneurial organizations.

The investment in the program is $500 plus a commitment to work hard and have fun investing 8-14 hours per month. The 5-month online course begins in January 2021. If you have multiple participants from the same institute, you are each entitled to a $100 discount (Promotion code: LITC21-MULT).

This course is led by Dr. Julie Fox from the Ohio State University Extension.

Complete details and registration information can be found at https://cityextension.osu.edu/leadership. The deadline for registration is November 30.

Rx for Hot Cities: Urban Greening and Cooling to Reduce Heat-Related Mortality

Extreme heat and its health impacts are on the rise. Annually, extreme heat already causes more deaths in the United States than all other weather-related causes combined, with effects most pronounced in urban areas. Reducing urban heat exposure is an equity issue. In this webinar (July 8, 2020, 1-2:15 p.m. EDT), speakers will introduce the efforts of the Los Angeles Urban Cooling Collaborative (LAUCC) – a multi-disciplinary, national partnership of researchers and practitioners working to understand and implement urban cooling strategies and the heat-health impacts on the human body. Follow this link to connect to the webinar.

Sourced from the U.S. Forest Service

Healthy Corner Stores: Response to COVID-19 and Emerging Best Practices

The Healthy Food Access Portal and The Food Trust’s Center for Healthy Food Access are hosting the webinar Healthy Corner Stores: Response to COVID-19 and Emerging Best Practices today (Wednesday, July 1) from 4 to 5 p.m. EDT.

Moderated by the Food Trust’s Juan Vila, this webinar will focus on how healthy corner store programming across the country has shifted in response to COVID-19, and what emerging best practices are being used to assist store owners. Guest speakers will include Robert Alsburg of Community Outreach and Patient Empowerment (COPE), and Ana Ramos and Jen Tepel of the Food Trust.

Click here to register

Sourced from: The Food Trust

Integrating a Food Systems Lens into Discussion of Urban Resilience

The Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems and Community Development recently published the article “Integrating a food systems lens into discussions of urban resilience: Analyzing the policy environment.” The article weaves the complexity of urban issues on sustainability and resilience with a food systems thread. One quote from the article says, “Food systems thinking holds tremendous integrative potential to address myriad, complex, and thorny issues at once, and can no longer be relegated to an afterthought.”

Sourced from: The Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems and Community Development