Strawman/Papers

USES OF THE TERM "REGIONAL" In Multistate Research Management

A Report to the NERA Executive Committee

Introduction

At the 2001 Winter meeting of the Northeastern Regional Association of State Agricultural Experiment Station Directors (NERA) it was proposed to change the name of the Regional Research Committee to the Multistate Research Committee. The intention of this name change was to provide consistency with the changes provided in ’98 AREERA designating the federal funds for this activity as the Multistate Research Fund.

To make the suggestion more comprehensive and complete it was decided to do a top-to-bottom study of the use of the term "regional" in the workings of the Association, and to make specific recommendations for a set of fixes to be implemented at one time. The members of NERA assigned the Executive Director the responsibility for conducting the study and formulating a set of recommendations for further consideration.

Study Results

A word search of the NERA home page was conducted to determine the uses of the term "regional". In addition to the association’s name the patterns discerned were found to be uses of "regional" as activity titles, committee titles, research products and services, documents, procedures, criteria, awards, and terms. More specifically, "regional" was used in conjunction with:

Proposal

It is proposed that the following changes be considered by the NERA membership to align better with the intention of Congress as expressed through AREERA, while preserving the traditions and history of the Association.

  1. The name of the organization should remain unchanged.
  2. The names of two committees should be changed to the:
    1. "Multistate Research Committee" and
    2. "NE Multistate Priorities Committee".
  3. Henceforth all research projects and coordinating committees should be referred to as “Multistate Research Projects and Multistate Coordinating Committees (intentionally dropping the term “research” from MCC in deference to extension’s participation). Additionally, dialogue with NEED and NE APS should determine agreement on any changes needed to the titles for NEREAPs and NERECs, if indeed they still exist as entities. At present the titles seem adequate.
  4. Henceforth all proposals for any form of activity should be requested to refer to “multistate”, not regional activities. And that the documents should be referred to as proposals, not outlines. Once approved the term would become an “approved proposal”.
  5. Henceforth all meetings, seminars, workshops and conferences sponsored by the association should be referred tom as multistate activities, rather than regional activities. For use with joint meetings concurrence with NE AHS, NE CARET, NEED, and NE APS may be needed.
  6. Henceforth all references to the association’s award for excellence should refer to as the Multistate Research Award for Excellence”.
  7. The Associations by-laws should be edited to reflect these policy changes
  8. The NERA home page should be up-dated to reflect these policy changes, including the development of a new list of acronyms.
  9. That all historical documents of the Association should be left unchanged, so as to preserve their historical value, inasmuch as the use of regional is accurate.
  10. That future effort should be directed at communicating with others through the use of terms reflecting the Association’s multistate philosophy, in keeping with he intent of AREERA. This can be done while preserving the actual fact that the Association is made up of only directors from institutions of the NE region.
END OF TEXT 3/12/01