New vice president for Extension chosen
The former president and chief executive officer of the American National Fish and Wildlife Museum and past national director of conservation for Ducks Unlimited has been named the new vice president and dean for Utah State University Extension, announced Kermit L. Hall, Utah State president.
Jack M. Payne accepted the offer to preside over the university’s unique outreach division that includes university faculty with offices in all 29 counties and more than 5,000 students enrolled in university courses statewide. He replaces Robert L. Gilliland, who stepped down after eight years of directing university Extension to serve a mission for his church. Payne will assume his new responsibilities beginning July 1, some 27 years since first setting foot as a graduate student on the campus of Utah State.
“This is a great opportunity,” Payne said. “We are in a new era of learning that encompasses the opportunity to educate millions of people all over the world and will re-define the concept of extension and continuing education.”
Payne comes from a strong agricultural tradition that includes work as an Extension agent at Texas A&M. He received both his graduate degrees from Utah State, a master’s in fisheries in 1978 and a doctorate in wildlife science in 1983. He credits the university for its firm commitment to expanding continuing education programs and distance learning to the region, nation and the world.
Hall said the university is fortunate to have a man of Payne’s experience in agriculture and higher education as a past Extension agent, and a man who has accomplished significant work in the private sector.
“Jack Payne knows how to bring people together, and he has a record of great success in forging public-private alliances,” Hall said. “Those qualities will be critical as he builds a market-oriented continuing education program while attending to the historic needs of agriculture and rural Utah in the midst of the state’s rapid urbanization.”
He also has a strong record of research and publishing and great success serving other major land-grant universities as an Extension agent. “He offers the right leadership for this important era of our Extension programs,” Hall said.
In addition to his work in the private sector, including becoming the first CEO with the American National Fish and Wildlife Museum, Payne was on two land-grant university faculties, Penn State and Texas A&M.
Ken Ashby, president of the Utah Farm Bureau Federation and a member of the 14- member search committee, said he was impressed by the fact that Payne has worked both in Extension and in the private sector. That background has provided him a unique quality of understanding about the particular needs of farmers and ranchers.
“He was able to work out agreements between farmers and ranchers and sportsmen that were equitable to all sides,” Ashby said of Payne’s work with Ducks Unlimited. “He put the methods he learned as an Extension agent to good use as he forged cooperative efforts that were win-win situations for everyone.”
Payne said he intends to provide the leadership and tools necessary to allow university Extension to serve its public and students in a new market-driven environment. More learners are demanding improved accessibility and convenience at lower costs. They want what they learn to have direct application to work settings. “This is radically changing the environment for higher education in the United States and globally,” he said.
Responding to these needs will involve shifting the locus of decisions on educational programs, priorities, budgets and students in ways that are more responsive to students and their immediate and lifelong needs.
Payne said one solution would be to form strategic alliances between organizations that capture each other’s strengths as a way to survive and be more competitive. He is not new to this kind of approach. As national director of conservation for Ducks Unlimited, he developed and cultivated “delicate and sometimes unlikely partnerships” for the benefit of agriculture and wildlife.
He said he intends to continue this model under a market-responsive strategy. This might occur by forming alliances between the university and for-profit organizations to enable contact and interaction between very different cultures, goals and operating principles and assumptions. “Increasingly, the choice will be alliance or annihilation,” he said.
Fee Busby, dean of the College of Natural Resources and chair of the search committee that began meeting in April, said he was impressed by Payne’s understanding of the importance of life-long learning and his ability to form alliances.
“We were impressed by the way he had used extension approaches to teaching during his tenure with Ducks Unlimited,” he said. “He used his position to help farmers and rural communities in the United States, Canada and Mexico to capture economic value from grain fields and wetlands through duck hunting while also improving the environment.”
Busby said Payne’s methods of working with farmers and rural communities seem very compatible with the work being done by university Extension at Utah State.
“Jack Payne meets people well,” he said. “I have no doubt that he will be able to maintain the good relationship we have across the state as well as help Utah State develop new relationships.”
Payne’s appointment and $141,000 annual salary are contingent upon approval by the Utah State Board of Trustees, which next meets in July.