Addison Stoddard: Welcome back to another USU Extension Education highlight. My name is Addison Stoddard, and joining me today is Michael Wierda, USU Extension associate professor and pesticide safety education program director. Thanks so much for being here with me, Michael.
Michael Wierda: I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Addison Stoddard: Michael, you recently won the 2024 Regional Award for Individual Excellence in Extension. Would you be able to describe the award a little bit and what the criteria is for that?
Michael Wierda: Yeah, so the award is just what it sounds like — for excellence in extension for an individual. I won it for the Western region, and basically the award is in recognition of providing innovative, adaptive, and supportive engagement for professional pesticide applicator audiences. That's what the award was for, and it was related to rewriting of study guides and rewriting of exams, and providing a webinar series—which is in full swing this month in November— and just supporting pesticide applicators and others trying to use pesticides safely.
Addison Stoddard: In creating a successful curriculum, I'm curious how long it took you to develop, and what was your process?
Michael Wierda: So the work I do is different than your average educator, so curriculum is a funny word. I create lectures and courses for professional applicators to take, but it's not like a regular, semester-long class. So it's different in that respect. I guess, what would be good to say is rewriting of study guides, that's a year or two that it usually takes to get those done.
The webinar series, that was kind of the result of the pandemic in 2020. We were doing face-to-face events for the most part, and then the pandemic hit and we were forced into webinars. But these webinars have grown into what seems to be one of our most effective ways of getting CEU's (Continuing Education Unit) to people. What we've seen November of this year, we averaged about 100 people per webinar, and this year, we're close to 150-200 people per webinar. I'm not sure if that really answers the question.
Addison Stoddard: That was great. That's great to see that there is that increase of people accessing these materials. That kind of leads me into my next question.
I read that it's a goal for you to share this information with people so that they can understand the concerns that are related to pesticide use. So how is this information accessible? You mentioned webinars, but where can people find it?
Michael Wierda: Yeah, so my goal, I'm not pro or anti-pesticide, what I am and what the P step program is pro safe use of pesticides. As a homeowner or as a pesticide application professional, we expect them to figure out when they need to use the pesticide, and we're here to help them do it safely. So for your professional applicators, of course, there's online courses they can take. There's the webinar series and stuff like that. For the average homeowner and/or the professional applicator, we actually have a Facebook page and a YouTube channel. On the Facebook page, I'll often do some video presentations, just to practice for future presentations, just so the information is available. Then on the YouTube channel, what we've been doing is taking some of our online courses and we host them on the YouTube channel. So these courses are courses that professional applicators take to get CEU's that you, the average homeowner, can watch on YouTube just to gain that knowledge. There's no CEU's connected to it in any way, shape. or form, but it's the same information as what a professional applicator gets .
Addison Stoddard: That's great that it's so accessible to so many different people. Thank you so much joining me today, Micheal.
