Leveraging the Power of Extension in Community-Engaged Research

Christina Sanders: We’re going to spend about the next hour talking with you about leveraging the power of Extension.

Christina Sanders: I and a few of my colleagues from across the state are going to present some of the work Extension is doing statewide. And in each of the presenters locations and programs. So I’m Christina Sanders. I’ve been with WSU for a little over 20 years. I’ve spent most of that time in Extension. I started out, as a project manager manager in the Division of Governmental Studies and Services, then worked my way up to director, and I’m now serving as director of that unit.

Christina Sanders: And of the Community and Economic Development Program Unit in Extension. I’m located in Olympia. Because we often partner with state agencies, and Olympia is where most of that is headquartered. But I also spent a fair amount of time on our Pullman campus, and I like to visit our other Extension locations whenever I get the chance to do so.

Christina Sanders: So Washington State University Extension is the world-class outreach and engagement enterprise of WSU, which serves the people of the state and the global society. So we develop and deliver programs and perform research projects across Washington state., the country, and internationally.

Christina Sanders: Extension is really about extending knowledge and changing lives. And our specialists really do change lives every day through the work that they do. They do that through our statewide network of offices and Research and Extension centers. We have, through through our statewide and campus space, faculty and staff, and through over 7000 volunteers. We’re seen as a trusted and credible local source of information.

Christina Sanders: We engage in local, state and federal partnerships, and we serve as a bridge between research and the communities we serve.

Christina Sanders: So here is a quick look at WSU Extension by the numbers. We have 39 county offices, two tribal offices, one located in Colville and one in Kalispel. We have four research and Extension centers, one in Mount Vernon, Puyallup, Prosser, and Wenatchee. And we have farms and research stations that research fun things like bees and berries, among many other things.

Christina Sanders: We have a presence on all five campuses across academic units. We have subject matter centers, like the Metro Center and the Division of Governmental Studies and Services and the Energy Office. And we have Extension personnel serving in other entities across the university, like the Ruckelshaus Center, the National Urban Research and Extension Center. The Composite Materials and Engineering Center, and lots of other locations.

Christina Sanders: We currently are organized under three main program areas, and those are Agriculture and Natural Resources, Community Business and Economic Development, and then Youth and Family or Youth, Family and Human Development. And this map, of the state of Washington shows what all of those locations look like across the state. You can see that there’s at least one location in every county, which is part of the reason that Extension is often referred to as the front door to the university.

Christina Sanders: There’re Extension folks working with people and organizations, starting at the community level in all of those geographic locations.

Christina Sanders: Okay. So this is a little snapshot of Extension funding expenditures by source. So you can see that 26% of the over $63 million for the 2023 calendar year are state dollars that come from the state through the university. Then we have 9% that are capacity funds, which are funds managed by USDA. And for that, for us, that is almost entirely Smith-Lever dollars, 7% comes from MOA agreements with county governments.

Christina Sanders: 54% comes from grant funding. So that would include like competitive grants and contracts. And then 2% each comes from gifts to the university and other sources, which might include things like workshop accounts.

Christina Sanders: So how this works is that Extension performs the research and identifies evidence-based programs to understand what works. So we use tools and programs and processes that are research based. Then we work with communities to assess and better understand their needs, looking to match those up with these programs and to help them identify where the gaps are.

Christina Sanders: Keeping in mind not to duplicate what others might already be doing, or in some cases, what others might be able to do better. Then we work to build capacity locally for delivery of the evidence-based programing, to help be able to ready the communities for the work. And then we work in partnership with them to implement programs, evaluate programs, and measure impacts.

Christina Sanders: And this last component is really important as it really produces the story that we in the university and those that we work with across communities can tell about the partnerships and the impacts that come from working with Extension.

Christina Sanders: Because we do work to meet the needs of individual communities, every county across Extension is going to look a little bit different from the next. 4-H does exist across the state, and agriculture and farming, youth and family programs, food and nutrition programing, and community economic development exist in many areas across the state, but not all of those programming areas are in all locations.

Christina Sanders: So we do have a statewide presence, but it can look very different from one location to the other. And again, that depends on things like capacity and funding and the needs in those communities. If you go to the website that is shown here, the extension.wsu.edu website, you can see, all of our Extension locations and the people and the programs that exist there.

Christina Sanders: And this is contact information and, and the order of presentation for the folks across Extension who are going to take some time now to talk to you about the programing in their areas. And with that, Anthony, I invite you to take it away.

Anthony Gromko: Thanks,

Anthony Gromko: Christina. Quick thumbs up from everybody that you can hear me. Okay. Audios. All right. Excellent. Thank you. I’m Anthony Gromko and I am the county director for Snohomish County Extension and also assistant professor with the Community and Economic Development Unit of of Extension. Christina put up previously the three different units of Extension and I’m with the Community and Economic Development Unit.

Anthony Gromko: And so what I thought I would do today is give an example of three projects that, I’m involved with as Co-PI. One current project, one completed project, and one kind of simmering future project, to highlight how Extension engages with community, how we scale impact, and how we leverage our partnerships. The first example here, that we have, is building community participation.

Anthony Gromko: And so, really wanted what I wanted to try and highlight here is how we connect, the expertise of academics and content experts with community needs. And so, the current example is a $3 million Commerce grant. That Extension that we led the way on, in partnership with six faculty from the Voiland engineering group… department and that are experts in cybersecurity.

Anthony Gromko: So, so the idea behind this project is to build a cybersecurity curriculum to deliver to eight different covered populations across Washington state. And so Extension, as you know, being experts in community outreach and engagement, we saw an opportunity to be able to leverage our network across the state to engage the eight different covered populations within this grant.

Anthony Gromko: But we needed the kind of the content, expertise, and credibility and, you know, resources of our experts in cybersecurity at WSU, to help us achieve, you know, achieve success with this grant. So, essentially, we recruited six faculty to work with us on developing modules for the curriculum and a plan for student assessment. We engaged, a group of students from the Criminal Justice and Criminology Department to work with the incarcerated population as one of the different covered populations that that we proposed to work with in this grant.

Anthony Gromko: And, also Global Campus. Because not only was there a component of engaging directly with populations in person, but also an online component of, of distance delivery and distance learning and also Global Campus had the capacity and expertise around a needs assessment of the different populations. And so really that that’s my, I guess, my first example of how we were able to organize and project manage a pretty large grant around curriculum development with a variety of different internal stakeholders from WSU.

Anthony Gromko: Next slide please. The second example, is really, I think, highlights, our ability to scale impact. And so we completed a $6 million Commerce grant in collaboration with various external partners to help with the implementation of what are called Broadband Action Teams in helping communities and Tribal counties… Excuse me, and Tribal Nations do digital equity planning.

Anthony Gromko: Now, this this was to go after ultimately to go after federal BEAD funding for broadband, for for broadband funds from the infrastructure… funding. So we were able to essentially organize a team, of Extension co-leads to because we have experience. First of all, I should say we have experience in, in developing broadband teams across Extension, which is essentially facilitating a network of local residents in a particular area to essentially empower them to do their own kind of assessment and planning around what their needs are in their community.

Anthony Gromko: For broadband and digital equity. And so the idea was to develop these BATS, as we call them, across the state with this funding and facilitate the planning, behind and ask from, or behind the implementation of of BEAD funding. And so we hired a state coordinator and we created eight different regions across the state with regional coordinators to work with Extension offices that would work as logistics and administrative support for this project.

Anthony Gromko: And ultimately, we were able to help develop, you know, we facilitated the development of digital equity plans for 39 counties and 14 tribal nations, which we thought, which we considered a success, a big success. Next slide please. The third and final example I have here is bridging partnership. And kind of a future oriented opportunity that we’re currently working on, which is, you know, 11 years ago, was the Oso landslide.

Anthony Gromko: And, that was a devastating natural disaster that took place in Snohomish County, between Arlington and Darrington, the communities of Arlington and Darrington and WSU. At that time responded and supported through emergency management expertise to help the communities. And ever since that also landslide WSU Extension has… WSU at large and WSU Extension have continued to stay connected to the communities and be intentional about continuing the support around economic development.

Anthony Gromko: And so, one project that we’re currently looking at with the town of Darrington is developing a wood innovation skills center. And so the town has secured, several million dollars of funding to develop an innovation skills center, which we are helping them to, to launch, which would involve, developing workforce skills, building a curriculum and also, prototypes for modular construction to address the affordable housing issue that, that we’re experiencing in this state.

Anthony Gromko: And so, I’ve gone well over my time, but that’s my third and final example of the variety of faculty, internal partners and external partners that are coming together to make that happen. Thank you.

Christina Sanders: Thanks so

Christina Sanders: much, Anthony. Okay, Chad, I think you’re up next. And if I’m not mistaken, you’re going to talk a little bit about the work that Tip does, also, since he couldn’t go today. Awesome. Thanks so much.

Chad Kruger: So I’m Chad Kruger, I direct

Chad Kruger: the Center for Sustaining Ag and Natural Resources. I’m also part of WSU’s new Institute for Northwest Energy Futures, and I’ll cover a little bit of both of those at a super, super superficial level, focusing on the Extension program in activities. So CSANR is an integrated Research and Extension Center, but I’ll focus mostly today on just the Extension activity.

Chad Kruger: Next slide.

Chad Kruger: So one of the long-running programs that we’ve had is really fits CAHNRS’ area of circular economy and looking at recovery of nutrients, energy and materials from organic waste and upcycling them to, try and reduce the impacts of waste in the environment and, and bring positive outcomes for the economy and for the environment. So one of the projects that we have is is very much focused on looking at new technology and how integrating technology into our existing composting system could potentially work.

Chad Kruger: In partnership with the state Department of Ecology. And another one of our specific Extension programs is Doug Collins runs the Washington Organics Recycling Council’s Compost Facility Operator Training. So every person in the state who works at a compost facility has to have this training. Next slide.

Chad Kruger: Another partnership that we launched relatively recently, working with the Northwest tree fruit industry, is they’re getting a lot of pressure from the marketplace around the carbon footprint of their fruit. And so we help pull together a lifecycle assessment project looking at the carbon footprint, but also to develop a tool that producers can use to consider management practices that they can implement to reduce their carbon footprint.

Chad Kruger: So the idea here is both kind of what is the current carbon footprint, but specifically, how can our tree fruit producers actually improve what they’re doing? Next slide.

Chad Kruger: One of the projects we launched last year has a national scope, and it comes from the perspective that if we’re going to successfully adapt to climate change, Extension is a key element in helping our agricultural industry make those transitions. And one of the things we’ve learned is getting people to talk together and kick the tires together. An old Extension model of going and seeing what someone else is doing in a location that’s analog to your future is actually a good idea.

Chad Kruger: So we focus this project on specialty crop Extension personnel from around the country. We’ve started our second cohort of essentially a training program to get Extension professionals up to speed and understanding climate change and how they can help, their specialty crop, fruit and vegetable producers make good decisions into the future. Next slide. One of the climate related issues that’s not received a lot of attention is the impact of climate change, including things like heat and smoke, stress on labor.

Chad Kruger: And so we’ve developed, in partnership with University of Washington Climate Impacts Group and PNASH, a new roadmap for advancing climate resilience and justice within the frontline farmworker community. Next slide.

Chad Kruger: Many of you have probably heard of the Washington Soil Health Initiative. The key Extension program out of the Soil Health Initiative is SoilCon, which is a digital and in-person hybrid learning environment focused on advancing knowledge in soils. That’s not just anecdotal, but actually is evidence-based. And this has been very well attended. And we really started it focused on the state of Washington, but it’s kind of gotten out of control in terms of national and international participation.

Chad Kruger: Next slide.

Chad Kruger: One of the projects that we’ve been working on for a long time with the Water Research Center at WSU, is forecasting future water supply and demand for the state, for the Columbia River system. And our focus from the center’s perspective has really been on the integration and extension of this information into the community that’s making decisions around water supply and demand.

Chad Kruger: And most recently, we helped through the Washington Food Policy Forum actually put forward a set of recommendations to expand the Columbia River forecast process to the western western side of the state, as well.

Chad Kruger: A couple of projects that we’re working on with partners throughout Extension and and also this is through the Institute for Northwest Energy Futures. In partnership with Pacific Northwest National Labs. So we’ve got one project focused on looking at cover crop production from across the state that could be converted to sustainable aviation fuel through emerging technology that PNNL is working on.

Chad Kruger: And a second one where we’re working with WSU Extension’s forestry team to look at potential forest biomass that could be converted into fuels and energy for the future, as well. Next slide. In an area we’ve worked in for a long time, but we’re really starting to bring together with new opportunities, and we have a new source of funding through the state Department of Commerce looking at integration of solar and farming systems.

Chad Kruger: But really, this question of agriculture is a huge energy user, but it’s potentially a huge contributor to our energy production. And and the solutions for agriculture and energy likely come together if we can be thoughtful about how to do that. And next, so I’m going to shift now to talking about Tip Hudson’s work and some work that Sonia Hall from the center has been doing with Tip, really around the ability to bring big data to large landscapes and actually improve and make the land management more sustainable.

Chad Kruger: And StockSmart is a product that they are in the process of doing some outreach and engagement with industry on right at this point in time. That brings together some capabilities that have emerged in technology over the last few years to help plan grazing management. So next slide, please.

Chad Kruger: So the team that’s working on it, ttiP, is the lead for the for WSU. Sonja from the center is part of it. And Georgine Yorgey who’s now with the energy program for WSU, is also part of it. And Matt Reeves from the Forest Service and some partners from University of Arizona. Next slide please. And really, this is about taking that data and working with the community that could use that data implement to implement better management.

Chad Kruger: And they did a at an extensive effort in terms of beta testing and use case development in the development of this tool to make sure that the tool actually is effective and can be used by the intended land managers. And with that, that’ll be my section. Thank you.

Alyssa Bowers: All right.

Alyssa Bowers: Thank you. So my name is Alyssa Bowers. I am the King County Extension director and the 4-H faculty in King County. So we do a ton of different programing in King County. And for each, my background is I come from Florida. I moved here two years ago, and I was the 4-H agent there for a while.

Alyssa Bowers: And I’m excited to talk to you all about how we can possibly connect. Next slide please. So one thing you’ve probably noticed throughout the last couple of presentations is the emphasis on network. So I just wanted to highlight that that is really one of our huge superpowers in Extension. We have a ton of trusted support and networks in our local communities that we are really embedded in.

Alyssa Bowers: And a lot of these are focused on underserved or under-resourced populations. And we really focus on bringing that research-based education from WSU to these local communities to make that positive change, especially in 4-H. We are really based on hands on learning and making sure that these youth can thrive into their adulthood. So really looking forward to hopefully building some of these, partnerships with you all.

Alyssa Bowers: So next slide please. I want to share a couple our one project and then some future opportunities that maybe we can connect with. So one thing that we’re working on in King County is part of a cohort grant, which is a coastal resiliency project that is across the state. It was based on research that came out of WSU, and it is a partnership with WSU faculty, Sea Grant, Washington Emergency Management.

Alyssa Bowers: Department of Ecology, and various local counties and organizations. So when I received this grant, we worked with… identified two projects in King County. One is Vashon Nature Center, is doing a salmon recovery data project where they had collected 20 years of salmon data, and they just needed a little bit of support getting the data analyzed and communicated to the community.

Alyssa Bowers: So we were, planning an event with them to do that. And then another one was with a neighborhood in South Seattle where they needed community outreach to help them deal with king tide and overtopping septic systems. So this is really great, example of how we can take that research and partner with all these different agencies and make really meaningful change, especially with organizations that are already doing this work in the local communities that might just need a little bit of support from WSU and other agencies.

Alyssa Bowers: And then in 4-H, we just have a ton of future opportunities. So there are connections with, and many, many youth organizations in every county. If you’re interested in curriculum development or piloting different projects, we can help with that. Or if you’re interested in specific topics, there’s a ton of curriculum that could, benefit from some updating and partnering with that.

Alyssa Bowers: I want to really encourage everyone doing research or grants, especially focus on youth to think about including youth voice in those decision making processes so we can help you connect with those groups that you may be needing some of that input from the youth on, and then some low hanging fruit of ways to partner becoming a speaker or coming to a educational event and talking about what your work is.

Alyssa Bowers: And then career shadowing those types of things are really valuable for the youth. They help bridge that pipeline of getting the future generation of kids at WSU and other universities that really can spark them into a career that they may not have ever even considered. There are just a ton of opportunities in 4-H, and it’s really endless.

Alyssa Bowers: We don’t just do AG, we do STEM, art. Anything you can imagine: we are doing. We are a life skills organization, so if there’s something, a project that you are interested in in youth, we can definitely I’m sure help you with. Next slide please.

Alyssa Bowers: And just kind of highlighting some other opportunities. So if you’re interested in applied research we can leverage those networks that I was mentioning and do some programing here. We have a really good pulse of the emerging community needs. So if there’s something that you’re noticing and you want to reach out to the local folks on the ground, I’m sure we could collaborate in that way.

Alyssa Bowers: And then leveraging skills is something that’s really important, because a lot of the Extension folks are really highly trained in facilitation or community convening or program development. And you all may have some other skills like, academic research skills and evaluation that we can mutually beneficial support each other. And it really could be a great partnership that’s really impactful beyond the reach of just one of us doing it alone.

Alyssa Bowers: And then, like I said, leverage those trusted networks, get youth voice involved in the projects that are relevant, and then we can really extend that research to our local communities, which is all of what Extension is based upon. Next slide.

Alyssa Bowers: And I just have a slide here of what we’re doing specifically in King County. So if anyone is interested in, any of these projects or topics. So the 4-H, Master Gardeners, Forestry is a huge program here. And then Nutrition and Food Safety. And then I have a list of different things that I’m interested in, if anyone is interested in collaborating.

Alyssa Bowers: My, specialty is kind of Urban Ag and Urban Extension and 4-H. So anything interested in that, feel free to reach out. I’ll pop my email into the chat and I’m looking forward to hearing from some of you.

Christina Sanders: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Alyssa. So next we have Vikram Yadama, who is going to present on the work of his unit, and that should leave us, a fair amount of time for conversations and questions after this presentation.

Vikram Yadama: Thank you. Christina, can you all, hear me? Okay, great. So my name is, Vikram Yadama, or Vik. So I’m, I’m the Director of Composite Materials Engineering Center on Pullman campus and professor in Civil Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering. Next slide please. So what I will be talking today is about who we are, what the center is about.

Vikram Yadama: And I would like to emphasize the fact that, what I’ll be talking about is not just my work, but, others involved in the center as well, other researchers, postdocs, students, and so forth. So the center is all about being a collaborative hub, basically to advance bio-based and hybrid composite materials. And it includes, a variety of professors and students and postdocs from different departments within VCEA and CAHNRS.

Vikram Yadama: And, and we do research, education and Extension work as shown here. Next slide please. So what is our tie to Extension? You know, I think a lot of people are not familiar with, a department that, where work that is done within the Extension. So I want to just give you a brief background. We’re probably the only connection to engineering, so to speak.

Vikram Yadama: Direct official connection. Of course, there’s a lot of Extension that is being done within engineering as well, by many faculty. So this is a big Extension, so to speak. And our ties basically started a long time ago, in early 2000s when Don Bender, who was then CMEC director, and Michael Tait, some of you probably I’m sure remember him was WSU’s Extension director at that time.

Vikram Yadama: And then, subsequently Linda Fox took over. They partnered together to create some positions. Mine was actually the first official position that was created with Research and Extension position within, the College of Engineering. And then subsequently we had a couple of other, faculty, Karl Englund and Jinwen Zhang, so three of us are, supported, 50% by Extension, to do the Extension work.

Vikram Yadama: And so our affiliations are within Civil, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Mechanical and Materials Engineering, School of Design, Construction and AMDT and BSE, which is Biological Systems Engineering. So next slide, please. So the Composite Materials Engineering Center has two locations. One, we moved in into PACCAR Environmental Technology building in 2016, 2017, around that time.

Vikram Yadama: And since we are part of the Civil Engineering, it’s basically, research center… the, the, the the whole building is dedicated to, multidisciplinary collaborative work. Between, Composite Materials Engineering Center to working on materials and biofuels from bio-based materials and also dealing with structures that are, that utilize a lot of bio-based materials as well as hybrid.

Vikram Yadama: And we work in conjunction with the other faculty members who are at Air Quality Group, and Water Quality Group and Transportation Materials as we work on the infrastructure materials in the space. We also have a facility at Research Technology Park where we have pilot facilities in order to produce different kinds of composites. And that’s one of the strengths that WSU has compared to many other places, which enables us to actually work with the industries quite a bit and communities a lot.

Vikram Yadama: Next slide please. So at that facility, we have different processing facility, equipment, as I mentioned before, where we could do composite processing, we could also do structural analysis and testing and both the facilities material characterization. We have extensive, labs in order to characterize, materials at a molecular level, understanding interactions between different biobased materials and adhesives, and analyze the thermal, characteristics of materials, which is really critical.

Vikram Yadama: When you’re using biomass and processing them into composites. And we work with variety of materials as I’ve shown at the bottom here. Next slide please.

Vikram Yadama: So my this is my last slide. What I would like to emphasize here is it’s presenting to you different kinds of projects. I thought maybe I should talk about how do we engage with communities and industries and three different ways we do that. I thought that would be probably very useful for for for me to communicate.

Vikram Yadama: And those include one is that, of course, direct technology transfer to industries we work with almost, 25 to 50 industries, depending upon who they are every year. And we work at different levels. We are, a IAS acreddited lab. That means the work that we do can be submitted as evaluation reports for building code approvals. So that’s one of the biggest advantages we have.

Vikram Yadama: A lot of companies come to us, you know, to evaluate, for example, perhaps their material to be used as different parts of a building material, building envelope, for example, like walls or floors or roofs and so forth. They would like to try new connection systems, or they want to see how they can improve the interaction between dissimilar materials such as concrete and wood, or polymers and wood and, and, and understand how to process them.

Vikram Yadama: So we do a lot of we provide a lot of testing and evaluation services. And they pay for those services. For example, one of the things we do a lot of work in is mass timber construction and as many of you probably heard, this is the next biggest thing happening in construction industries that is working with mass timber panels such as cross laminated timber and other composite based mass timber panels in order to construct tall buildings that are 15, 20 stories or higher.

Vikram Yadama: And which is being enabled by this mass timber panels and Mercer, which is located in Spokane, which is the company that makes, mass timber panels, actually, all the when they’re building the company… the plant there, we worked a lot with them, you know, to, test their panels, produce their panels, and the photograph that you see on the left, on the top there is a cross-laminated timber panel pressing machine that actually, they, they, they host, they, they, lease it to us, and we use it on routine basis.

Vikram Yadama: So we produce a lot of panels in order to test and develop protocols for their processes. And that was translated back into that company. And we also actually did workmen sorry. Train their workers, you know, to not only make the panels, but also how to evaluate them for a variety of different, properties. We engage communities as well, such as through projects such as Northwest Advanced Renewable Aviation Fuels, where… Alliance where basically we looked at how do we take woody biomass from post-harvest operations and use it for producing aviation fuel that, Mike Walcott, who led that project and

Vikram Yadama: many others took part in those. And I led the outreach component of that, where we work with the forest products industries and communities that are rich in biomass in order to see how supply chains could be actually set up, you know, to enable that, and you could see all this at, NARA, Northwest Advanced Renewables website.

Vikram Yadama: If you if anybody needs that website, please contact me and I can forward that to you. We are a part of all of the Washington Forest Products Roundtable and Mass Timber Accelerator, where we are participating to see how to to transfer the technology. And as Anthony already mentioned, we are with doing, with Anthony’s group in Darrington to, you know, to see how we could help with the workforce development in the mass timber panel side.

Vikram Yadama: We are participating with Oregon, University of Oregon, Oregon State in a variety of industries and communities in the Pacific Northwest to establish a National Science Foundation ENGINES program around basically, supply chain, that fits in well with existing forest products industry, but as well as complement the mass timber industry. So we also in the third bucket we worked and worked in is research oriented.

Vikram Yadama: So we have many, National Science Foundation and USDA grants where we work directly with industry such as Ocean which is located in Seattle, where we are helping them to develop roofing product from bamboo for use in communities such as low income housing communities in India and eventually transfer and use that big products over to and apply them in in the U.S.

Vikram Yadama: Many of the faculty are also working recycling of the wind turbines to make panelized products for use in building construction for a variety of different purposes where fire and moisture are really big issues. We are also working with companies, architectural companies. who want to look at, “how do we come up with modular construction that can be constructed very quickly?” And so you can move towards more affordable construction, for, for homes and other kinds of, structures.

Vikram Yadama: So and we work a lot actually with, in the bio-based materials side as well through NSF, IUCRC, which is an Industry University Cooperative Research Center, and we have a center called bioplastics… for bioplastics and biocomposites with three other sister universities, North Dakota State University, Iowa State and University of Georgia, where we’re working on using forest-based and agribased fibers for developing and and producing bioplastics and biocomposites.

Vikram Yadama: So these are the different ways we engage in, with communities and industries, and fulfill our mission, that the Extension has and the land-grant university which WSU does that. Thank you so much. And this is my contact information.

Christina Sanders: Great.

Christina Sanders: Thanks so much, Vik.