MSU Extension—Collegian Spring 2014

Extending MSU’s reach over a century

Celebrating 100 years of Extension

BY M A RJOR IE SMIT H

G

rowing up on the edge of the Billedeaux was so impressed with her Blackfeet Reservation east of fellow students’ skills that after she graduGlacier National Park in northated, “I told my parents, ‘I’m going to start west Montana, Verna Billedeaux a 4-H club for kids around here.’” Then she ’91 always liked animals. As a high school heard about a job as Extension agent on student she spent summers working in the Blackfeet Reservation. She applied, was MSU’s veterinary diagnosis lab as part of a hired, and started work in 1995. minority apprentice program. That experiNow, it’s unlikely any child on the ence was the key to her future.

Blackfeet Reservation grows up unaware of “I learned I didn’t want to devote my 4-H these days. “In the past five years our life to research, that I wanted to be on the program has grown so that now we put on people side of things,” says Billedeaux. our own 4-H fair. We have nine clubs and Once enrolled at MSU, “I met all these more than 100 kids on the reservation are kids with ranch backgrounds like mine, involved,” Billedeaux says proudly. but they had skills in public speaking and Eric Miller ’98, Extension agent in cenanimal judging,” Billedeaux remembers, tral Montana’s Garfield County, was also noting her lack of experience in the same unaware of the Extension Service growing areas. “I said, ‘How did you learn about up. “I was a Navy brat,” Miller explains. this?’ And they said they learned it in 4-H. “But when you want to work in agriculture, They had to tell me what 4-H was.” you find out about Extension pretty quick.”

4-H is a network of youth clubs orgaAfter earning his bachelor’s degree in nized by the Cooperative Extension Service, California, Miller’s interest in livestock which celebrated its 100th anniversary in brought him to MSU to study breeding 2013. Volunteer adult leaders help kids age and genetics. He received his master’s at 5–19 sign up for projects ranging from rais- MSU in 1998 and got the job in Jordan, ing a calf to cooking to perfecting shooting Mont. (population 343). “No one has tried skills. Record keeping, presenting demonto get rid of me,” jokes Miller, noting that strations, participating in club meetings Garfield County gained notoriety in 1996 and exhibiting work at county fairs are for an 81-day standoff between federal commitments kids make when joining 4-H. Collegian | 10

officials and the anti-government Montana Freemen.

While more populous counties have three or more agents, Miller runs a solo operation in Garfield County. “I do everything,” he says. “Agriculture, 4-H, community development—anything people need help with that Extension can provide.”

That’s exactly what the U.S. Congress had in mind 100 years ago when it established the partnership between agricultural colleges, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and county and state governments known as the Cooperative Extension Service.

As Montana’s land-grant university, MSU is the administrative heart of Montana’s Extension Service, hosting a network of specialists who do research and provide up-to-date information. But it is the agents stationed throughout the state’s counties, Indian reservations and tribal colleges who provide the day-to-day contact with the people the 1914 Smith-Lever Act was designed to assist.

One thing that keeps Miller busy is noxious weed control, a responsibility he shares with Missoula County’s Jerry Marks ’69, who has long been a field general in Montana’s war on invasive, non-na-

VERN A BILLEDE AUX

JOSIE E VENSON

BL AC K F E E T R E S E R VAT I O N

RICHL AND COUNT Y

ERIC MILLER GARFIELD COUNT Y

JERRY M ARKS MISSOUL A COUNT Y

The bridge between university research and the people of Montana

tive plants. “Back in the ’70s, the Missoula City Commission encouraged me to come up with biological weed controls,” Marks says. “Through the years we’ve worked with insects, grazing and revegetation. Now we’re looking at ecology, how to encourage desirable plants.”

Marks acknowledges he’s seen “one or two changes” in his 45 years with Extension. “Our role is helping people deal with changes,” he says. He grew up on a farm near Canyon Ferry Reservoir, east of Helena, Mont., where his family had been in agriculture since the 1860s. “We’ve seen great change there.”

Western Montana has been in the vanguard of many changes. “The discovery of Montana as a lifestyle began in western Montana in the seventies,” says Marks. “I started out doing community development work, dealing with changing land use.

“The latest thing is locally grown food,” he says. Marks helped start Extension’s Master Gardener program and was involved in getting an Extension forestry office established at the University of Montana.

Extension helps Montanans adopt new technologies. “In recent years we’ve started using GPS mapping in weed control,”

“If I can help anyone who comes through my door with research-based information that makes their lives better, that’s what I want to do.”

—Josie Evenson, 4-H Agent, Richland County

Marks says. “When the City of Missoula passed a conservation bond, I helped figure out where people belong and where the wildlife fit.”

With retirement on the horizon, Marks says, “It’s been a good career. It’s allowed me to reinvent myself. And I like to help people deal with change.”

Dealing with change has rarely been as abrupt as it is for clients of Josie Evenson ’12, in Richland County in the heart of the Bakken oil boom. Animal loving Evenson grew up in Flathead County doing chores on her grandparents’ farm. Although the physical environment is very different in Sidney, Mont., change is nothing new to her. “Because of development pressures, my family sold their Flathead Valley farm and moved to the Hi-Line,” she says.

When Evenson arrived at MSU, “Bob Gough (then associate dean of agriculture) told me, ‘You don’t want to be a crop scien-

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tist, you want to be an Extension agent.’ I had never considered it,” she recalls. “But when I thought about all the things I got to do through 4-H, I thought if I could give those to another person, that would be a great career.”

The oil boom impacts Extension’s work.

“Even our travel time is affected by the oil traffic,” Evenson says. She is responsible for Richland County’s youth development efforts. They’ve seen increases in both permanent resident youth and more transient kids. “We’ve got one new 4-H club that was organized by a family who came from Arkansas for the oil work and wanted their kids to have the 4-H experience,” she says.

A year into it, Evenson is happy with her career choice. “If I can help anyone who comes through my door with researchbased information that makes their lives better, that’s what I want to do.”

As Missoula’s Jerry Marks likes to say, “We’re the bridge between university research and the people of the state.”

For a list of Extension offices and contact information, go to msuextension.org.