Development and External Relations Update

The Development and External Relations office UPDATE is a monthly summary of activities in the section and is published for your general information. If you have questions, please contact Jim Goit or call at (902) 893-7950

• AgriTECH Park
  • Participated in NS Food Summit in Annapolis Valley; met agri-food producers and processors who were interested to hear about the proposed Atlantic Centre for Agri-Innovation; toured Fox Hill Cheese House (Richard Rand) and spoke to owner about future expansion plans and challenges; also toured Longspell mixed farm (Jeff McMahon) – both operators are NSAC alumni;
  • ACAI planning continued in October – meeting with Dept. of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal and CBCL Engineers re pre-design phase of the project; also met individually with TIR project manager (Deborah Porter) to discuss design process and program considerations within the new facility; travelled to New Jersey with CoRDA and NS Dept. of Agriculture reps to tour Rutgers University Food Innovation Centre/agri-food business incubator;
  • Met with Orville Pulsifer and Andrew McCabe (Pellagri Energy) to discuss opportunities to showcase/demonstrate the use of grass pellet boiler technology at AgriTECH Park; Pellagri boiler technologies have been developed in collaboration with Newmac in Debert; Pellagri has also constructed a pellet mill in PEI and the company is testing a variety of raw materials;
  • Performance Genomics Inc is the newest resident tenant at the Park.
• External Relations
  • Jim attended the annual NSIA fall Tour. This is an opportunity to meeting with members and alumni and visit with agricultural operations in the area.  This year the IFB class attended the tour as part of their class work.
  • The Atlantic Centre for Agri Innovation project has been moving forward.  Jim, Laurie and Bernie have met with the steering committee and TIR to further define some of the objectives and a design consultant was selected.
  • The Atlantic Agricultural Hall of Fame occupied a significant portion of staff time during the month sending our notices, preparing reports and making arrangements for the meeting itself held on the 29th.  There was a good turn out to the event and the board approved a new system for display of the photography.
  • Jim participated in the official opening of Bible Hill portion of trail that will go thru campus.  The agreement with the county, village and TIR was finally competed and signed.
  • Office assisted with Drive Away Hunger program.
• Marketing
  • Consulted on partnership visit from Dr. Hadi Mahabadi, Director of Xerox's Canadian Research Centre;
  • Continued coordinating marketing agency to fulfill this year's branding work including social media strategy development, white paper and linking strategies;
  • Consulted on strategic communications with VP REO;
  • Developed communciations plan to promote use of new wide format printer;
  • Researched public and private sector funding programs for financing sustainability projects at NSAC;
  • Assisted Golden Ram editor to establish new advertising price list.
• Communications and Alumni
  • A group met to discuss changes necessary to make the Switch Board more user friendly.
  • Design of official alumni ring has moved further forward.
• 560 Found/changed alumni records this month.
• Planning started for the winter edition of the Agricola News.
• Development and Fund Raising
  • There was a lot of work on Datatel again this month as we work to get the database into full us.  Much of the address conversion and clean up has been competed but there are still duplicates to search out and reconciled.  The system has been used for it first mailings and additional issues have been uncovered and resolved.
  • Jim, Alisha and Collette Wyllie had a meeting on fund raising project ideas for the alumni Family Bursary. There will be a number of initiatives in the winter.
  • All staff of the section were involved in the Scholarship Banquet in one way or another.  Jim meet with several donors and followed up with pictures and cards.  The event was a great success and serves as a platform for many of our fundraising initiatives.  A new video thank you was created.
  • Annual appeal kicked-off with letters being mailed to approximately 5,000 alumni. Recent alumni received email appeals.

• Website
  • Email preview was integrated into the portal.
  • Digital sign roll-out continues. Banting is now up and running. Jenkins Hall, AgriTech Park and a second monitor in Cox should be completed in November.
  • SMS message was sent out on the 16th. There were no reports of messages not being received. Another test message should go out in November.
  • There has been interest by a number of groups on campus to create or improve their web presence. Mike will be assisting each group as needed.
  • iTunesU was discussed with Dr. Goodyear, Sondra Mantle and Linda Jack. We will be making an application to be included in iTunesU.
  • embraceyourworld.ca configuration by Bristol was completed at the end of the month and should be live in early November. Mike will be learning a bit about Drupal and how to properly admin the site.
  • Dreamweaver training continues with web editors across campus.