THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY OF ‘SERVICE’
Early Career Development
Timothy Waller
Agriculture & Natural Resources County Agent III
Rutgers
Millville
Abstract
Service is a critical component to being an Extension professional, even required for those in the tenure stream. Tim Waller currently serves as the County Extension Department Head of Rutgers Cooperative Extension – Cumberland County (CEDH)(2025 - ), Vice-Chair of the NACAA Early Career Development Committee (2023-2025), New Jersey Director for the North Eastern Association of County Agricultural Agents (NEACAA) (2021 - ), President of the Agricultural Agent Association of New Jersey (AAANJ) (2024-2025), Chair of the Nominating Committee of Rutgers Agriculture and Natural Resources Department (2023-2025), and Chair of the Rutgers Nursery and Green Industry Working Group (2020 - ) in addition to his ex officio service roles with the local Board of Agriculture (BOA), 4-H Advisory Board, County Ag-Development Board (CADB), and is on educational committees for two regional high school / Future Farmers of America (FFA) programs and three professional associations as well as a faculty-lead on Rutgers Office of Continuing Professional Education courses. He is also a pre-tenure professor with all the associated requirements. Through this litany of early career service responsibilities, instances of great collaborations and witnessing their true value materialize to those incredibly time-consuming ultra-low impact endeavors, have been endured. This seminar aims to provide a lessons-learned approach to the initially unseen time commitments of ‘Service’, perceptions surrounding early career service, balancing valuable time and reportable impact, and most importantly the ‘good’, that comes from service opportunities. Service is implicit to Extension, however, how an early career person approaches this can and will have dramatic impacts on the success or failure of their position.
Authors: Timothy Waller
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Timothy Waller Agriculture & Natural Resources County Agent III, Rutgers Cooperative Extension, New Jersey, 08332-9776