Managing Adversity to Advantage in off-Campus Agricultural Stations - Lessons for Virginia and Beyond.

The Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station (VAES) supports the work of approximately 320 scientists at Virginia Tech and includes 13 field research stations located at various sites around the state. These field stations are known as Agricultural Research and Extension Centers (ARECs) and emphasize the close working relationships between the VAES and Virginia Cooperative Extension. Recent reductions in state support have caused us to look for budget savings and explore alternative methods for funding the stations. Toward that end we prepared a detailed survey that was administered to AES directors from across the nation to determine best practices to deal with budget shortfalls. The survey was administered on-line using the Snap Online survey tool and had a remarkable 69.4% total response rate. The survey results indicate that agricultural experiment program directors have employed or anticipate that they would employ a wide variety of approaches to address a budget reduction. The measures identified were all selected from a list of commonly used strategies that were provided on the survey; most of which were expenditure reduction-based measures rather than revenue enhancements. In addition to the detailed survey results, three novel models for supporting off-campus station will be presented.