Back to Contents8.0 Project Managment
This project will be administered through Dr. M. Scott Smith's Office, Associate Dean for Research in the College of Agriculture at the University of Kentucky. The proposal was authored collectively by the Organization Committee, as specified in Section 3.0, with input from cooperating researchers and extension personnel in the college (Section 3.0). Central to the focus of this project is the dissemination of research findings directly to Kentucky producers and service providers via the Cooperative Extension Service, and to other researchers in the U.S. and around the world via peer reviewed journals. Cooperating investigators will be required to report the progress of there work on an annual basis in both written and oral form to colleagues, students, administrators, producers, service providers and interested government agencies at a conference on precision agriculture.
The budget will be allocated and managed at the departmental level within the Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station. Specifically, the funds will be allocated as follows: Agricultural Economics (Sub-Project 6.4.1), Agronomy (Sub-Projects 6.1.2, 6.2.2, 6.2.3, 6.2.4, and 6.3.1) and Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering (6.1.1, 6.1.3, 6.2.2, 6.2.5 and 6.3.2). Section 9.0 contains detailed budget sheets identify the allocation of funds by sub-project. Reporting requirements will be handled through the CRIS reporting structure and will be consistent with this format and timing.
To facilitate sharing of data, and to foster cooperative planning efforts, the cooperating researchers will meet four times annually, including the above referenced conference, to review project progress. At these times the Advisory Board, as identified in Section 3.0, will be invited to provide feedback to the researchers concerning the nature of the work being conducted and the applicability to production in Kentucky. To facilitate interaction between the research and extension specialists, and their constituents, a program coordinator will be hired. The salary to support the coordinator will come from this project budget (33%), University of Kentucky, College of Agriculture resources (33%) and extramural grants (34%). The coordinator will be responsible for: 1) organizing all meetings, 2) scheduling extension related activities, 3) identifying potential sources of extramural funding, 4) editing and revising group publications to include the handbook referenced in Section 8.0, 5) maintaining a web page, 6) coordinating press releases, 7) maintaining a database on cooperating producers and services providers, 8) author a newsletter twice a year, and 9) and managing geographically referenced data generated from this and related projects.