Web Design Contract Consultant

After three months, I'm finally ready to explain what my current job is. Here it is in a nutshell:

I am updating the University of Minnesota Extension Health and Nutrition program website.

Let's break apart that kernel of a sentence.

Extension: I didn't really know what extension was all about before I came to the University of Minnesota, but it has a long history. Basically, the "cooperative extension"  of a land-grant university brings research-based knowledge to (rural) communities with the intention of making community members' lives better.

University of Minnesota: My local land-grant university. The Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 gave land to the states for them to develop or sell; proceeds went toward establishing colleges that would focus on teaching agriculture, science and engineering.

Health and Nutrition program: Extension usually focuses on the areas of agriculture/food, home/family, the environment, community economic development, and youth/4-H. At the U of M, Health and Nutrition (H&N) falls under the Family Development area (agriculture and food tends to address the production side versus consumption). 

About 90% of H&N's energy and resources go toward Simply Good Eating, Minnesota's delivery system for SNAP-Ed. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program - Education is a federal/state partnership that supports—you guessed it—nutrition education for people eligible for SNAP benefits. H&N has Extension Educators (EEs) and Program Coordinators (PCs) distributed across twelve regions of Minnesota, managing paraprofessionals called Community Nutrition Educators (CNEs) who do most of the actual educating.

Updating: Extension's website is migrating, program by program, from a more rigid, cramped template...

UMN Extension's front page in January 2010, courtesy of the Way Back Machine.

...to more open, flexible template.

UMN Extension's front page today.

Part of my job, then, is to take all the content currently on the H&N page, review it, and figure out how to make it look good using the new template. But that's not all. H&N wants to expand their site, creating big "buckets" (categories) of information that make sense for its various audiences. But that's not all. H&N also wants to develop more and better content, to become a destination for health and nutrition information for Minnesotans.

This means I work closely with a number of people. I take orders from the H&N program director about the big picture. I follow rules and regulations laid down by the Family Development project manager. I asked EEs and PCs for ideas, clarification, and feedback. And I rely on my best buddy, the web production assistant, to take my Word documents full of URLs, cut-this's, and change-that's, and turn them into functional web pages.

Website: I'm building a framework, which is only half the battle in this Age of Social Media. And it's plenty of work for now.

There you have it. I'm being called a consultant years ahead of schedule, I'm managing multiple projects, and I'm learning valuable new skills. For what more could I ask?

Turning a New Leaf

The past five months have brought many changes and milestones for this former dietetic intern. Let's take a month-by-month review, shall we?

February - Joseph and I move into a house with another married couple with whom we went to high school. Plans to garden commence immediately. I get trained in as HEN web co-chair.

March - I finish my clinical rotation at Abbott Northwestern, making two presentations ("Registered Dietitians and the In-Patient Treatment of Eating Disorders" and "Tetraplegia, Pressure Uulcers, and Malnutrition: A Case Study") and riding the plateau of the steepest learning curve I've experienced to date.

April - My groupmates and I present our final project to our TEP preceptors: "Eating, Moving, and Your Body: An Eating Disorders Prevention Curriculum for 6th-8th Graders." High fives and diplomas all around. 

May - I hunker down for some serious studying and light gardening (beans, basil, tomatoes, kale, beets, corn). RTB welcomes me back to record the show Nutrition and Health. I apply for an instructor position at HECUA (no go) and a web design contract consultant position (so go!), which has its own sharply inclined learning curve.

I can ha-RD-ly believe it!

June - I sit the registration exam for dietitians and pass, just as everyone told me I would. Mhonpaj Lee of Mhonpaj's Garden offers me work managing communications - I pounce. The chair of the Hampden Park Co-op Board of Directors encourages me to apply for an open position on the board - I do so and am appointed forthwith.

I can hardly believe how blessed I am to have become gainfully employed straight out of the internship, with work that is not only gainful, but also thoroughly engrossing. Each one of my positions includes room for tremendous growth of varying degrees - now I just have to figure out how to do it all!

SPOR

I had the pleasure of baking rolls for my family this Easter. Usually I defer to Trotter's Cafe and Bakery and buy their Sweet Potato-Oat-Currant (SPOC) bread for the holidays. This year, however, I was on my own.

Two-thirds of the way through kneading.

The head baker graciously allowed me to snag the SPOC recipe. Not able to leave well enough alone, I used raisins soaked in red wine instead of currants.

Housemate's digital scale made me feel like a professional.

I cut nubbins off, rolled them into balls, and tucked them three at a time into muffin tins.

Naked SPOR rolls.

Sprinkle with oats, pop in the oven...

Not nearly enough to satisfy aunts, uncles, AND cousins.

...and I was ready to delight my family.