Management of the Southern Region IPM Center

Non-Technical Summary: The mission of this proposed Southern Region Integrated Pest Management Center (SRIPMC) is to coordinate, enhance, and facilitate the flow of resources and information in integrated pest management on a regional basis, including grants management, data acquisition and sharing, infrastructure development, and the documentation needed to provide accountability for resources used. The Center focuses its efforts on meeting the challenges described in the developing National Roadmap for Integrated Pest Management. The purpose of the Southern Region IPM Center is to identify and address high priority research, extension and education issues related to Integrated Pest Management in the Southern Region of the United States. <P> Approach: We will use the Advisory Council (AC) and the Steering Committee (SC). The Advisory Council comprises a diverse group of 25-30 people who represent our stakeholders with a wide range of perspectives from across the region. The Steering Committee is a group of 12-15 members, with primary responsibility to set policy for the Center. We will involve other stakeholders and partner institutions through working groups and other mechanisms. In addition to the Advisory Council and Steering Committee mechanisms, SRIPMC will continue to involve other stakeholders and partner institutions. Existing committees and other groups will provide SRIPMC with strong links to the needs identification and prioritization of our stakeholders. These include SERA03-IPM, EPA Strategic Agriculture Initiative, NCERA208, S1010, Southern Plant Diagnostic Network (SPDN, Southern Region IR-4 Project, and other Regional IPM Centers. We will solicit, distribute and use stakeholder-identified priorities in ways including: links to stakeholder-identified research, education and regulatory priorities in Requests for Proposals, Pest Management Strategic Plans, SRIPMC Advisory Council and Steering Committee and our Web-based IPM Priorities Database. We will report progress in addressing and accomplishing strategic plan goals at least annually to the AC and the SC, and we will revisit the strategic plan to consider revision with the AC and SC at least annually. We will use, maintain and enhance a complex of interconnected information networks. We cross traditional boundaries to address regional IPM priorities; we share current pest management information with pest managers and other stakeholders; and these systems link, often dynamically, to other regional and national information systems. We link to other regional and national systems. SRIPMC and its managing organization (CIPM) have led the IT approach of IPM Centers nationally since the onset of Pest Management Centers in 2000, even when the Southern Pest Management Center was hosted at University of Florida. We maintain and serve not only our own websites but national sites including IPMcenters.org, IPMPipe.org, IPM.gov, and over 50 IPM-related web-searchable databases. We facilitate and manage the national IPM Centers Information Technology Work Group. Our Communication Specialist will handle most of the communication to various audiences. Communications and outreach efforts include SRIPMC Newsletter, SRIPMC Annual Report, communication with the media, OnTarget web news list, collaboration with other IPM Centers. We will initiate a Friend of Southern IPM awards program with details to be refined and finalized by the Advisory Council and the Steering Committee at the July 2007 meetings.