Illinois Extension: Sharing knowledge and building communities for more than 100 years

MACOMB, Ill. — The holidays are a time of year to refresh and reflect. It brings much-needed time away from the computer, save typing out this article.

I am lucky to have a job where I can take extra time off at the end and beginning of the year, and I intend to do just that. It is time for a recharge.

Another important detail during the break is a reminder of why we do what we do. What motivated us this past year to work later? To read that extra report? To call one more client? Is there anything beyond the paycheck that pushes you to excel?

As a horticulture educator with Illinois Extension, I feel accountable to those who came before me and the communities I serve. Illinois Extension has been around for more than 100 years. Since the beginning, our job has been and still is to ensure that knowledge does not stay locked up in an institution but gets extended out across the state.

It was President Lincoln’s original intention when he worked to establish the land-grant universities with the Morrill Act of 1862. He knew bringing the knowledge of agricultural research into the fledgling United States was critical to establishing a foundation to build a country. Sadly, Cooperative Extension did not come into being until after Lincoln’s death with the passing of the Smith-Lever Act in 1914.

Larger organizations often have a code that acts as a guide to their employees. Extension professionals have a creed. I stumbled across this creed early in my career and have it pinned on my wall for those times when I need extra motivation. It just so happens that the Extension Worker’s Creed was written by W. A. Lloyd as a New Year’s greeting to county agriculture agents in 1922. As we are about to turn over a new year, it is a fitting time to share Lloyd’s words as we look toward 2024.

The Extension Worker’s Creed

“I believe in the people and their hopes their aspirations and their faith and their right to make their own plans and arrive at their own decisions and their ability and power to enlarge their lives and plan for the happiness of those they love.

“I believe the education, of which Extension is an essential part, is basic in stimulating individual initiative self-determination and leadership that these are the keys to democracy and that people, when given facts they understand, will act not only in their self-interest but also in the interest of society.

“I believe education is a lifelong process and the greatest university is the home that my success as a teacher is proportional to those qualities of mind and spirit that give me welcome entrance into the homes of the families I serve. 

“I believe in intellectual freedom to search for and present the truth without bias and with courteous tolerance to the views of others. I believe that Extension is a link between the people and the ever-changing discoveries in the laboratories.

“I believe in the public institutions, of which I am part. I believe in my own work and in the opportunity I have to make my life useful to humanity.

Because I believe these things, I am an extension professional.”

Here’s to a Happy New Year and another growing season of getting our hands dirty.