Tweeten Elected to ESP Board

Kathleen Tweeten, director of the North Dakota State University Extension Service’s Center for Community Vitality, has been elected north-central region vice president for Epsilon Sigma Phi.

Epsilon Sigma Phi (ESP) is a national organization dedicated to fostering standards of excellence and promoting and supporting professionalism in Extension.

Her role as a regional vice president will be to help with ESP’s national leadership, connect with chapters in the north-central region and chair the organization’s national Global Relations Committee. She begins a two-year term in October.

“My goal is to bring the resources of the national organization to our local chapter of Epsilon Sigma Phi and NDSU Extension, as well as to help the national organization to achieve its educational goal of leadership development,” says Tweeten, who also is an Extension community economic development specialist in NDSU’s Department of Agribusiness and Applied Economics.

She was elected north-central region vice president at ESP’s national leadership meeting in Nashville, Tenn., in February. The north-central region consists of North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.

“I don’t believe that anyone from North Dakota has ever served on the national board,” she says.

Tweeten has served as president and past president of the state ESP chapter and chaired the conference committee when North Dakota hosted the ESP national conference in Fargo in 2009. She also was one of the organizers of the Joint Council of Extension Professionals in North Dakota.

At the national ESP level, she has served on the Professional Development and National Conference Planning committees.

She also has been involved in a number of other national leadership activities, including serving on the Extension Committee on Organization and Policy Leadership Advisory Council, Public Issues Leadership Development Planning Committee and National Extension Disaster Education Network Design Team for Ready Business, which helps small and medium-sized businesses survive disasters. In addition, she has been president of Business Retention and Expansion International and the National Association of Community Development Extension Professionals.

NDSU Agriculture Communication