Visionary Leadership Recognition Award

Rhonda Conlon

Rhonda is in charge of design, coordination and presentation of computer training for more than 400 individuals in the extension service and experiment station. Her creative training efforts include the Land Grant Training Alliance, a group of 35 computer education and technology professionals, mostly from land-grant universities. This group, of which Rhonda was an original member, recognized a need for creative ways to teach extension staff about various software packages in a time- and cost-effective manner. The answer was to cooperatively write and deliver lessons through e-mail rather than workshops for small groups. Rhonda has been closely involved with all 17 online sessions that have been offered, was the author of five lessons and was online faculty for a course on using e-mail. She, with the help of a high school student, formatted most of the lessons for the World Wide Web and created the Web site. She offers training through hands-on and demonstration workshops, pays personal visits to county extension offices and research extension centers, chairs the NDSU Extension Technology Task Force and served on the development team for the NDSU Extension Service Web site. She is active in professional organizations and has presented papers at professional conferences.