Tim Reardon described the regional Rotary Literacy Team's BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) for 2025: they seek to transform communities to have the highest reading proficiency with the fewest inequities and achieve it with "a fierce urgency of now." The benchmarks of success: every child is "wired" to read by age 3 and reads proficiently at grade level. Rotarians are championing this effort in communities across Minnesota and the Distric Team aspires to spread this movement to Wisconsin as well.  Tim opened his talk by asking us to put our minds in the place of 3rd graders who know that they are behind their peers when it's time to read in class.  He also presented statistics about the price that both individuals and society pays for our collective failure to make sure that all children are able to read.  To be further inspired/challenged, click Download Files below to see Tim's slides.

Catherine White described the partnership between the WinField United facility in River Falls and UWRF.  She started with her academic and work history:  Catherine holds a BS in agronomy from Virginia Tech and a Master’s from the University of Illinois.  She has been at Winfield since 2009.  She has had 3 different roles in product development at Winfield, and she also works at UWRF as an adjunct Professor at UWRF in Soil Science.  Catherine noted that lately she has become more of a plant physiologist focused on interaction between plants and soil they grow in.

 

WinField is part of Land O’ Lakes, which is much more than the butter we love.  WinField sells a huge variety of agricultural products, both on the seed/supplements/treatment side and on the herbicide/fungicide/insecticide segment, both of which contribute to the success of farmers (by growing stuff and killing stuff, respectively).  WinField has a strong relationship with the Mann Valley Lab Farm.  Catherine also noted that WinField has a food sustainability focus.   [Continued]