Tidball

Keith Tidball, senior extension associate in the Department of Natural Resources and state program leader of Cornell Cooperative Extension’s New York Extension Disaster Education Network (NY EDEN), has been named a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA) 2014 visiting scholar. Tidball, whose work focuses on disaster readiness, response and resilience, will work jointly with NIFA’s Division of Family and Consumer Sciences and NIFA’s Center for International Programs.

Visiting scholars are selected from faculty who are actively engaged with the NIFA-funded Extension Disaster Education Network and interested in conducting work that bridges domestic and international efforts in disaster preparedness, response and recovery education. Tidball will link existing EDEN efforts to other NIFA initiatives and programs, Cooperative Extension Regional Development Centers, emergency preparedness, response and recovery programs of other federal agencies, and international disaster education efforts.

“This is an extraordinary opportunity for an extraordinary leader in emergency response and recovery. As the director of the Nature and Human Security Program at Cornell University and state coordinator for the New York Extension Disaster Education Network, Keith has been developing innovative and effective ways to keep New Yorkers and those in the Northeast safer,” said Kathryn J. Boor, the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “This NIFA visiting scholar opportunity will enable Keith to share his expertise at the national level, as he gains new insights into disaster preparedness and response from around the country.”

During his appointment, Tidball will work to further integrate EDEN’s national and New York state work with the new Cornell Climate Change and Agriculture Institute and similar NIFA funded initiatives around the country, and he will help the Philippines launch its Extension Disaster Education Network.

“It’s a great honor to be selected for this opportunity, and I am looking forward to the challenge of better integrating the climate change discourse within USDA/NIFA and other federal agencies, and the preparedness and disaster response discourses,” Tidball said.

Since 2008 NIFA’s Visiting Scholars Program, offered by the Division of Family and Consumer Sciences (FCS), advances collaboration between NIFA and land-grant university partners. The program provides an opportunity for land-grant university faculty members and administrators to enhance their professional growth while cultivating their interests at the federal level.

Tidball will spend three weeks in residence in Washington, D.C., throughout 2014.