Cooperative Education in Full Swing and Cooperative History Captured
When cooperative leaders gather, there is a great synergy of passion, determination and a willingness to learn new ways to help their cooperatives move forward to meet the future needs of their customers. The winter months are the prime meeting time for cooperative leaders. Not only did Arthur Capper Cooperative Center (ACCC) Director, Dr. Brian Briggeman and ACCC Managing Director, Seleise Barrett, host a successful conference for cooperative CEOs and board chairs, but each attended several cooperative conferences, including the CHS Cooperative Leadership Conference (Dr. Briggeman was a panelist on the program), National Council of Farmer Cooperatives Annual Meeting, KCC and KFSA Annual Meetings and the CoBank Western Plains Customer Meeting. For both, spending time with cooperative CEOs, directors and leadership teams, brought experiences rich with insight, a chance to hear great speakers and the opportunity to network within the coope
rative community.
In addition to cooperative meetings, many local cooperatives hold board retreats and strategic management team retreats during the winter months. Dr. Briggeman made presentations at several retreats. The economic outlook and the map project were the most requested topics.
A google map project was launched by the ACCC to show the upright grain storage locations in Kansas. Both cooperative and non-cooperative storage sites were located and defined. The map is updated as mergers occur and includes cooperatives headquartered out-of-state but with storage facilities in state. To learn more and to see the latest maps, visit http://accc.k-state.edu/map.html.
The ACCC is part of the Department of Agricultural Economics at Kansas State University. With the addition of new office space for the growing department, the ACCC staff and cooperative library were moved and are now all housed in 305 Waters Hall with the ACCC Director.
The ACCC was pleased to have received a donation of cooperative history materials from Rod Simpson and John Minor to add to the Far-Mar-Co and Farmland Industries collections in the K-State Archives. In addition, a video featuring two cooperative leaders captured their work history as well as the early history of cooperatives in Kansas to add to the collection and to use in the online class on cooperatives.
In March, the cooperative scholarship committee awarded 17 cooperative scholarships (over $50,000) awared on behalf of the cooperative community for the 2017-2018 academic year. To date, $672,856 has been awarded to outstanding students at K-State since 1985.
The ACCC continues to strive to offer relevant programs to help the cooperative community. Upcoming programs include an inaugural CFO conference in May, Emerging Leaders: Building a Cooperative Finance Foundation on July 18-19 and the K-State Symposium on August 15th followed by the KCC Leadership Roundtable. http://accc.k-state.edu/meetings/index.html
For more information about the ACCC, visit our website: http://accc.k-state.edu/ or our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/KStateACCC/
