Editor's Page

This "Editor's Page" is a bit different from those you may have read before. It's longer. And, to make the length more palatable, it's got headings.

No, the first "Editor's Page" for the year is not starting with a weather forecast. As the new editor of the Journal of Extension, I want to introduce myself and to salute my predecessor, Len Calvert.

My name is Laura Hoelscher. When I'm not wearing my new JOE hat, I'm senior editor in the Department of Agricultural Communication at Purdue. I've worn the Purdue hat since 1983.

Between then and now, I've edited countless Extension bulletins, many research publications, 34 issues of an electronic newsletter on communications, and five books. Before 1983, I taught composition and technical writing while earning two graduate degrees in American Studies. (I won't tell you how long that took me.)

That's me. What about Len Calvert?

Len ably served as editor of the Journal of Extension for four years. Just how able his service and how extensive his contribution to JOE have become increasingly clear to me in the two months that I have been trying to fill his shoes.

My refrain with people who know and have worked with him is that "my respect for Len increaseth daily." And it does. The sensitivity and warmth he brought to his interactions with prospective JOE authors. His command of the multitudinous tasks involved in being JOE editor. The skill with which he "put together" JOE issues. His generosity in putting together the current issue when he was not obliged to. Wow.

In his last "Editor's Page," in the December '99 JOE, Len asked that you all be patient with me because "there's a lot of detail to learn in this job." There sure is, and I second Len's request for your patience.

But Len also talked about all of the people he'll miss when he's no longer JOE editor. I know that all of you who have worked with Len and all of you who have enjoyed and learned from JOE while he was editor will miss him, too.

JOE has them. Jim Lemon, Ohio State, and I have worked over the last month to update the guidelines and bring them more in line with JOE as it is now and hopes to be in the future.

We request submissions as Microsoft Word or WordPerfect attachments rather than as ASCII text embedded in email messages. We give length parameters as word counts rather than numbers of pages when printed. And so on.

Check out the new guidelines http://www.joe.org/sub1.html, and please let me know what you think joe-ed@joe.org.

Quality submissions are the lifeblood of any journal, so we want to make the JOE submission process as transparent and painless as possible.

As I mentioned before, this is really Len Calvert's last issue rather than my first. In other words, I can't take credit for it. I wish I could.

Len's generosity in preparing this issue so I could get my JOE bearings has given me a kind of freedom I won't enjoy again until my three-year term is over--the freedom to read an entire issue without being responsible for it. What I was freed to notice is just how interesting JOE is and, by extension, how interesting Extension is.

Sometime--when time permits--allow yourself the freedom Len gave me, and read an entire JOE issue without feeling constrained by your responsibilities. You'll enjoy it.

A specific note about this issue: "Farmers' Perspectives of Michigan State University Extension: Trends and Lessons from 1996 and 1999" discusses "AOE teams." If you want more information you can find it in an article in the June '99 JOE http://www.joe.org/joe/1999june/a3.html.

A specific note about the "Editor's Page": The next one will be shorter.

Laura Hoelscher, Editor