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Columns::April 1, 2002
61st Peabody Awards: September 11 programming prominent among this year’s winners
Kleven, head of avian medicine, is named a Regents Professor
Researcher receives $1 million grant to study stuttering in children
International symposium participants will discuss biotechnology in textiles
Food safety director will deliver annual Woodroof Lecture
Out of the woods
Driven to succeed
New director appointed to Coca-Cola Center for Marketing Studies
Newsmakers
New recruitment office opens in metro Atlanta
Campus News
Human development specialist’s career is an extension of himself
By Denise Horton
dhorton@uga.edu
Don Bower can remember when child safety seats were a rarity.
“It was the late 1970s, and I had two young daughters,” he recalls. “I was appalled at how crude the safety seats were.”
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| Don Bower |
Bower approached the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety with a plan to educate Georgians about the importance of safety seats and how to install them correctly.
“They had no idea what extension was, but they gave us $5,000 to buy sample teaching seats for every extension office in the state,” he says.
From those humble beginnings has grown a program that now has an annual budget of $800,000 to train parents, child-care providers, law enforcement officials and health-care workers in the use of child safety seats--as well as encouraging adults to wear safety belts.
“Twenty years ago I thought we’d get a system that works simply and reliably and that would be it,” Bower says. “But the problem is even worse now. There are several different vehicle belt systems and dozens of different styles of safety seats available. Also, you have new seats going into old cars and old seats going into new cars. When we do seat checks, more than 90 percent are installed incorrectly.”
Bower speaks passionately about his work with child safety seats, but he’s just as passionate about the many other programs he’s worked with in his 27-year career with the extension service, which began with six years with the state extension program located at Fort Valley State University.
“When I first started with the extension service in Fort Valley, I quickly got to know my counterpart here at UGA,” Bower says. “We developed some of the first extension parenting-education programs anywhere. We trained county extension agents throughout the state in how to present these programs--that system is what still exists today.”
In 1981, Bower moved to Athens, where he has continued to develop programs that target a variety of human development needs.
“What’s changed is that when we started parenting programs around the state, we were working with mainstream audiences,” he says. “Now, we’re frequently working with mandated audiences, parents who have been ordered by the courts to receive parenting education. That’s a tougher audience to help.”
Parenting education is only one example of the programs Bower and his colleagues have developed. There are the demonstration projects occurring in several sites around Georgia that target at-risk populations, such as families living in poverty, parents or children who are using drugs, or children who are engaging in risky sex.
“In Valdosta, we’ve partnered with the staff at Moody Air Force Base to help provide after-school and summer programs for the children of air base employees,” he says. “The air base had the personnel, but adding extension’s vast experience in youth and family programming enhanced their efforts.”
A project in Cobb County is targeting families who are homeless, providing after-school tutoring and other programs to children who have few resources.
“We reached a bunch of kids who were performing below grade level, and helped many of them catch up,” he says.
Each project has a two-fold purpose: to accomplish its goals successfully at that particular site and to work out any kinks so the program can be used at other sites throughout Georgia and elsewhere.
Bower and his colleagues provide training to local Family and Consumer Sciences and 4-H extension faculty throughout the year, ensuring that they have the basic knowledge necessary to develop and present a variety of programs required in the areas of child, youth and family development. He also is available whenever they need specific information on a topic.
“There’s been a tremendous change in how quickly we can access information,” he says. “I had a FACS agent call the other day searching for information on establishing mentoring programs for teen parents. Before the Internet, it would have taken a week to locate that information. Now it takes an hour.”
Bower is also embarking on a new challenge. Working with the Carl Vinson Institute of Government, Bower and other colleagues on campus are establishing the Georgia Family Policy Institute.
“A similar institute has been established at the University of Wisconsin and we’re one of 10 states to replicate that model,” he explains. “The goal is to identify public policy issues on the horizon that will impact families. Using UGA resources we’ll pull together briefing papers and conduct seminars around the state for legislators and other policy makers. The goal is ensuring that policy makers understand how research and practice can better inform public policies affecting families.”
With nearly 30 years as an outreach faculty member, Bower has seen the extension service change in many ways, but he anticipates even more challenges as issues surrounding both child care and senior care become more and more important to Georgians.
“Family and Consumer Sciences has always recognized the importance of child, youth and family development as an integral part of the extension service,” Bowers says. “But it’s important that we continue to think about what extension will look like in the future and how we can continue to use the outstanding university outreach system service that we have through local extension offices to provide knowledge and assistance to Georgians.”
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