As Americans we outspend our disposable income. Which has plunged the U.S. consumer savings rate into the minus digits. The New York Times says last year consumers paid $17.1 billion in credit card penalty fees alone. During the same period, the credit industry tantalized consumers by sending out nearly 8 billion credit card offers--26 for every man, woman, and child living in the U.S.

Is the University of Maryland able to take direct action to educate consumers about adopting healthy spending habits? It is. Through its major outreach arm, University of Maryland Cooperative Extension. A primary example is Extension's annual in-depth conference, "Personal Finance Seminar for Professionals." The conference for financial educators and counselors who work with the public addresses critical consumer-spending issues. As it has for the past 18 years, according to Susan Morris, assistant director of Extension's family and consumer science program and a conference planner. Attendees of the 3-day affair, held in May in Columbia, included family counselors from U.S. military bases overseas.

National experts such as Kelvin Boston, host of the Moneywise PBS series, and Robert Manning, director of the Center for Consumer Financial Services, led seminars, according to Jinhee Kim, who worked alongside Morris. Kim, an Extension family finance specialist, said topics included current estate-planning strategies, diagnosing the compulsive shopper, and how to change social attitudes toward consumer debt in a credit nation.

 

If you've ever wondered whether or not your shopping style falls into the compulsive category, here's a chance to find out. Coleen Moore, an addiction expert who spoke at the 2007 Personal Finance Seminar for Professionals mentioned above, presented a checklist that her organization, the Illinois Institute of Addiction Recovery (IIAR), uses to identify compulsive shoppers.

As Moore told the audience for the event, sponsored by University of Maryland Cooperative Extension, compulsive spending, the leading cause of consumer debt in this country, is an addiction. And money is the drug. The spender lacks impulse control and the spending creates feelings of excitement or euphoria, which fuels the addiction. Then the shame that torments spenders because of their uncontrollable behavior compels them to shop. And the cycle goes on. The good news is treatments exist for the problem. The bad news is IIAR has the only program in the country that treats spending addictions.

 

When Nacheshia Pierce (pronounced NaKEEsha) took her first food science course, the last thing she expected was to land a dream job before she'd even graduated. She'd arrived at the Nutrition and Food Science (NFSC) department via a circuitous route, with a beginning in chemistry and a pause at nursing as a career goal. It was while taking a course in basic nutrition--in preparation for nursing school--that she discovered food science and came to an end of her journey.

Martin Lo, who was her NFSC advisor, says "her passion for food and an understanding of the science behind food production" are what led her to find her niche in food science. Nacheshia cites Lo, an associate professor in food bioscience engineering, for "his ability to make things relevant and easier to apply, therefore easier to learn." In August, she'll start working at DuPont's Wilmington, Delaware, experiment station, on surfactants that protect tile and carpeting from food stains. DuPont was eager to hire her, Lo believes, "because of her aptitude in science and creativity, besides her outstanding interpersonal skills."

 

Tunka, a community in Yucatan, Mexico, overflows with cats and dogs. And without a vet in sight. Problem is residents are too poor to pay for animal care were it even available.

Helping fill this vacuum is Bettye Walters' week-long community service program, now in its second year. "Exposure to other cultures and levels of technology is important", says Walters, director of the Center for Public & Corporate Veterinary Medicine at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine. "It helps our students grow when they learn that not everyone lives or looks like us!" Two of her third-year students--Heather Grouch and Alida Kinney--worked as part of a team, sleeping in hammocks, and going house to house at times to provide veterinary services. The 9-person team comprised vet students from other universities here and in Mexico, plus licensed veterinarians. The team spayed or neutered 27 pets and vaccinated 586 against rabies, with no complications.

Team members made it their mission to persuade townspeople that vaccination wouldn't cause illness and that spaying and neutering didn't harm their pets. If the team had failed to connect with the townspeople, allaying their fears, team effectiveness would have suffered greatly. As Heather, fluent in Spanish, puts it, "The effects of communication and education are goals of equal import with the eradication of disease and population control in cats and dogs."

 

-or a whole nursery full of annuals, plants need nitrogen to thrive. But fertilizing plants in containers can be an inefficient means of providing the nitrogen. Andrew Ristvey, University of Maryland Cooperative Extension regional specialist for commercial horticulture, researches Nitrogen Uptake Efficiency (NUpE). Roots of container-grown plants, his research shows, take up only about 40 percent of the nitrogen provided by either drip irrigation or controlled release fertilizers applied to the top of the soil. Turns out microbes beat plant roots in the competition for nitrogen in the soil.

One of the best ways to increase uptake efficiency, according to Ristvey, who works at the Wye Research and Education Center in Queenstown, is to apply the recommended rates of controlled release fertilizers. Second, and most important, he says, is remembering effective fertilization starts with irrigation-watering. Since nutrients are water soluble, they travel with water to the roots, and often past the roots. Controlling leaching (aka not overwatering) is vital to keeping nutrients where they're needed--in the pot.

Home gardeners: some tips about fertilizing your container-grown plants (Word doc). Courtesy of Jon Traunfeld, regional Extension specialist and director, Home and Garden Information Center, and Tom Blessington, regional specialist in postharvest floriculture, Central Maryland Research and Education Center, Keedysville.

 

It's with pride that I tell you that incoming student Apratim Mitra, who's been accepted into the Animal Sciences Graduate Program, has received one of the 10 Flagship Fellowships the university recently created to attract talented graduate students. I'm also proud of Jeffrey Moore, a Ph.D. student in Nutrition and Food Science, who was recently awarded the 2006 Food Products Association Graduate Student Scholarship in a national competition.

This past May marked another successful "Personal Finance Seminar for Professionals" conference, sponsored by University of Maryland Cooperative Extension. This event attracts international attention and its evaluations rate it as outstanding. My thanks to Susan Morris, Jinhee Kim, Jean Austin, Joanne Hamilton, and Megan O'Neil-Haight for their exceptional planning and execution, including the hard work that made the program possible.

UM's Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (JIFSAN), in partnership with the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, was awarded a citation for leadership in fostering effective partnerships in international food safety programs, which improve the safety of foods imported into the U.S. Part of the credit for this citation goes to Chris Walsh, professor of horticulture in Plant Sciences and Landscape Architecture, and JIFSAN's international training coordinator. Terp Magazine recently discussed his work protecting U.S. consumers. Walsh trains the trainers about good agricultural practices in countries that export fresh fruit and vegetables to this country.

My sincerest congratulations to the following college faculty and staff:

Siba Samal, professor and associate dean, Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine, for the grant USDA's National Research Initiative awarded him for his research in generating avian vaccines.

Ria Malloy, business service specialist at Extension's Home & Garden Information Center, for winning the University of Maryland System Board of Regents Staff Award for 2006-2007, the board's highest honor for recognizing outstanding staff members.

Kate Everts, associate professor, plant pathology, in the Plant Science and Landscape Architecture department, who was elected Potomac division councilor to the American Phytopathological Society. She just completed a term as president of the division.

Last but not least, Jackie Takacs, an Extension marine science specialist for southern Maryland and Sea Grant Extension Programs. Mid-Atlantic Sea Grant has awarded her the 2005-2006 Outstanding Sea Grant Extension Program Award for her development and leadership of the "Junior Watermen's Program" at the annual East Coast Commercial Fishermen and Aquaculture Trade Expo.