ISU Extension & Outreach Clay County Has A New Staff Member
ISU Extension & Outreach Clay County Has A New Staff Member
January 13, 2022Steve Schwaller
(Spencer)– Iowa State University Extension and Outreach of Clay County has a new staff member. Jenna Keene is the new Youth Outreach Coordinator. Keene is originally from Hartley. She has a background in education and most recently served as ISU Extension and Outreach County Youth Director in Sioux county…
“I grew up as a 4-Her. I showed livestock and I always had a lot of non-livestock projects, and so 4-H is something that’s always been near and dear to my heart. And so when I started looking for work outside of the classroom, extension was kind of at the top of my list. And so I started with extension in Sioux county. I was the County Youth Coordinator in Sioux county for about a year and-a-half and when the opportunity opened up here in Clay county, it was kind of a no brainer. I was driving about an hour to work every day and Clay county is a lot closer to home.”
Keene explains what her new duties in Clay county consist of…
“On the 4-H side of things I will be working with all of the non-livestock. So things like communication events, clothing events, and then all of the static projects that come to the Clay County Fair every year. Things like Achievement Fair will fall under that, and so I’ll get to work with 4-Her’s in that context. So then on the outreach side of things I’m really excited to develop some new programs, workshops, events, things like that, for youth throughout Clay county. We at extension just want to make sure that people know it’s not just 4-H. Know that there’s a ton of opportunities for youth throughout the county. Obviously we would love for kids to get involved in 4-H. We really believe in it as a program and so one of the ways that we’re just spreading the word about extension and the work that we do in the community is by working to develop a lot of new programs, youth events, summer camps, after school programs, things like that. And so that will also be a big part of my role here.”
Keene started in her position in Clay county January 10th.
