From the Editor

Greeting to all members of the Association for International Agricultural and Extension Education (AIAEE) and to all readers of the Journal of International Agricultural and Extension Education (JIAEE)! The JIAEE summer issue brings many contributions from the 21st Annual AIAEE Conference, held in sunny San Antonio, Texas during the last week of May. I extend my sincere congratulations to the organizers of our annual conference. On behalf of the AIAEE, we say “thank you” to James R. Lindner, the AIAEE leadership team, and their many helpful assistants for planning, coordinating, and sponsoring a wonderful conference in San Antonio. I am hopeful all conference attendees enjoyed visiting Texas.

You may have noticed a slight change on the cover of this issue. True to the JIAEE editorial board promise made one year ago, we no longer publish the outstanding professional papers from our annual conference. Why not, you may ask? Well, as our profession has aged, so too has the number of manuscripts submitted for peer review to this journal. The JIAEE summer issue, traditionally confined to the contents of our most recent AIAEE conference, was a valued conduit for publishing manuscripts that otherwise would not have been shared in another medium. However, those were the days before high-speed Internet, auto-play compact discs, and far-reaching electronic mail listserv. Today, if you desire conference information, you need only access the Web site, http://www.aiaee.org/conferences.html, for a complete listing of all conference materials from the past five years. But, not all conference material was excluded from this issue. Take a few moments to read David Acker’s inspirational Keynote Address (p. 5), and review the conference professional paper abstracts (p. 57-85) before finding them on the Web.

Beyond the reasons for not publishing the outstanding conference papers described in the previous paragraph, the JIAEE must continue its goal of improving scholarship published in each issue. That is not to say that annual AIAEE conference papers are not worthy of being published in this journal, quite the contrary situation exists. However, all conference paper authors are encouraged to re-write conference papers and submit them to the JIAEE for peer review and possible publication. This journal offers all authors an opportunity to expand articles (Feature Article manuscripts may now be up to 20 double-spaced pages in length). AIAEE conference papers are limited to 12 double-spaced pages. The extra pages allowed by the JIAEE may be used for in-depth narratives of manuscript frameworks (theoretical, conceptual, or operational), fuller descriptions of the research methods used, comprehensive data analyses, or enhanced explanations in the sections for conclusions, implications, and recommendations. All other sections, including the abstract, tables, and references must be included in the 20-page limit. If you did not have your paper selected as one of the research conference papers in San Antonio, I encourage you to re-write and submit it for review and possible publication in a future issue of the JIAEE.

Thank you to all JIAEE contributors, reviewers, and board members for assisting in the production of this issue. Enjoy your summer issue and continue doing what you can to promote greater understanding of agricultural and extension education worldwide.

Sincerely,

Gary J. Wingenbach, Editor

Journal of International Agricultural and Extension Education