The Alabama Cooperative Extension System (Alabama Extension) provides educational outreach to the citizens of Alabama on behalf of the state's two land grant universities: Alabama A&M University (state's 1890 land-grant institution) and Auburn University (1862 land-grant institution). The System employs more than 800 faculty, professional educators, and staff members operating in offices in every
one of Alabama’s 67 counties and in nine urban centers covering the major regions of the state. In conjunction with the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station, the system also staffs six Extension and Research Centers located in the state’s principal geographic regions. Since 2004, "Alabama Extension" has functioned primarily as a regionally-based System in which the bulk of educational programming is delivered by agents operating across a multi-county area and specializing in specific fields. County Extension coordinators and county agents (where they are funded), continue to play integral roles in the Extension mission, working with regional agents and other Extension personnel to deliver services to clients within their areas. Alabama Extension, which will mark its centennial in 2014, possesses a history deeply rooted in the impoverished post-Civil War conditions of the rural Deep South. When the foundations of Extension work were being initiated in the state, Alabama was still reeling from the lingering economic dislocation and deprivation associated with post-war conditions. A major focus of Extension work at that time was on using cutting-edge research from the state’s expanding land-grant university system in tandem with emerging Industrial Age technologies to improve the working conditions of the state’s farmers and homemakers. Today, Alabama Extension faces many of the challenges common among Extension programs in other states, namely addressing and expanding its mission to account for the needs of a state that is becoming increasingly affluent, urbanized and racially and ethnically diverse. While many of Alabama Extension’s priority programs are targeted to traditional audiences in rural parts of the state increasingly there is a focus on reaching nontraditional clients in urban areas. Moreover, capitalizing on rapid advances in communications technologies, Alabama Extension, like many of its counterparts in other states, is expanding its mission to reach regional, national, and global audiences.
