Two Ramsey County commissioners are pushing the University of Minnesota Extension to remove the word “master” from its Master Gardener volunteer program because of the word’s connection to the painful legacy of slavery.

If the Master Gardener program does not seriously consider changing its name, Commissioner Mai Chong Xiong said, it may be time for Ramsey County to reconsider its partnerships.

“It is all of our work, as Americans, to talk about our racist past and how it was built on the backs of slaves, and exploited people,” Xiong said, sharing her concern alongside Commissioner Rena Moran in a board meeting on July 23.

Tim Kenny, state director of the Master Gardener program, said the U Extension has been working to “improve access and welcome all to the program” following a 2021 report on its inclusivity. The Extension is still in the early stages of discussing a name change internally, Kenny said, describing it as a complex process.

Established at the University of Minnesota Extension in 1977, the statewide Master Gardener program seeks to share horticultural knowledge, support local volunteerism and promote a more healthy planet. Similar programs can be found across the country at other public universities, most with the same name.

More than 3,100 volunteers across Minnesota are active Master Gardeners. The Ramsey County chapter had 381 certified volunteers in 2023.

The word “master” has fallen out of favor in recent years. Many real estate professionals have stopped using “master” in listings, opting instead to dub a home’s largest bedrooms and bathrooms with the word “primary.” In computer science, many companies have phased out the use of “master” and “slave” in programming.

“The word ‘master’ is a word that’s very triggering to us who have descended from enslaved people,” Moran said. Using it, she said, may set the program back in its efforts to engage communities of color.

Xiong and Moran met with the Extension about the name recently, but said they walked away “disappointed” by the program’s response. Xiong said her impression was that the Extension was preserving the name “just because the current membership is going to be uncomfortable” with changing it, she said.

A local research agency, Terra Soma, led the 2021 inclusivity study. Researchers conducted a voluntary survey of 931 members and interviews with eight leaders who represent “diverse cultural communities” across Minnesota.

The majority of respondents reflected the demographic profile of the program’s most common member: “retired, affluent, educated European women,” the report said.

Among questions about access and inclusion, researchers also asked respondents about the program’s name and brand identity.

One-third of respondents were in favor of changing the Master Gardener program name, two-thirds were not.

Nearly half of the total sample who identified the program as very welcoming and inclusive had positive associations with the name. Hundreds of survey respondents, according to the report, “spoke passionately,” about maintaining the name, so as not to, “capitulate to perceived political pressure.”

However, the name appeared to be an issue for some survey respondents and interviewees who identified as African American, multiracial or Indigenous. According to the report, many of the interview subjects expressed support for a name change.

“I think that it is terrible for a few reasons,” said an interviewee quoted anonymously in the report. “First, think about the historical context and Black people and it’s a bad name. To be a master of nature or a master of plants and the fact that we could be full experts on nature is wrong.”

Yet, the study reports that for hundreds of respondents, a name change would not fully address root issues of inclusion in the program. Rather, reach, access and relationships should be primary concerns before the program name.

The Master Gardener program at the time served its primary white, female demographic “almost exclusively,” the report said. This left many others feeling, “excluded, unwelcomed, or simply uninterested in or unaware of a program that doesn’t reflect them.”

While the report concludes that there was “no clear consensus,” about the program’s name, respondents were united in refreshing the program’s culture to support future diversity in the program.

“Although I’m for keeping the term ‘master gardener,’ I also think this is a conversation we should have,” said one survey respondent quoted anonymously in the report.

Since the 2021 report, the program has been applying the recommendations in six key initiatives, Kenny said. It has launched a new five-year strategic plan, migrated its learning course to a fully online method to increase access, revised the application process to remove horticultural knowledge as a prerequisite, formalized financial assistance and a more “flexible” volunteering process to allow more people to be involved by doing projects at home.

Last year, the program added a new module of “inclusive volunteering” that begins the program’s online training.

“It encourages our volunteers to think about active inclusion, to create an environment that makes all people feel included,” Kenny said.

Ramsey County took up the issue itself in 2022. The county systematically removed the word “master” from its purchasing and contracting work, after pressure from the community and board. Now, “master” contracts are referred to as “collaborative” contracts.

“We want to do cooperative agreements with the community, and I don’t want to use language that turns people off,” said Alexandra Kotze, who was the county’s chief financial officer in 2022. “I wish I went about to change it sooner.”

It took a team of five people two months to meticulously remove the word from every county document, website and policy, according to Kotze. If it took longer, she said, they would have taken longer to do it.

“If Ramsey County was able to do it, so can the U of M,” Xiong said.