A big congratulations to the new members and officers of Xi Sigma Pi, who were inducted during an evening ceremony on Wednesday, May 22!
Marc Morrison is happy to report that three student-led projects were awarded a total of $113,078.22 as part of the Student Technology Fee! The committee approved grant proposals for SEFS faculty members Ivan Eastin (Peace Corps Masters International Computer Lab: $16,029.50), Dan Vogt (Building Geo-Spatial Computing Capacity on the GIBSON Cluster: $41,776.00) and Aaron Wirsing (Equipment for Wildlife Research: $55,272.72). Well done!
Now that the Silent Auction bids have been nearly tallied and finalized, we are pleased to share that your generous donations—and items offered for bidding—will end up adding more than $2,700 to the SEFS Student Scholarship Fund! Nice work, everyone (and you can thank Bruce Bare's legs for a good chunk of it after he pounded out 95 miles in two weeks, stunning those who were brave enough to bid per mile on how much he’d run during that time)!
In case you missed it a few weeks ago, UWBG hosted its third BioBlitz on May 10 and 11 to help catalog biodiversity in the Washington Park Arboretum.
Our friends at the American Water Resource Association passed along information about a couple upcoming conferences that intersect with our work. Of particular interest might be the “Health Forests=Healthy Water” conference, June 27-28 in Hartford, Conn. Other events include the “Environmental Flows” conference, June 24-25, also in Hartford, and the Annual Water Resources Conference, Nov. 4-7 in Portland, Ore.
Kudos to George Watson, a junior BSE major who recently attended the 35th Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals in Portland, Ore., April 29 to May 2. The event, hosted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, was a great opportunity for Watson to present research he’s working on with fellow undergrads Neethi Nagarajan and Seth Jorgensen, who also attended. As the only undergraduates at the symposium, Watson, Nagarajan and Jorgensen were in a unique position to learn about the future prospects of an industry with great potential, as well as the types of opportunities for graduate research throughout the country and the world.
We’ve already put in two notices, so we’re SURE you have this one on your calendar … but just in case, the Dead Elk Society’ end-of-year-party is coming up this Friday, June 7, at 5:30 p.m. at the Center for Urban Horticulture! They’re supplying the beer (for ages 21+) and other beverages, as well as some food for grilling. You’re welcome to bring whatever food you’d like to eat, and the Gravity Kings will be performing live!
Professor Josh Lawler reports that one of his recent graduate students, Tristan Nuñez, recently published a piece in Conservation Biology this past April: “Connectivity planning to address climate change.” (Nuñez, T. A., J. J. Lawler, B. H. McRae, D. J. Pierce, M. B. Krosby, D. M. Kavanagh, P. H. Sigleton, and J. J. Tewksbury)
On May 30, Sandra Hines at UW News and Information released a story that features the work of Elaine Oneil, Bruce Lippke and Rick Gustafson in the latest Forest Products Journal: “Transportation fuels from woody biomass promising way to reduce emissions.”
Christina Galitsky, who earned a Master of Forest Resources from SEFS in August 2012, recently became the program coordinator for Tree Kangaroo Conservation at the Woodland Park Zoo. She started her new position on May 1. Congratulations, Christina!
Also, Paul Schulte, who earned a Ph.D. from SEFS in 1985 and is now an associate professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, recently had some light microscope images from his plant anatomy image website used as part of a new art installation in Seattle. The artist Benson Shaw was designing several large stained glass panels for the Seattle Wood Technology Center at Seattle Central Community College, and he credits Schulte’s photo “micrographs” for influencing his final design (at the Center’s entrance, fragmented green and violet honeycombed glass reflects the cellular structure of a yellow poplar tree, mimicking a tree slice under a microscope).
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