Congrats to Evin Carter, Jessica Moore and Michael Van Nuland, who were recognized for Graduate Research, and Riley Bernard, Cassie Dresser and Marisol Sanchez-Garcia, who were recognized for Graduate Teaching, in the Inaugural Graduate Student Appreciation Week 2015. Below is a photo of four of the awardees, who attended an awards breakfast this week.
Thanks to all of our graduate students who do outstanding work every day!
EEB is excited to announce that Susan Kalisz will be joining us as our new head of department, starting August 1!
The 2015 NSF Graduate Research Fellowships have been announced; Jordan Bush (Simberloff Lab) and Todd Pierson (Fitzpatrick Lab) each received one. Congratulations!
Eugene Wofford is an author on a new book coming out from the University of Tennessee press. Guide to the Vascular Plants of Tennessee is available for pre-order.
Chelsea Miller (Kwit Lab) has been awarded Catherine H. Beattie Fellowship for Conservation Horticulture from the Garden Club of America and the Center for Plant Conservation. Each year, the grant enables a graduate student in biology, horticulture, or a related field to conduct research on a rare or endangered U.S. plant. Preference is given to students focusing on the endangered flora of the Carolinas or the southeastern United States.
Associate Professor Paul Armsworth is featured in TN Today with a new paper in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment called, “Are conservation organizations configured for effective adaptation to global change?”
Veronica Brown (research coordinator, McCracken Lab) is featured on the Bat Conservation International page focusing on Women in Bat Conservation.
Christine Hawkes’ seminar, which was scheduled for 3:30pm on Friday, February 27, has been cancelled, due to inclement weather.
On pages 6-7 in the March 2015 issue of National Geographic, there is a shout-out to J.R. Shute (MS 1984, Zoology) and Pat Rakes (MS 1989, Zoology), two of Dave Etnier’s former Zoology graduate students. They founded Conservation Fisheries, Inc., based in Knoxville, which is devoted to the captive rearing and, where possible, the release and re-establishment of threatened and endangered freshwater fishes. They are noted for their ability to develop artificial habitats and other aspects of husbandry which will encourage their finicky charges to spawn and for the young to survive to become breeding stock for future generations. This is not easy, since many of the fishes with which they work inhabit cool, fast-flowing, highly-oxygenated streams and are picky about the substrate over which they will mate and in which to lay their eggs. They have both spent many hours in wet suits making the observations that are often a major part of their success.
Both Katie Massana (O’Meara Lab) and Rachel Wooliver (Schweitzer Lab) won NSF East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute (EAPSI) grants last week!
Katie will be going to New Zealand and Rachel will be going to Tasmania this summer.
The McCracken Lab has a new paper in the Journal of Wildlife Diseases (online first).
Riley F. Bernard, Jeffery T. Foster, Emma V. Willcox, Katy L. Parise, & Gary F. McCracken. 2015. Molecular detections of the causative agent of white-nose syndrome on Rafinesque’s big-eared bats (Corynorhinus rafinesquii) and two species of migratory bats in the Southeastern USA. Journal of Wildlife Diseases 51(2).