Mike Kuhns has been elected to the ANREP presidency. He will be president elect in 2010, president in 2011, and past president in 2012. ANREP is the Association of Natural Resources Extension Professionals.
Gene Schupp -- Undergraduate Research Mentor
(left to right: Johan du Toit, Gene Schupp, Joyce Kinkead, Brent Miller)
Gene Schupp was recognized at the Undergraduate Research Day which is a celebration of undergraduate research, scholarship, and creative activity. The event was held on Tuesday, March 31, 2009 in the Taggart Student Center. Gene was recognized for his efforts in working with undergraduate students. He received an award and cash prize during the Undergraduate Research Day Awards Ceremony.
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College of Natural Resources Honors Top Scholars
Congratulations to Fee Busby
CNR's 2008-09 Advisor of the Year
and
Robins Award Winner for Faculty Advisor of the Year
Although not an ‘official’ departmental advisor, it is unlikely that any other faculty member in CNR spends as much time working one-on-one with our students. Fee often can be seen sitting at a table in the CNR Atrium providing undergraduates with academic and professional career advice. Fee teaches a course both spring and fall that introduces students to the range of opportunities in the Forest, Range, and Wildlife Science majors and helps them understand how their interests fit into the natural resources curriculum and various career tracks in federal and state agencies. Fee is also very involved in the USU student chapter of the Society for Range Management and works closely with the students to prepare for the state and national examinations and plant identification competitions. Utah State Today article...
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Congratulations to Fred Provenza --
2008 D. Wynne Thorne Research Award Winner
(left to right: Johan du Toit, Fred Provenza, Dean Nat Frazer)
Dr. Fred Provenza, USU Wildland Resources professor, presented his research on understanding food-related issues in animals and how they enable people to manage domestic livestock in ways that enhance the nutrition and health of soil, plants, herbivores, and people in ways that lead to local adaptation to the landscapes we inhabit. He presented "More Than a Matter of Taste" on Monday, March 30, 2009 in the David B. Haight Alumni Center. Additional information...
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Congratulations to Eugene (Gene) Schupp
CNR's 2008-09 Undergraduate Research Mentor of the year
Gene Schupp has been intimately involved in promoting undergraduate research for most of his more than 16 years at USU. He was the lead author of a successful proposal to the CNR Dean’s Council to use Quinney Foundation funds to create a College of Natural Resources Undergraduate Research and Travel Grants Program to facilitate independent undergraduate research and to promote undergraduate participation in professional meetings. While the Research Grants were modeled after the university-wide URCO program, the Travel Grants were innovative; the CNR program, instituted before a similar program was introduced at the university level, has helped students present the results of their independent research at regional and national meetings for more than a decade. Gene has been the director of the grants program since its inception and in this role he has tirelessly advocated the value of student research as an educational tool, including giving annual presentations on undergraduate research in the College and in individual classes. In addition, Gene has had more than 30 USU undergraduates gain research experience working on his and his graduate students’ research projects. His philosophy has always been that these undergraduates are not merely technicians, but rather are junior colleagues, and that the experience is not simply employment, but an opportunity to learn about the process of research. For example, students are not simply taught what to do, but also why they are doing it: the hypothesis being tested, the experimental design used to test the hypothesis, the interpretation of the results, and more. Lastly, Gene has mentored four independent undergraduate research projects from conception of the idea through development of a research design, collection and analysis of the data, interpretation of results, and writing of the final report. Three of these projects resulted in presentations at regional or national professional meetings, one has produced a peer-reviewed publication, and one is in the final stages of manuscript preparation for submission to an international journal.
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Congratulations to Jeff Burnham
CNR's 2008-09 Employee of the Year
Congratulations to Jeff Burnham -- CNR's Employee of the Year. Jeff is a Professional Employee paid through the Ecology Center and has been a Research Associate running Eugene Schupp's large-scale restoration ecology projects since 2004. Presently, he is managing a long-term project (SageSTEP) funded at more than $1 million. At the same time he is responsible for the maintenance and functioning of the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station facilities in Tintic Valley near Eureka, UT and Jeff is doing all of this while pursuing his M.S. in Ecology!
Jeff is an extraordinarily competent and dependable employee at all levels. He works extremely well with minimal supervision. He is easy to get along with and treats his employees with respect while maintaining very high standards of work. He hires and manages a field crew of 4-5 undergraduates each summer and organizes field work that spans three states and involves camping at most field sites, including some extremely isolated places in northern Nevada. The work is hot and tiring under the summer sun and early in the season the crew is inundated with mosquitoes. Yet through it all Jeff maintains an extremely positive attitude and keeps the field crew functioning efficiently and in high spirits. In fact, as far as I can tell they love him and greatly respect him. As an example, see the letter from Corrin Liston, a member of his field crew last summer. After the field season he is responsible for getting very large amounts of vegetation and fuels data entered, proofed, and uploaded to the data base, and conducting analyses. He willingly participates in outreach activities for the project, leading tours for Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service personnel, Utah Partners for Conservation & Development, university classes, and more.
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Congratulations to Lana Barr
CNR's 2008-09 "Headless Hatchet Award" Recipient