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March 6, 2017

Posted by entomology.office | March 22, 2017

March 6, 2017

Department Meetings

The next Entomology Faculty meeting will be on Friday, March 24 at 11:00 AM.  Conference dial # to come.

Seminars and Colloquium

EGSA Speaker 2017Entomology Colloquium:  There will be no colloquium presentation on Monday, March 13 due to Spring Break.  The next Colloquium will be by the EGSA student choice speaker, Dr. Mary Barbercheck from Penn State. Her talk is titled: A Growing Concern: Women Farmers Sustaining Agriculture and the Environment. Her seminar will be during colloquium on March 20th at 2:10 pm, except will take place in FSHN T-101. We will send out her itinerary the week of February 20th for all to sign up for meetings.”

Department Announcements

David James was featured in a Northwest 4 news article in the March 6 edition of the Yakima Hearld-Republic.  The title of the article is “Expert from WSU to offer butterfly program at Yakima Arboretum.”

Mushrooms & the Mycology of ConsciousnessJoin us in Seattle on March 29th at the Moore Theatre for an evening with Paul Staments and Louis Schwartzberg.  Paul Staments is the founder and president of Fungi Perfecti.  He is a mycology expert, TED speaker and developer of innovative mushroom technologies.  Louis Schwartzberg is an award-winning cinematographer whose work has appeared on National Geographic and Disney Nature.  Event speakers will also include Dr. W. Steve Sheppard and Dr. Brandon Hopkins.  Proceeds from this event will support the WSU Honey Bee + Pollinator Research Program.  To learn more go to http://bees.wsu.edu/seattle/ or http://bees.wsu.edu/.

 

Faculty, Students and Researcher are invited and encouraged to join the Department of Entomology’s ResearchGate group to help make our profile more current and relevant.  ResearchGate is a professional network for scientists and researchers and some of you are already members.  To get more information and to join our group go to: https://www.researchgate.net/institution/Washington_State_University/department/Department_of_Entomology and click on Join this Department.  There is no cost to join ResearchGate.

If you engage in pesticide research, application, handling, or recommendation activities as part of your WSU employment, you must follow all WSU Pesticide Policy requirements as defined in the WSU Business Policies & Procedures Manual (BPPM). Refresh your knowledge of WSU Pesticide Policy requirements by visiting WSU Employee Resources at the Washington State Pest Management Resource Service (WSPRS) website. The Pesticide Policy training modules are available as videos, video transcripts, and podcasts.  Find the related WSU Pesticide Policy BPPM sections here:

WSU Pesticide Policy applies to ALL WSU EMPLOYEES (with or without a pesticide applicator’s license) who are engaged in pesticide-related work, including students, volunteers, faculty and staff.

If you have any questions about the training, pesticide policy, pesticide license requirements, or experimental use of pesticides, please contact Dr. Catherine Daniels, WSU Pesticide Coordinator, at 253-445-4611 or cdaniels@wsu.edu.

University Announcements

I wanted to send out a reminder that the Meeting Place conferencing system will be turned off on March 10, 2017. Meetings cannot currently be scheduled beyond March 9, 2017 so this should not affect any currently scheduled meetings. As of that time, Skype for Business will be the replacement conferencing product provided by ITS for both voice and video conferencing from your desktop or mobile device. (This does not affect the video conferencing service provided by Academic Media Services in any way.) If you have not done so, I would really encourage you to become familiar with Skype for Business and start using this conferencing product as soon as possible so there is no interruption in your ability to schedule conferences. HRS also has training courses and videos to help you become familiar with the specifics of using this product. Questions on Skype for Business should be directed to your local IT support or CougTech.

The Center for Reproductive Biology would like to announce the opening of registration for the 2017 microscope maintenance service facilitated by the Center. We have arranged for Christine Glinski, a service technician from Pacific Microsystems, Seattle, to come and service microscopes (maintenance (especially after moving), and cleaning) at WSU and the University of Idaho. Christine will offer the additional service of instruction on how to maintain your microscope, if needed. She will be in Pullman/Moscow Tuesday, April 18 and, dependent on demand, April 19. Prices are listed below (labor is included):
* $135 each for LARGER inverted and compound microscopes
* $110 Inverted or compound microscopes
* $95 for simple compound microscope
* $55 each for stereo microscopes
Travel cost: $95.00 (shared between all users)
If you are interested in this service, please respond to this email with the information requested below. Response deadline is Monday, April 10 @ 5:00pm.

  1. Name of the PI
  2. The type of microscopes (e.g. large inverted, inverted, upright or stereo) and the brand name/model name (e.g. Zeiss Axioplan IE)
  3. How many microscopes
  4. Location of microscopes
  5. Your budget number for billing and the departmental contact for purchasing
  6. Any time constraints (e.g. not Monday afternoon, etc)

If you have questions contact Carolyn Emerson-Farr emersonc@vetmed.wsu.edu or 509-335-2473
From International Programs:  You probably have heard that starting April 3, 2017, USCIS will temporarily suspend premium processing for all H-1B petitions. This suspension may last up to 6 months, and it will apply to all H-1B petitions filed on or after April 3, 2017. It may impact some of your incoming and current H-1B employees. Please feel free to contact us or schedule a phone call to discuss how it would impact your individual H-1B worker(s).  If you have questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. Jan jan.keiser@wsu.edu, Maria maria.cardieri@wsu.edu, Dulce dbeltran@wsu.edu

For Graduate Students

From the Grad School: It’s that time of year again when we make changes to the admission application. That also means you have a chance to add video interviews to your application process. Applicants are shown videos of the questions you want (you record them), and then have two minutes to record a response. They can’t go back and re-do the questions, so you get a candid answer. There are two ways to have the interviews processed. First, you could have all applicants immediately sent a link to the interview form as soon as they submit their online application. This could cause quite a bit of work depending on how many applicants you get. Second, you could send the link only to those applicants you are most interested in getting more information from. That way you only have to process the interviews for a subset of applications. We are only allowed to set this up during our annual change period, so I need to know if you are interested and have all materials (videos of questions, text of questions) by March 26th. That gives me enough time to get everything together for submission to CollegeNET by my deadline. If you would like more information or have questions contact Scott Bean at the Grad School at 509-335-3806 scott.bean@wsu.edu

Poster contest: We have organized a poster design competition open to all WSU students. The purpose of the poster competition is to try to increase diversity in computing by breaking down stereotypes and introducing students to the possibility of taking CptS 111, the UCORE [QUAN] programming course at WSU. There is a $150 Amazon gift card prize for the best poster! The winning poster will be printed and posted around the campus to get more people excited about technology and computing. The deadline for the competition is: 11:59 p.m. PST, Wednesday, March 15, 2017.For more detailed information please visit: http://bpc.eecs.wsu.edu/poster/. For convenience I have attached a pdf of a flyer that can be forwarded to students and advisors. Josh Whiting Ed. M., Director of Undergraduate Advising EECS, joshwhiting@wsu.edu

Employment Opportunities

  1. Endowed Chair in Urban Entomology, UC Riverside, Riverside, CA
  2. Research Associate (Entomology/Insect Ecology), Montana St. Univ., Conrad, MT
  3. Research Asst Professor, Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL
  4. Post Doc Research Assoc. Grassland Ecology, Univ. of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE
  5. Junior Researcher, Coll. of Tropical Agr and Human Resources, Plant & Environmental Protection Sciences, Univ of Hawaii-Manoa – Honolulu, HI
  6. Scientist III-Entomology, General Dynamics Info Tech, Frederick, MD
  7. Asst. Professor, Medical Entomology, Auburn University, Auburn, AL
  8. Vice Pres for Ag Administration & Dean, Ohio St. Univ, Columbus, OH
  9. Research Station Manager, Pacific Ag Research, Salinas, CA

Meetings – Regional, National, International

The Pacific Branch of the Entomological Society of America Annual Meeting this year will take place on April 2-5, 2017 in Portland Oregon at Hilton DoubleTree Hotel. You are encouraged to attend and to spread the word to colleagues and students about this meeting. Registration for the meeting has just opened on line: http://www.entsoc.org/pacific/2017-pacific-branch-annual-meeting. There you will also find information about submitting talks, posters and nominations for awards. Thanks to the work of program chairs Laura Levine and Erik Wenninger, and those who have stepped up to organize symposia, the program is going to be full and exciting. Portland, of course, is a perennial favorite location for PBESA meetings.

Entomological Society of America Annual Meeting will be November 5-8, 2017 in Denver, CO. Program Symposia and Workshop submissions are now open.  http://www.entsoc.org/events/annual-meeting.

Community Events

The public forum on Monday has to do with revising Pullman’s city taxicab ordinance which would allow for shared ride services such as Uber to operate in the community. The forum is on Monday March 13th at 5:30 PM in the Council Chambers at Pullman City Hall.