Recent CALS Spotlights

  • First Lady Visits Tucson, Praises Students for Healthy Initiatives

    First lady Michelle Obama came to Tucson Monday to meet with local students as part of her effort to promote healthy lifestyles.

    Obama spoke with elementary school, middle school and college students who volunteer at Tucson Village Farm [part of the University of Arizona College of Agriculture and Life Sciences' Pima County Extension] as well as some members of 4-H, a youth organization administered by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture. According to the volunteers, she asked what they did on the farm, what vegetables they liked and what they wanted to be when they grew up.

  • Arizona's Greenspace Honored

    The Nebraska-based Arbor Day Foundation has named the University of Arizona a 2011 Tree Campus USA school in honor of the UA's "commitment to effective community forestry management." The UA has garned the award for three straight years.
     
    Tanya Quist, an assistant professor of practice in the School of Plant Sciences and director of the UA Campus Arboretum, will receive the award, which is sponsored by Toyota.
     
    The Arbor Day Foundation said the UA achieved the designation by meeting its five core standards required for sustainable campus forestry: a tree advisory committee, a campus tree-care plan, dedicated annual expenditures for its campus tree program, an Arbor Day observance and the sponsorship of student service-learning projects.

  • Center Awarded for Safer, More Sustainable Pest Management

    For its leadership role in making pest control more ecologically friendly and less dangerous to human health, the Arizona Pest Management Center at the UA College of Agriculture and Life Sciences has been awarded the Gold Tier Shining Star Award by the Environmental Protection Agency.

  • 21st Annual Desert Horticulture Conference on May 18--Register Now

    Registration is now open for the 21st Annual Desert Horticulture Conference, to be held at the Casino del Sol Resort in Tucson on May 18 from 7:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Four concurrent tracks for 2012 include arboriculture, design, maintenance and hands-on workshops—22 sessions in all. 

    Desert Horticulture is the premier annual conference for all members of the southwest green industry: landscape architects, designers, growers, retailers, contractors, maintenance personnel, suppliers and educators. Sponsored by the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, the event offers timely and research-based information relevant for designing, building, maintaining, and producing plants for urban landscapes in the arid Southwest. Registration is open this year to students at a reduced price until April 30. 

  • Select Faculty Honored as Outstanding Teachers

    The University of Arizona Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost and the UA Foundation are honoring associate professor Laura Gutiérrez, senior lecturer Lester I. McCann, associate professor Vicente Talanquer and lecturer Thomas Wilson for their outstanding achievements in teaching.
     
    These honors include the Henry and Phyllis Koffler Prize awarded to Talanquer for his contributions to the department of chemistry and biochemistry; the UA Foundation Leicester and Kathryn Sherrill Creative Teaching Award honoring McCann in the department of computer science; and the Provost's General Education Teaching Award honoring Wilson in the department of soil, water and environmental science and Gutiérrez for her work in the department of Spanish and Portuguese.

  • 'Compost Cats' Sees Progress

    After initiating a composting campaign on and off the University of Arizona campus, a student-run group has plans for additional expansions of the program.
     
    In line with the UA's promotion of sustainability efforts, the student-run Compost Cats established a composting bin system at three restaurants located inside of the UA Student Union Memorial Center.

  • UA Innovation Day Honors Three in CALS

    On Tuesday, March 6, the University of Arizona (UA) hosted its ninth annual Innovation Day at the UA. The event, attended by over 300 people, celebrated the UA’s success in technology development and innovation by highlighting the research achievements of students, staff, and faculty. 


    Three of the honorees were from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences: Dr. Leslie Gunatilaka, director of the Natural Products Center and professor, School of Natural Resources and the Environment; Dr. Sharon Megdal, director, Water Resources Research Center and Modene Neely Endowed Professor, Distinguished Outreach Professor; and Alexandra Armstrong, final year Ph.D. candidate, Department of Veterinary Science and Microbiology.

  • Russian Dolls of the Bug World

    A research team including Martha (Molly) Hunter from the department of entomology in the University of Arizona's College of Agriculture of Life Sciences has disentangled relationships in an assembly of players that resemble Russian dolls: a bacterium that lives inside a tiny insect, a virus that infects those bacteria, and a parasitic wasp that lays its eggs in the insect.


    In a war between parasite and host, the parasitic wasp, Aphidius ervi, and the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum, are locked in a battle for survival.

  • CALS Appoints Four New Associate Deans

    Four new associate deans have been appointed in the University of Arizona College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Dean Shane Burgess announced the team on February 13 after a five-month search.

  • College of Agriculture and Life Sciences: A History from 1980 to 2010

    The attention currently focused on Arizona's Centennial in 2012 is a reminder that the University of Arizona celebrated its centennial in 1985.  Also that year, the College of Agriculture commemorated its own 100-year milestone by publishing a book entitled "The University of Arizona College of Agriculture: A Century of Discovery."