New honors board and bulletin board installed in McCook

Posted on October 31, 2013 by cgeiss

We got the two boards a few weeks ago, but yesterday Christoph finally got around to installing the little brass plaques on our new honors board.
Just in time for homecoming, the board lists all of our presidential fellows (going back to 2003) as well as the recipients of the senior prize and the activism prize. The board has been hand-made for us by the guys at City Bench. Given the size of the board and the tiny brass plaques it will last us probably for the next 50 years. City Bench used reclaimed wood from a silver maple that stood just north of McCook Hall and had to be cut down last year. Wood from the same tree was used in the bench that sits between Jon and Christoph’s offices and the new ENVS bulletin board.
The bulletin board hangs between our two offices, while the honors board is located at the end of the hallway, so nobody can miss it during their visit to the dungeon of McCook.

New ENVS Brochure Proves Beyond a Doubt: Our Students can Walk on Water!

Posted on October 22, 2013 by cgeiss

After serving us well for the past ten years, our ENVS brochure received a major face lift this morning. Just in time for the major’s fair Christoph spent a couple of hours updating major and minor requirements and removing ancient faculty from our list of instructors. Along the way the brochure also got new student images, including the one shown below that proves without a doubt that our students can walk on water:

The major’s fair was a full success: over twenty students came by to ask about the ENVS major and minor. Jon, Cameron and I spent an enjoyable lunch hour in the Washington Room answering questions, promoting the major, and stealing candy from the “formal organizations” table.

Yes, you may have noted that Cameron and Jon do most of the talking. They needed practice – and I didn’t want to embarrass them with my awesome German accent. :-).

Nevertheless: Cameron made out well with his delicious vegetarian sandwich from First and Last – a giant step up from his talk on Friday, where Elizabeth tried to poison him with ham.
Oh, yes, you can check out our new brochure here.

Cameron Douglass Gives Talk About Invasive Species

Posted on October 19, 2013 by cgeiss

In his talk entitled “How the West was won … and then lost to an alien invasion” Cameron Douglass, our Thomas McKenna Meredith ’48 Postdoctoral Fellow in Environmental Science (longest title in the program!) talked about the invasion of riparian habitats by tamarisk, Russian olive and other alien species. His talk focused on the effectiveness of various management approaches to invasive species removal and native habitat restoration.