Grad Student News

Congratulations to five of the Department of Entomology’s grad students that received recognition during the 23^rd annual meeting of the Graduate Student Forum that was held virtually on Tuesday, August 18.

This year’s forum featured 17 students giving presentations on diverse topics. The first place award was given to Morgan Thompson for her presentation titled “Undercover operation: root herbivory modifies aboveground plant-herbivore interactions.”

Jonathan Hernandez received second for his presentation titled “Co-occurrence of kdr mutations V1016I and F1534C in the voltage-gated sodium channel and their impact on the survivorship of Aedes aegypti (L.) (Diptera: Culicidae) from Harris County, Texas, after ULV Permanone ® (permethrin) field-cage test” while Bert Foquet received third for his talk titled “The effect of the neuropeptide [His7]-Corazonin on phase-related characteristics in the Central-American locust Schistocerca piceifrons.”

This year’s forum also included two honorable mentions including Erfan Vafaie and Jordan Ellis. Erfan’s presentation was titled “Robustness of biological control using multiple natural enemies against whitefly influx or delayed natural enemy releases” while Ellis’s presentation was titled “Honey bees (Apis mellifera) experience accelerated age polyethism and premature death due to developmental stressors”

The forum allows current graduate students a chance to present their latest research projects and to practice public speaking skills and to get ready for upcoming 10-minute paper presentation competitions at the upcoming national meeting of the Entomological Society of America that will be held virtually on November 11-25.

To see the list of speakers and their presentation titles, visit https://entomology.tamu.edu/gradstudentforum/2020-forum/

Congratulations to seven of the Department’s Ph.D. students as they received certificates from the Texas A&M Center of Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning this summer.

Jeffrey Yung and Dayvion Adams received CIRTL’s Academy of Future Faculty certificate. Some of the activities they did included engaging in a semester-long learning community either in the fall or spring, participating in weekly professional development workshops about college teaching, observe faculty teaching classes, as well as adding to their teaching portfolios.

Leah Buchman, Zachary Popkin-Hall and Ashley Tessnow were also named Graduate Teaching Consultants. Under supervision of the Center of Teaching Excellence, these students will serve as peer mentors to teaching assistants across campus and are available to conduct classroom observations upon request.

Casey Flint, Zachary Popkin-Hall, and Caixing Xiong received Massive Open Online Course and Local Learning Community certificates. Participants in the learning community learned several key learning principles such as the role of mental models in learning and the importance of feedback and practice, the fundamental course design elements, and teaching strategies for fostering active learning and inclusive classroom environments.

The Department of Entomology at Texas A&M University would like to honor Ph.D. candidate Ashley Tessnow with the 2020 Outstanding Grad Student Award in the Ph.D. category.

Tessnow was honored during the annual Graduate Student Recognition seminar during the annual Ph.D. recruitment week on January 30.

Tessnow first came to the Department as a student participating in the National Science Foundation’s Research Experience in Undergraduate program in 2013. During her time in the program, she worked in Dr. Greg Sword’s lab which resulted in her co-authoring a publication.

Two years later, Tessnow returned to A&M as a Ph.D. student working in Dr. Greg Sword’s lab. She is currently researching the applications of nutritional and molecular ecology to the integrated pest management of the fall armyworm.

Tessnow also has been very active in presenting her research having been invited to present three times at a wide range of scientific conferences. Additionally, she has given 19 oral and four poster presentations at various events. Her most recent talks include presenting her fall armyworm population genomics research at the 2019 Entomological Society meeting in St. Louis, and the 2020 Beltwide Cotton Conference in Austin, TX.

Tessnow has also mentored three different undergraduate researchers and is often sought out for help by other graduate students in the Department and across the university for bioinformatics and computational advice. She has served as a planning committee member for the Ecological Integration Symposium and helped raise more than $20,000 to support the event that had over 400 people in attendance.

Tessnow has been honored recently with the Undergraduate Student Organization’s Outstanding Teaching award and has been invited by the Assistant Department Head of the Academic Programs to serve as a Graduate Teaching Consultant to train other graduate students to become effective educators. As a Graduate Teaching Consultant, she regularly represents the department by teaching seminars across campus and working with international graduate students who hope to become teaching assistants.

“I am very honored to have received this award,” she said. “I’m overwhelmed with gratitude for this department, my advisor, and all the people who have helped me to get to this point.”

The Department also announced the winners of the annual Arthropods Image Salon. This year’s salon had a total of 35 images in four categories, with the best overall winner being awarded to Ph.D. student Mark Olson with his entry named “Sugar Dance.”

The category winners are:

• Artistic: Samuel Zachary Howard – “Love After Life”
• Arthropods in Action: Alex Payne – “Fly me to the moon”
• Computer Aided/Traditional Microscopy: Xiaotian Tang – “The micro-rollercoaster”
• Traditional Close-Up: Mark Olson – “Sugar Dance”

All images can be viewed at https://entomology.tamu.edu/salon