Way to go!

Andrea Guggenbickler, staff academic advisor for the Global Disease Biology (GBD) major, part of the UC Davis Department of Plant Pathology, has received a prestigious award for her outstanding advising.

The 2020 Eleanor and Harry Walker Academic Advising Awards program, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CA&ES), selected her for the staff academic advisor award.

Guggenbickler coordinates a 400-student program that includes course scheduling, faculty and instructional reports, statistical analysis of the major, and individual advising sessions.

“Andrea has made such a positive impact on student success in the GDB major,” said Susan Ebeler, CA&ES associate dean for undergraduate academic programs. "She has created innovative materials for incoming GDB students to support their remote advising experience and she is dedicated to student welfare and ensuring that the basic needs of every student are met.”

Nominator David Rizzo, professor and chair of the Department of Plant Pathology, described Andrea “as a huge part of the development of the relatively new Global Disease Biology major at UC Davis. Since becoming a GDB major, she has played many different roles in the major.”

And “all with her trademark enthusiasm,” he added.

The story behind the story....as a student majoring in GDB from 2014 to 2018  at UC Davis, Andrea appreciated the “incredible support” she received from then staff academic advisor Brandy Fleming. Now, in a scenario turned full circle, Andea is drawing appreciation from students and faculty for her own “incredible support.” 

“Although she has been a staff advisor for a only a short period of time (since June 2019), Andrea has had a tremendous impact on the major,” wrote Rizzo in his nomination letter. Praising her leadership, dedication, communication skills and problem-solving expertise, he characterized her as a “truly a caring advisor” and someone with “an excellent sense of the needs of our students in order for them to be successful in the major.”  

The Walker Academic Advising Awards recognize faculty, staff, and peer advisors who have demonstrated excellence and innovation in academic advising for CA&ES academic programs. The 2020 recipients also include Jim Fadel, faculty master advisor, Department of Animal Science and Management; and Kiara Cuevas, peer advisor for Agricultural and Environmental Education, Animal Science, and Animal Science and Management. 

"It's so nice to see our hardworking advisors being recognized college-wide,” said Nora Orozco, chief administrative officer serving both departments. Last year Elvira Galvan Hack, staff advisor for animal biology (ABI), received the Walker staff award and forensic entomologist Robert Kimsey received the faculty master advisor award. They went on to win regional and international advising awards from NACADA, the global community for academic advising. 

Andrea formerly served as an academic advising assistant to the animal biology and entomology majors, both housed in the Department of Entomology and Nematology.

“I've always believed in the power of advising,” said Guggenbickler, who received her bachelor's degree from UC Davis in 2018. “When I first met with the GDB advisor, Brandy Fleming (now an undergraduate academic advisor supporting majors in economics, history, and East Asian studies), she helped support me and my education in incredible ways. Since then, I've wanted to do the same thing for others. As a (student) peer advisor, I was able to connect with students based on shared experiences, which has been extremely valuable in my current position as well. Now, as a staff advisor I've tried to use my position to be a constant advocate for the students. I do my best to always put their needs first, and to do whatever I can to help students in difficult situations.”

“One of the main ways I've tried to make a difference in our advising center is to create our student pantry,” Andrea said. “We provide healthy, easily accessible, snacks and on-the-go food and drinks for students. Food insecurity can be a huge issue for students, and we have done our best to mitigate that barrier for them. The pantry is open to everyone, and we have gotten some really great feedback from students who have said that it has really helped them. Getting that feedback and tangibly making a difference has been by far one of the most rewarding parts of my job.”

Her favorite part of being an advisor? “Watching students succeed. I've been with the program in some capacity since 2017, so I've seen a lot of students come through the office. I make an effort to meet with every student at least once per year, and it is amazing seeing them grow, conquer obstacles, excel in coursework, graduate, and move on to their next adventure.”

“Advisors have a really unique opportunity to touch a lot of lives in a meaningful way,” Andrea said. “I can only hope that in my time as an advisor at UC Davis that I've been able to create a positive change in the lives of others the same way that my students have made a positive change in my life.  As I move on to my next adventure as a master of public health student I will take with me the lessons my students have taught me: the importance of equity, advocacy, belief in oneself, and perseverance. I am thankful to the advising community in the College of Ag for creating a space in which advisors are able to make a difference for students while also growing themselves.”

Andrea grew up in Ferndale, Humboldt County, and now lives in Woodland with her fiancé, Tyler Baum, an associate veterinarian at Broadway Veterinary Hospital, Sacramento. Baum, a “double” UC Davis alumnus, holds a bachelor's degree in animal science and a DVM from the School of Veterinary Medicine. They share their home with three UC Davis-connected cats: “Butters,” “Toast” and “Dr. Professor Stripey Pants.”

"We got Butters and Stripey (they are brothers) from the Orphan Kitten Project run through the Vet School," she said, "and we got Toast from a shelter when Tyler did a shelter medicine rotation--and he fell in love with her and brought her home."

The couple purposely selected "breakfast names" for Butters, a light orange tabby and Toast, a black and white feline, but they couldn't bear to change the name of Dr. Professor Stripey Pants, a gray tabby ("it was too perfect"). 

Her career plans? “My career plans are to complete my master's degree in public health, and hopefully pursue my Ph.D in public health. After that I would love to dive into public health research and advocacy for women and minority health. Ideally, in the future, I would like to do some teaching at the collegiate level.”

Rizzo says that GDB is now the fifth largest major in the CA&ES, but it still maintains the “small-college” feel.  Among Andrea's many accomplishments: modifying and expanding the department's professional development modules. “Over the holiday break, she developed a series of orientation modules (seven in total) within Canvas,” he wrote. “All in all, the whole project is amazing. And it was done without dropping the ball with any of her traditional advising.”

As a facilitator with First-Year Aggie Connections, Guggenbickler mentors students as they navigate their first-year experience. She created a 10-week course on professional development that encompasses such topics as “how to read a scientific paper” and “how to create a resume.”

In a group letter, GDB students Austin Dalmasso, Bianca Arao and Brandon Nguyen, all who worked as either peer mentors or peer advisors, praised her dedication and accomplishments.

“As the academic advisor, she communicates efficiently with students when they need to speak to her regarding urgent or sensitive circumstances, and when she is with students, she is attentive and sensible to any situations that may need care beyond her scope,” they wrote. “Andrea cares about her students and wants to equip them for success in their future endeavors.”

“Throughout all of the responsibilities that govern an academic advisor's role, Andrea is always looking for novel ways to improve student advising,” they wrote. “As students, we look back on our own informative orientations, and praise Andrea for making this year's orientation user-friendly.”

“From the countless interactions we have shared with Andrea, we are grateful that she always puts it upon herself to be an open crisis line. Andrea is genuinely supportive of our successes as students, and continues to be a comforting figure we greatly appreciate. It is Andrea's nurturing character that we want to honor and showcase to the UC Davis community.” 

The posters displayed at the Bruce Hammock Alumni Lab Reunion last August in the UC Davis Conference Center epitomized state-of-the-art scientific research.   Typical of the posters, all by Hammock lab affiliates:

• "Insect Gut--Pathogen Molecular Interactions" by Bryony C. Bonning, University of Florida
• "A New Assay to Screen for the Inhibitory Capacity of Air Pollutant Components on Antioxidant Enzyme Activities" by Norbert Stainer, Arthur Cho and Ralph Delfino, UC Irvine and UCLA
• "From Steriod to Non-Steroid: Discovery of Nonsteroidal Brassinolide-Like Compound" by Yoshiaki Nakagawa, Kyoto University, Japan

And then there was this poster: "Health Benefits of Water Balloon Fights."

Yes, you read that right: "Health Benefits of Water Balloon Battles." It was the brainchild of researcher Christophe Morisseau of the Hammock lab, who added humor to the weekend-long reunion that drew 100 laboratory alumni from 10 countries: former graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, collaborators, colleagues and other researchers. They gathered to honor their mentor and reminiscence.  They know Bruce Hammock as a UC Davis distinguished professor who holds a joint appointment with the Department of Entomology and Nematology and the Comprehensive Cancer Center, and who directs the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)-UC Davis Superfund Research Program. They know him as "a genius" with 50-year expertise in chemistry, toxicology, biochemistry and entomology who seeks to alleviate pain in human and companion animals. (See news story). They also know him as a fellow who likes to have fun.

Fun? Hammock and Morisseau, aka "The Splash Brothers," launched the annual Bruce Hammock Water Balloon Battle, aka "Bruce's Big Balloon Battle at Briggs" and "Fifteen Minutes of Aim," 16 years ago. This year's event takes place at 3 p.m., Friday, July 12 on the northwest lawn of Briggs Hall on Kleiber Hall Drive.  First (starting at 1 p.m.), the water warriors fill 2000 balloons. Then, at Morisseau's signal, the "15 Minutes of Aim" begins. When they diminish and deplete the water balloon supply, they empty tubs of water on unsuspecting lab mates.  Other labs join in the fun, as do bystanders.

But back to the creative water balloon poster.

Morisseau, tongue in cheek (and probably balloon in hand and prospective target in eyesight), extolled the virtues of Water Balloon Fights, aka WBF, on his poster:

Hypothesis: Work is very stressful, and stress is known to affect health and happiness, thus leading to a short and sad life. We hypothesize that a little fun at work can bring a lot of goodness to the lab microcosm.

Methods: Get some people, as shown on the made-up graph at right: more people more fun, but optimal in the 30-50 ranges.

Fill the balloons. This is a group activity for team-building purpose.

Divide the people into fair and equal groups: the bosses against the rest of the crew.

Devise advance tactical and strategical battle plan: Let's get everybody wet.

Results: A lab without WBF yields infightings and conflicts, as well as sick-looking dudes. A lab with WBF yields to harmony at the workplace with healthy food practices and buffed guys.

Conclusions: Water balloon fights provide team building efforts, stress relief and healthy exercise. We recommend that any workplace establish water balloon fights on a yearly or twice yearly basis.

Morisseau illustrated his poster with contrived before-and-after photos of Hammock: before: a scrawny scientist and after, a buffed-up athlete. The poster now hangs outside their offices in Briggs Hall.

Disclaimer: Professor Hammock is known for his athleticism--from hiking mountains to kayaking. And the Hammock lab is known for its strong camaraderie. Indeed, not many scientists can draw 100 of their lab alumni from all over the world to a reunion!

Do you know where your praying mantids are?

Water a bush or a plant frequently visited by bees and other pollinators, and if they're in there, they're likely to emerge.

Such was the case when a male praying mantis, Mantis religiosa, emerged from our pomegranate bush. No spray zone, please.

Frankly, he looked a bit irritated.

The next week a female M. religiosa emerged from a plant in our neighbor's yard.  She, too, looked a bit irritated.

Praying mantis expert, Lohit Garikpati, a UC Davis entomology student who rears mantids and volunteers at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, confirmed their identities and gender.

The European mantis, or Mantis religiosa, belongs to the family Mantidae ("mantids"), the largest family in the order Mantodea. As all insect enthusiasts know, they derive their common name by their distinctive posture of "praying." (Some entomologists like to think of them as "preying" mantids.)

The females are usually larger and heavier but the antennae and eyes of the males outsize the females.

"Along with the forward directed compound eyes there are also simple eyes to be found on the head," Wikipedia tells us. "These three dorsal ocelli are also more pronounced in males than in females.Male individuals are often found to be more active and agile whereas females are physically more powerful. One of the outcomes of these morphological variations is that only males and very young females are able to fly. Adult females are generally too large and heavy for their wings to enable a take-off."

In Germany, M. religiosa is listed as ‘threatened' on the German Red List. That means finders aren't supposed to be keepers: don't catch it or keep it as a pet.

The status of the male and female mantids in our neighborhood? They're still there in their respective yards. If they meet, however, the male may lose his head in the well documented phenonomen of sexual cannibalism...nature's way of better survivability--not for the male but for his offspring!

"Eating her mate provides the female with a lot of nutrients she doesn't have to hunt for," according to Wikipedia. "She has a prey item available that is bigger than the prey she would be able to catch in the manner she usually hunts. The meal also takes place during or shortly after she was fertilized giving her more resources for the faster production of a large ootheca with large eggs, increasing the chance of her offspring to survive. Males have also been known to be more attracted to heavier, well-nourished females for this reason."

There's a lesson in there somewhere!

“Go as far as you can [young scientists]. The world needs you badly.”—E.O Wilson.

That sign greets visitors to the Bohart Museum of Entomology, University of California, Davis, and that's exactly what Noah Crockette, 18, an intern there since age 11 and the winner of an international beetle research award as a teenager, plans to do.

This week he's already gone far--a distance of more than 2700 miles--from Davis to Ithaca, N.Y., where he is majoring in entomology at Cornell University.

Fondly known as “The Beetle Boy,” Noah won the 2015 Coleopterists' Society Award (senior division) for his project, “Survey of the Dung Beetles of Stann Creek, Belize.”

He volunteers at the Bohart Museum, home of nearly eight million insect specimens, and a live petting zoo of Madagascar hissing cockroaches, walking sticks and tarantulas. He has helped out with open houses, outreach programs and collecting trips.

“Yes, Noah has been volunteering here for quite a few years,” said Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at UC Davis. “We've seen him go from a middle school kid to a very mature 18-year-old. He's a great kid, always ready with a big smile, great attitude and really hard working. Smart, too. He should do very well at Cornell. We already miss him.”

Last Friday Bohart Museum officials, museum associates and volunteers turned out in force to honor "the great kid," with a going-away party.

Two Cornell University alumni--Tabatha Yang, the Bohart Museum's education and outreach coordinator,  and UC Davis doctoral candidate student Emily Bick of the Christian Nansen lab, serenaded him with the Cornell fight song. Yang's degree is in general biology, and Bick's degree in entomology. After they sang the fight song, they told him how cold the winters are!

Noah arrived on the Cornell campus on Wednesday, Aug. 15. “The first thing I did when I got here was grab coffee from Ithaca Coffee Company and drive around campus," he related. "I also got to watch some of the birds and insects flying around which was cool because many of them are so different from what I'm used to in California. I'll have to work on learning all the life around here now! I saw some eastern tiger swallowtails around and a few cool blow flies.”

His major advisor is drosophila (fruit flies) expert Patrick O'Grady, who taught at UC Berkeley for 12 years before joining the Cornell faculty last year. His ecology professor is UC Davis alumnus Anurag Agrawal, an ecologist who received his doctorate in 1999, studying with Richard Karban.

His acceptance into Cornell, one of the top-ranked entomology programs in the country, came in 2017. Noah graduated in 2017 from The Met Sacramento High School, and Cornell offered him a one-year student transfer contract for the fall of 2018.

“I have always been interested in bugs but my interest in entomology started in sixth grade,” Noah said. “I mostly became interested in insects through my internship at the Bohart and participating in the undergraduate UC Davis Entomology Club (open to all interested persons). Before then I had only known that I was interested in zoology and started going to the Ent Club after learning about it from talking to (UC Davis forensic entomologist and club advisor) Robert “Bob” Kimsey at UC Davis Picnic Day. After attending the club for awhile, Danielle Wishon (club president and entomology major) and Bob got me connected with the Bohart to start the internship from which my interest grew.”

Career plans? Noah is keeping his options open as to specialty, but he wants to work in research. Beetles fascinate him, especially scarab beetles. “I have a tendency towards scarab beetles,” he said. “I particularly like the tribe Cyclocephalini, the masked chafer beetles. I really like that they are a Dynastines like the Hercules beetles but lack any sort of horns or other glitzy features. Even though they are small and brown, I love the subtle beauty of the markings which remind me of the Rorschach ink tests.

”I also really love venom so I have also thought about going into venom research but would like to grow more familiar with it before considering it more.”

As a Bohart Museum intern and associate, Noah collected insects twice in Belize on Bohart-affiliated collecting trips “where I was able to get field work experience in entomology as well as herpetology and ornithology.”  Fran Keller, assistant professor, Folsom Lake College, and David Wyatt, an entomology professor at Sacramento City College, led the collecting trips. Keller, who served as his mentor, received her doctorate in entomology from UC Davis, studying with Lynn Kimsey.

“My last trip to Belize," Noah said, "was when I completed my Coleopterists' Society project in which I designed and constructed 12 baited pitfall traps which I used to survey the dung beetle species on the property as well as determine their preferred bait, between human feces, pig feces, chicken manure, rotten chicken, and rotten fruit."

In his freshman year, Noah taught an entomology class to elementary students, and as a senior project, organized a museum day at Shriners Hospital for Children.

Outside of entomological pursuits, he enjoys hiking, kayaking and birdwatching. “I really love the outdoors,” he said. “Last year after my trip to Belize I was also given the opportunity through my school to go on a month-long backpacking and kayaking trip through the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) in Alaska. I also played rugby for C.K. McClatchy High School during my senior year which was a fun experience and I now plan on continuing with the sport. At home I like to keep reptiles and invertebrates--mostly tarantulas--as pets and enjoy collecting zoology related books and objects.”

During the going-away party, a photo of Noah Crockette flashed on the wall-mounted computer screen. It pictured him at about age 14, enthusiastically working with insects.

Doing what he loves.

Not overlooked was the quote from noted scientist E. O. Wilson “Go as far as you can [young scientists]. The world needs you badly."