- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Kimsey will be honored at the UC Davis Fall Welcome, set for 9:30 to 11 a.m., Thursday, Oct. 17 in the Student Community Center multipurpose room. The annual campuswide awards program, launched in 2015, honors the outstanding faculty advisor, staff advisor, advising administrator, new advisor, peer advisor, campus collaborator and the advising equity champion.
Kimsey, known as "Dr. Bob," earlier received the 2019 Eleanor and Harry Walker Faculty Advising Award from the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CA&ES).
Kimsey, master advisor for the animal biology (ABI) major since 2010 and an ABI lecturer since 2001, “excels at teaching, advising and mentoring,” wrote nominator Steve Nadler, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. “He sincerely cares about each student, and incredibly, remembers their conversations and their interests.”
Kimsey is known for expertly guiding students toward career paths, helping them meet challenges and overcome obstacles.
Advising is “about being a good listener, being a source of diverse perspectives to tackle potential problems, being able to put oneself in the other person's place, being broadly experienced and caring about and enjoying other people,” said Kimsey, who also advises the UC Davis Entomology Club.
Kimsey holds two entomology degrees from UC Davis: a bachelor of science degree (1977) and a doctorate (1984). He has served in his current position as an associate adjunct professor and lecturer since 1990.
“I view Dr. Kimsey as the epitome of what a university professor and student advisor should be,” wrote doctoral student Alex Dedmon, who has worked with him for 10 years, first as an undergraduate student in 2009 and now as a doctoral candidate. “Over that time, he has filled many roles in my life and career--a mentor, teacher, advisor, major professor, and friend.”
UC Davis biology lab manager Ivana Li, who holds a bachelor's degree in entomology from UC Davis (2012), wrote: “For myself, and likely for others, Bob has served as a wonderful mentor. He saw things in me that I didn't see in myself. He gave me the confidence to be a leader and I still carry those lessons with me as a lab manager.”
Kimsey continues to draw “best of the best” accolades from students on the Rate My Professors website:
- “Dr. Kimsey is by far one of the best professors at UC Davis. His class never fails to entertain! You do need to put in the work to do well but it is very worth it! Dr. Kimsey truly cares about his students and wants to see them succeed and find a path that best suits them. Strongly recommend!”
- "This was the best class I've taken at UC Davis. You can tell that Dr. Kimsey really cares, and puts a lot of effort into his class.”
Dedmon recalled that in his third year, he enrolled in Kimsey's forensic entomology course. “This turned out to be arguably the most pivotal point in my academic career. Dr. Kimsey is an excellent teacher, and aside from being thoroughly enjoyable, the content of the course itself was comprehensive and enlightening. Dr. Kimsey's instruction was unparalleled, both in the classroom as well as the field part of the course. In the end, I was so enamored with forensic entomology and its presentation, that I decided to make it the focus of my degree.”
“Over this time, I have seen countless undergraduates from his courses come to him for advice, help, or even just someone to talk to. While it is common for advisors to have to listen to the woes of students, it is much rarer to find ones that genuinely care. The proof of his character is in their success – I know many of his former students who have gone on to graduate, veterinary, or medical school. I still find it amazing how these young men and women have gone from scared, tearful students in office hours to successful vets and doctors. After being his student for so long, though, I can easily see why.”
Dedmon praised Kimsey not only his major professor, but as a friend. “When I was diagnosed with cancer, there were countless times he called or visited me at the hospital – this was not just to touch bases about academics, but because he genuinely cared and wanted to help as much as he could. In my most trying times, gestures such as these were absolutely invaluable to me. Even in good times, he is someone I know I can always turn to for advice, a straight answer, or just a good laugh.”
Li wrote that “his dedication to inspiring students for careers in the science, far surpasses the scope of his obligations as an advisor to the Entomology Club or as a faculty member of the department.”
She first met him as an undergraduate student in 2009. “It became apparent that he truly possessed a deep caring for each student that he met. Everyone who knows him affectionately calls him Bob, and I think it is a testament to his determination to tear down the alienating hierarchy of academia and fully integrate students into the UC Davis community.”
“Over the years, I worked with Bob as a member of the Entomology Club,” Li related. “When I became president of the club, I planned many of the club activities with him. He connected us with the National Park Service which helped the club take some truly unique trips. Of these, the one that stands out to me was when we took an overnight trip to Alcatraz. While surveying for rats, we found evidence of beetle damage to the buildings. This led to subsequent trips that involved documenting the full scale of the damage done by beetles, including in many areas normally off-limits to tourists.”
“The hard work he puts into making events happen is infectious,” Li said. “Bob is really the hidden hero of Picnic Day for the Entomology Department. Year after year, he never fails to lug several truckloads of equipment and décor out of storage. Without him, the entomology exhibits at Picnic Day wouldn't be possible. He truly loves educating the public and having students teach people what they have learned. It's a very direct feedback experience that helps students gain confidence that they understand the organisms and scientific processes that they have been learning.”
“In addition to promoting on campus networking, Bob connects students with his many contacts in forensics labs, the National Park Service, the California Department of Food and Agriculture, and other organizations,” Li pointed out. “This has led to internships and even full-time employment for some many students over the years.”
UC Davis alumnus Danielle Wishon, who holds a bachelor's degree in entomology (2013), said that Kimsey “continues to be one of my most valuable connections from my time there. I am proud that, even years after my graduation, I can call him a friend.”
Kimsey “introduced us to as many personal and professional contacts as possible,” Wishon said. “This networking has proven invaluable to my and others post-graduate success. I participated in a number of skill-based volunteer work that contributed to my CV and qualified me for a number of job opportunities that I would have otherwise been unqualified for. Working on Alcatraz Island was one of those opportunities."
Wishon recalled “conducting official pest surveys of a number of rodent and arthropod pests, as well as evaluating and documenting pest-related structural damage. We were able to work alongside and learn from a National Park Service professional in charge of the Island. Dr. Kimsey understands the value in developing the practical side of student education and works tirelessly to help us develop that skill set.”
“Another invaluable opportunity for me was interning in his laboratory," Wishon added. "After showing a particular interest in Forensic Entomology, he welcomed me into his lab as a student intern. In this position, I learned colony development and various laboratory skills; I assisted and observed curriculum design and student teaching; and I assisted him in the field on casework. I was able to network with many professionals in my field of interest and was able to get a job soon out of college directly based on the experience I obtained through this internship.”
“Dr. Kimsey has always had an open-door policy with his students,” Wishon said. “Students come to UC Davis from all over the world, with all different backgrounds and upbringings, and come together in a setting that is often stressful and vulnerable. He helps us personally when he can, and knows when and how to get other forms of help to students when needed. In addition to my own experiences seeking his counsel and help through difficult times in my life, both personal and with learning disability struggles, I have personally witnessed Dr. Kimsey aide a number of other students through turbulent times in their lives. academic stress to more serious.”
Graduate student Mark James McLellan of the UC Davis Forensic Science Masters' Program lauded Kimsey for offering him first-hand experience in forensic science. “In addition, he has been instrumental in my research, I had little experience and he has pushed me towards developing a thesis for the program. I am not the only one, there are boatloads of students he has helped and continues to do so! He is a guide and mentor, not only academically but professionally.”
April 26, 2011 See more photos
He's not there to tour the “The Rock” or contemplate the lives of the notorious criminals once housed in the former federal penitentiary--inmates like Al “Scarface” Capone, George “Machine Gun” Kelly, Robert “The Birdman of Alcatraz” Stroud or Arthur “Doc” Barker.
He's there to do research on the nuisance flies that plaque staff and tourists.
Meet Robert Kimsey, “The Fly Man of Alcatraz,” a name given him by a former guard at the penitentiary during the 2007 Alcatraz Reunion..
The professor-researcher has traveled to the island about 50 times since July 2007. When he stays overnight, he sleeps in the same cell once occupied by “The Birdman of Alcatraz”-- Cell 42 in D block.
Cell 42, basically an all-steel box with steel bars on the windows, offers a dazzling view of San Francisco.
“One day when I was working on research until 4:30 a.m., I laid down in the cell, extremely tired,” Kimsey said. “I looked through the steel bars and saw the lights of San Francisco. I thought about how I'd feel if I had to spend a large chunk of my life in this cell. I'd certainly be very angry with myself.”
Kimsey became involved in the fly project in July 2007 when he received a call about the annoying flies from entomologist Bruce Badzik, integrated pest management coordinator with the National Park Service, Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
Complaints rose to a feverish pitch in late August, September and October. The flies seemed to land on people as if they were rotten meat. Kimsey witnessed the incessant “shoo-fly” behavior on the docks and encountered it on a personal basis.
Kimsey identified the troubling fly as a “kelp fly” (Fucillia thinobia) or “cormorant fly” in the family Anthomyiidae. “But it's not a kelp fly as such,” said Kimsey, who plans to publish his research in an entomological journal. “It has nothing to do with kelp. It lives in purge-soaked soil under dead cormorants found in rookeries all around the island. It does not exist in any other place.”
Since federal law prohibits people from entering the rookeries--inhabited by cormorants, gulls, night herons, egrets and pigeon guillemots--Kimsey could not examine the rookeries until the nesting birds vacated the area.
Fucillia thinobia creates problems for four to six weeks as the cormorants start to leave the island, the entomologists said. In the late summer or early fall, usually in September and October, the flies vacate the rookeries on the west side of the island, and move to various parts, including the dock on the east side.
“With Bob's dedication and professionalism, he has been able to create this enthusiastic desire by island staff to know more about the biology of this fly,” Badzik said. “This is an impressive thing to do on an island with a rich cultural history.”
“This fly has no public health significance,” Kimsey said. “They rest on human beings as they rest on any other surface—on the ground, buildings and on humans. Like flying insects found on islands, they remain near the ground and tend to flit from place to place rather than fly high in an air column.
His research involved quizzing park rangers, former prisoners and guards at the 2007 Alcatraz Reunion, held Aug. 12. “Do you recall flies ever being a problem on Alcatraz during your association with the island?” he asked.
“Of 15 persons interviewed, all but one stated that they had no recollection of flies ever having been a problem anywhere on the island in the period prior to 1963,” he said. (The island was a federal penitentiary from 1934 to 1963). The sole person describing any kind of a fly as a problem recalled small non-metallic, gray-colored flies in the kitchen.
Back then the island had no extensive rookeries as it has today, Kimsey said.
Kimsey and Badzik, partners in the fly problem, know The Rock well. They have scrutinized every building, the entire shoreline, the cliffs and tunnels, the rookeries, trash cans, public restrooms, sewage facilities and “certainly every potential source of flies commonly associated with humans.”
The entomologists survey places off limits to the public, such as the Citadel, “part of the old Civil War fort beneath the main cell block where they used to put prisoners.”
The result: none of the sites contributes to the production of flies except the rookeries.
“We discovered that the shoreline of Alcatraz offers no habitat for the genus Fucillia,” Kimsey said. “F. thinobia does not breed in the piles of decomposing kelp and other flotsam, commonly known as beach wrack.”
So far, Kimsey and Badzik have identified 17 species of flies on the island. Before their research, no one knew how many or what species of flies existed on Alcatraz. However, only one—the cormorant fly—bothers staff and visitors.
Kimsey continues to place baited fly traps on the island and checks them repeatedly. He reared a colony of kelp flies in his UC Davis lab until a fungus killed them.
The UC Davis students also receive lessons on the history of the island from Bruce Badzik. For example, Alcatraz was the site of the first lighthouse and first U.S. built fort on the West Coast before it became a federal prison. Today the National Park Service offers year-around tours, except on major holidays.
“Alcatraz is truly a wonderful place to go,” Kimsey said. “It combines history with living history. The 1920s, 30s and 40s--and the criminals and gangsters of that era—those were interesting times in American history. There was this idea in the criminal justice system that one can correct criminal behavior by isolating them from other people--forcing them to be introspective by sitting in their cell and thinking about the wrongs they committed. The name, penitentiary, has its origins with Puritans or Quakers. They felt that when you commit a wrong and do penance, you can be reformed.”
Kimsey, who has attended several Alcatraz Reunions, reuniting former inmates, guards and others who lived on the island when it was a federal penitentiary, is now friends with many of them. Of the former inmates he's met: “To a person, each one had no desire to be involved in recidivism after staying on the island.”
For some, it involved a revelation. “They ‘saw the light' as they sat on the island contemplating the errors of their ways,” Kimsey said. “They fell back into the religion that they had embraced as a child. For others, it was an epiphany—a sudden realization--of why they should be good and the consequences of being bad. They didn't want to be bad any more.”
Meanwhile, the flies aren't the problem they were in 2007, 2008 and 2009 (the year Kimsey was awarded a National Park Service grant).
“In 2010, the cormorants didn't come back and neither did the flies,” Kimsey said. “Gulls came back but not flies. It doesn't appear they will be a major problem in 2011.”
It could be because of the reduced food supply for the cormorants, the forensic entomologist said. “The sardines and herring off shore may have diminished, perhaps because of a shift in currents.”
<“This has been one of the most interesting entomological projects that I have worked on in my career,” Badzik said. “Through our research, we are discovering an enormous amount of information on this fly and how it is influenced by the cormorants on the island. None of the other dozen or more species of birds on the island have any relationship—at least as we know right now—to this fly.”
(Editor's Note: Forensic entomologist Robert Kimsey will speak on “The Flies of Alcatraz” at a meeting of the Northern California Entomology Society on Thursday, May 5 in the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, UC Davis. His talk begins at 1: 15 p.m.)
Links:
Reservations to tour the island
About Alcatraz, part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area
The Penitentiary
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
April 19, 2011 See news story on Robert Kimsey
UC Davis forensic entomologist Robert Kimsey, known as "The Fly Man of Alcatraz" for his work researching flies on the San Francisco Bay island that once housed some of the nation's most notorious criminals, will discuss his current research at the next meeting of the Northern California Entomology Society.
The meeting takes place from 9:15 a.m. to 3 p.m., Thursday, May 5 in the conference room of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility on Bee Biology Road, University of California, Davis.
Registration for club members and guests begins at 9:15 a.m. Membership is open to all interested persons.
Kimsey, an adjunct professor of entomology at UC Davis, works with the National Parks Service on research projects. He will speak on "The Flies of Alcatraz."
He is one of five speakers who will address the group from 9:45 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The agenda:
9:15 a.m.: Registration and coffee for club members and guests
9:45 a.m.: “Non-target Effects of Mosquito Control,” aquatic entomologist-community ecologist Sharon Lawler, professor UC Davis Department of Entomology
10:30 a.m. “Trichogramma (Stingless Wasps) for Control of the Light Brown Apple Moth,” entomologist William Roltsch, senior environmental research scientist, Biocontrol Program, California Department of Food and Agriculture, Sacramento
11:15 a.m.: “Pakistani Asian Citrus Psyllid Parasitoids,” entomologist Mark Hoddle, Extension specialist in biological control, and director for the Center for Invasive Species Research, UC Riverside Department of Entomology
Noon: (Lunch menu below)
1:15 p.m.: “Flies of Alcatraz,” forensic entomologist Robert Kimsey, adjunct professor, UC Davis Department of entomology
2 p.m.:“Ecosystems of Hedgerows: Pollination and Pest Control, UC Farm Advisor Rachael Long, pest management specialist, Yolo and Solano counties.
The Northern California Entomology Society is comprised of university faculty, researchers, pest abatement professionals, students and other interested persons. Newly elected president of the society is Leann Horning, an ag technician with the CDFA Biocontrol Program since 1990.
The society meets three times a year: the first Thursday in February, usually in Sacramento; the first Thursday in May, at UC Davis; and the first Thursday in November in the Contra Costa Mosquito and Vector Control District conference room, Concord. Membership dues are $10 year.
Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen of the UC Davis Department of Entomology faculty serves as the secretary-treasurer.
For further information, contact Mussen at ecmussen@ucdavis.edu or call (530) 752-0472
Directions to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility:
From the east: Take Interstate 80 to Highway 113 north, the Woodland exit. Go over the freeway overpass and then take the immediate next exit, Hutchison, on your right. On Hutchison, turn left (or west, toward the airport) and continue for about 1.3 miles. Turn left onto Hopkins Road and then take an immediate left onto Bee Biology Road. The first building on the right is Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility. Parking is free in front of the building or between the olive trees on both sides of the road.
From the west: Take I-80 through Dixon to Pedrick Road. Exit onto Pedrick and turn left at the stop sign, and proceed over the I-80 overpass. Proceed north on Pedrick a few miles. Turn right on Hutchinson and then right on Hopkins Road and left on Bee Biology Road. The first building on the right is Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility. Parking is free in front of the building or between the olive trees on both sides of the road.
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Lunch menu Eric Mussen, secretary-treasurer of the Northern California Entomology Society, is taking lunch choice reservations. You may order a sandwich below ($15) by May 1 or bring your own. Contact him at ecmussen@ucdavis.edu; phone (530) 752-0472; or fax, (530) 752-1537. He will place the orders, which will be payable to him at the meeting. Safeway Select Favorite Sandwiches Great Western – Smoked turkey, pepper jack and chipotle dressing on artisan split crust bread. California Dreamin' – Pan-roasted turkey breast, avocado, ranch spread, bacon, green leaf lettuce and tomato on rustic Italian bread. Smoke Stack – Smoked turkey breast, black forest ham, smoked fontina, tomato, green leaf lettuce and spicy mustard on artisan split crust bread. Primo Italiano – Black forest ham, Genoa salami, provolone, pepperoncini, mayonnaise, lettuce and tomato on artisan split crust bread. Chicago South Sider – Roast beef, horseradish cheddar cheese, horseradish sauce, lettuce and tomato on rustic Italian bread. Classic – Choice of Primo Taglio brand meats (grilled chicken, smoked turkey, pan roasted turkey, ham, roast beef, salami, chicken salad or tuna salad), primo Taglio brand cheeses (American, cheddar, Swiss, havarti, provolone), and condiments (lettuce, tomato, red onion, caramelized onion, green bell pepper, pepperoncini, dill pickle, bacon, and avocado) on your choice of bread: artisan split crust (original, cheddar, pesto), rustic Italian, country white or wheat, ciabatta, or focaccia (square, crusted roll). Caesar Salad – Romaine lettuce, creamy Caesar dressing, baked bagel croutons, specialty bread and cookie. City Salad – Spring mix, sweet roasted walnuts, gorgonzola cheese, raspberry vinaigrette, baked bagel croutons, specialty bread and cookie. |
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
