Missouri Academy of Science

Ahmad did an exceptional job of representing our research group this weekend at the Missouri Academy of Science Annual Meeting.  This morning before class he brought me the award he earned for first place in the student poster competition!  I'm so proud of these guys.

Festival of Student Achievement

As referenced in the previous post, our research team presented their poster at the FoSA yesterday.  Congrats and well done to all of the presenters!  The picture was during Jake's "shift" in front of the poster.  That's me and our awesome Lab Manager, Aaron Bossert, talking to him about it.

Dean's Undergraduate Fellowship

Please join me in congratulating my outstanding research student, Mr. Ahmad Maaz (pictured below with his collaborators, Jake Grimes and Kurt Piening, at the Missouri Natural Resources Conference in January), for receiving the Dean's Undergraduate Fellowship for Summer Research!  Ahmad will receive funding through this award to compose and publish a manuscript describing the research we have been conducting on the phylogeny and taxonomy of the Smooth Earth Snake (Virginia valeriae).  He will also be presenting this research Monday at the Rockurst Outstanding Research Seminar and next weekend at the Missouri Academy of Science annual meeting; and all three students will be presenting their poster at the Festival of Student Achievement on campus next week.  This is truly an exciting time for our research team!  Great job, guys.

Honors Induction Ceremony

Yesterday morning, families, faculty and the Honors Student Executive Board formally welcomed the honors freshmen class into the Honors Program.  We gathered for a nice brunch and were honored to have two distinguished speakers, Mr. Shail Mehta (freshmen honors student) and Dr. Joanna Carraway-Vitiello (Honors Advisory Committee member and professor in the honors program, pictured talking with me below).  We were so proud to celebrate the

largest freshmen honors class in Rockhurst history!  Congrats to all of these outstanding students (and a special thanks to Dr. Bill Sturgill for taking pictures)!