I think I have shared that I am competitive and wake up with the attitude of ‘beat yesterday, every day.’ At the same time, I consider tiny victories, wins and important building blocks for more success. Last week and this week have surfaced several wins and accomplishments across AGNR.
UMD's Turf Bowl Team secured a top five finish for the second time in two years! The team finished fourth place this year. Our undergraduate student team that competed in the Edmund Bacon Student Competition, an international competition that invites undergraduate and graduate students to reimagine specific urban sites in Philadelphia, tied for second place! Congratulations to all of our student teams! We are proud to have these students representing us!
Fun fact: The UMD Soils Judging Team has won the national championship 6 times since 2013 and is recognized as a powerhouse over the 60-year history of the event. Among our athletic teams, the women’s lacrosse team has the most national championship wins (14 NCAA, 1 AIAW), including 7 consecutive wins (1995 – 2001). If anyone knows how many national championship titles, the Soils Judging Team secured over the 60-year history, please share.
Our faculty, too, have had strong accomplishments of late. Dr. Younggeon Jin, Assistant Professor in Animal and Avian Sciences, is part of a team led by Reza Ghodssi in Engineering that just secured an NIH R21 grant! I saw Younggeon last week and he shared a bit about his gastrointestinal research. You might have seen in Friday’s Maryland Today that Hee-Jung Song, Extension Specialist in Nutrition and Food Science, has received more than $480K from USDA NIFA to develop and test a produce prescription program for Marylanders with certain diet-related health risks. The program is featured on the USDA-NIFA website, too.
On Thursday, we celebrate the accomplishments of our students at the Celebration of Scholarship luncheon in the Adele Stamp Union. Over forty donors and more than eighty of our students will be in attendance. I am sure our donors are eager to meet this group of talent! It is a bit hard to believe that we are already approaching that time of the semester when we hold award ceremonies.
Before I get to Thursday, I will be in DC with our esteemed CARET representatives. Writing this post reminds me that I need to get a webpage up to recognized our CARETs. This, too, is an impressive group and I look forward to Hill visits with them on Wednesday and partner visits on Tuesday! I hope the weather cooperates – it is not feeling like mid-semester yet.