Monthly Newsletter-April | College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources

Dear Colleagues,

It's an exciting time at CAHNR. Last week, the entire College came together to celebrate students, alumni, volunteers, staff, and faculty at our annual Awards & Honors event. I was thrilled to spend time with so many of you and to recognize your accomplishments in research, teaching, community engagement, and years of service. The excitement continues today with the One Health conference, which was organized by our Strategic Vision Implementation Committees to bring together the entire University around this important topic. CAHNR is leading the way to ensure healthy people and a healthy plant - a major focus of UConn's strategic plan. I hope everyone has the opportunity to learn, connect, and exchange ideas and hopefully have some fun as well.

As always, thanks for all you do.

Best,

Indrajeet Chaubey
Dean and Director

The Easter lilies that added some spring-time flare to the Awards & Honors celebration were more than pretty flowers. Students in John Creedon's class grew them as part of their experiential learning. Creedon, an adjunct professor in the Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, includes this activity to help students learn how to use plant hormones and temperature to influence their phenology, and they were even able to time the bloom opening with the holiday. The bulbs for this crop are donated to PSLA by one of the regional producers.

One Health

Thank you to everyone who is participating today in the One Health Conference. We know it will be a fantastic event and are looking forward to the next steps. In a few days, you can visit s.uconn.edu/2024conference for the recording, poster abstracts, and next steps from the three framework discussions.

DEIJ Statement

Dates have been determined for our two SVIC workshops focused on developing a DEIJ statement for CAHNR. We tried to work around schedules to the best of our ability, though the end of the semester is always so busy. At this time, we have settled on the following dates for our two, in-person workshops in collaboration with the HartBeat Ensemble and have reserved rooms.

Friday, April 26, 2-5 PM, WBY 132 (also have 128 and 100 reserved for part of this time)
Monday, May 13, 11 AM – 2 PM, WBY 327 (also have 132 and 100 reserved)

The objective of the first event is to have as many students, staff and faculty on hand to participate in an interactive workshop to co-design a diversity statement. The draft statement will be circulated in the weeks during the two workshops to get additional input from the CAHNR community and external stakeholders before the second workshop in May where we hope to further refine and finalize the statement.

Learn More

The SVIC-funded projects for the spring 2024 semester are well underway, the list of funded projects is available at s.uconn.edu/SVIC, and project updates will be shared as work progresses.

Visit the SVIC site for more information.