Congratulations to this year’s LIFT Fellowship participants, Stephanie Smith and Lisa Colón. WSU’s LIFT program is a systemwide effort to support the transformation of undergraduate, graduate, and professional education. It is designed to introduce participants to research-based instructional practices that increase student engagement and motivation, improving student retention and learning outcomes.
Congratulations, also, to the team that spent countless hours pulling together the Smart Orchard Field Day last week. Scot Hulbert and Leslie Edgar attended and can’t stop talking about the event. I have no doubt that all of the attendees feel the same. I recently had a conversation with a national organization that’s planning a June 2025 meeting in Washington that will focus on agriculture automation. This meeting will be a great opportunity to showcase CAHNRS’ efforts. It will also provide a chance to advance the importance of expanding agriculture in Washington while growing research and development of automation approaches for agriculture.
This week, the associate deans and I meet with our counterparts at the University of Idaho to talk about opportunities for increased partnership. Thanks to everyone who shared what already exists in terms of collaborative student education and ideas for what more we can do. Our goal for the meeting is to start the conversation and see what the next steps might be.
Can you believe we are at the end of July? In two weeks, we start welcoming students back! In the meantime, several of our departments are holding retreats to do some planning and receive updates from various faculty. I look forward to meeting with the plant pathology faculty this week and learning about their priorities and plans for the upcoming year.