A person standing on a stage in front of a crowd.
CA&ES in October
Dean Ashley M. Stokes welcomed people to the Celebrating CA&ES event highlighting the advancements that faculty, staff, students, alumni and donors have contributed to over the years. (Jael Mackendorf / UC Davis)
A person uses a squeegee to apply paint while screen printing.
The Art and Science Fusion program demonstrated screen-printing at the Celebrating CA&ES event. (Jael Mackendorf / UC Davis)
A person eats a stalk of celery while standing in a field.
Dean Ashley M. Stokes visited a celery field at the produce firm Tanimura and Antle in Salinas. (Melissa Haworth / UC Davis)
People seated next to each other talk to an audience.
Dean Ashley M. Stokes moderated a panel at the Terra Madre Americas international slow food festival with faculty members Anne Todgham, Majdi Abou Najm and Neal Williams, and Student Farm Director Colin Dixon as panelists. (Jael Mackendorf / UC Davis)
Five people stand next to each other and a few hold up popsicles.
Students at the 2025 Ice Scream Social. (Stephanie Perla / UC Davis)
A crowd of people stand together outside a lit building.
Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science hosted its annual Taste event. (Jael Mackendorf / UC Davis)
A person holds a football while standing next to a blue horse mascot and three other people.
The Salute to Ag tailgate before the football game took place on Sept. 27 and Dean Ashley M. Stokes was presented the game ball. (Jael Mackendorf / UC Davis)
A person holds a bug while another person smiles and looks on.
Students with a bug from the Bohart Museum of Entomology exhibit during 2025 Ice Cream Social. (Stephanie Perla / UC Davis)
A group of people stand outside in a forest.
Dean Ashley M. Stokes visited the Quail Ridge Natural Reserve at Lake Berryessa and met with students, staff and faculty to learn about ongoing research there. (Jael Mackendorf / UC Davis)

A Message from the Dean - October 2025

  • by Ashley M. Stokes

Happy fall, Aggies!

 

We’ve been so busy welcoming back students, visiting with alumni and donors, and celebrating all that is great about our college! Late last month I spent some time in Salinas, El Dorado Hills, Point Reyes and locally meeting with donors, alumni, friends of the college, industry leaders and a variety of organizations. I love getting out and connecting with people in the field and spaces where they are putting our science and research into action. Our visit to Salinas provides us with the perfect reminder of our commitment to the land grant mission and supporting the needs of Californians throughout the entire state. 

Recently I had the privilege of touring Quail Ridge Reserve, which is part of the larger UC Natural Reserve System. What a beautiful space for teaching and research! We toured a portion of the 2,500 acres of protected Coast Range habitat and listened to students, faculty and staff as they showed us their research sites, including habitat for trapdoor spiders and native bees, and research using amphibians to measure the effectiveness of cameras under low light in biodiversity studies. It is so wonderful to see the various and resourceful ways our community is studying and interacting with the land and biodiversity in our backyard.

Our researchers continue to go far and wide to find answers to pressing questions, including one team that spent the summer walking an estimated 25,000 steps at schoolyards across the state to measure just how hot outdoor spaces can be. On the technology front, researchers launched an online tool called the Byproduct Database to help track byproducts from agricultural processing and discover innovative ways to reuse them across different industries; and another team worked with partners in Asia and Africa to develop RationSmart, an app that helps farmers formulate the right diets to increase dairy cattle production in hopes of reducing methane emissions from the industry. We also learned that songbird siblingscan be more beneficial to helping juvenile birds learn than their own parents and that an algae experiment in Lake Tahoe could mean seasonal water shifts in alpine lakes may be on the horizon.   

Last week we hosted our annual Celebrate CA&ES event. Guests got an interactive experience with five different areas of the college, including Hilgard631, the Student Farm, our Sensory Hub, the Art and Science Fusion Program and the GEMINI project. Every year, this inspiring evening shines a spotlight on the groundbreaking, impactful research, innovative programs and extraordinary people who make our college number one. 

 

Go Ags!