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When UC Davis student Madison “Madi” Burns joined the Davis Rewilding Society during her freshman year, it helped bring her future into focus. The second-year landscape architecture major said she has developed a much better understanding of the importance of native plants from her involvement with the student-run organization.

We are two months into the new year, and our college is thriving and alive with activity. This month has been busy for our college and the entire campus! As the days slowly lengthen, the number of prospective students coming to visit us grows. I love seeing groups of families on tours, threading their way through the Arboretum, past the Eye on Mrak, and along the bike path towards the Coffee House while listening to the guides give bits of information about why they love UC Davis. 

I was a plant girl. As an undergraduate student at UC Davis, I’ve spent my summers restoring wetlands with native plants, summiting peaks to study alpine cushion plants, and dissecting seeds in labs. Animals were never in the picture, and birds were no exception. So when I kept seeing “Bird ID skills needed” on botany position advertisements, I knew my plant-only class days were over.  

Dean Helene Dillard with the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences will gather with fellow scientists, staff and students at the 2023 World Ag Expo in Tulare, Feb. 14-16, to chat with farmers, prospective students, alumni and leaders throughout the agricultural industry.

More than 100,000 people are expected to attend this three-day event, where 1,400 exhibitors display cutting-edge agricultural technology and equipment throughout 2.6 million square feet of show grounds.

A team of UC Davis doctoral and undergraduate students have something to celebrate as the fall quarter comes to a close. UC Davis sent a team to the Region 6 (southwest) Collegiate Soil Judging Competition, where groups are scored on their ability to describe and classify soils and landscapes.

There’s a type of olive oil that may lift spirits during the cold winter season. It’s called “olio nuovo,” which in Italian means “the new oil.” This oil is immediately bottled after the olives are harvested and milled, making it one of the freshest extra virgin olive oils you can get.

An ordinary bus stop in Vallejo has a fresh new look. The local site got a makeover designed by UC Davis students Ashley Gear and Katie Wong, both seniors majoring in landscape architecture.

Solano County Transit (SolTrans), which runs the bus service in Vallejo, recently unveiled its newly transformed bus stop located at Gary Circle and Magazine Street. SolTrans chose the students’ design, which Gear and Wong created last spring for the “Plants in the City” course led by Assistant Professor Haven Kiers.

From concept to completion – UC Davis student Mariah Padilla has taken what she’s learned in class to help create a tool that aims to enhance a local community’s social and economic health and well-being. Padilla, a community and regional development major going into her senior year, took a community economic development course (CRD 156) last spring which empowered students to provide an assessment of food security and community violence in two neighborhoods located in South Sacramento.

Despite virtual learning and being away from campus, the UC Davis student-run organization Multiculturalism in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Sciences (MANRRS), was able to come together this past year to accomplish its goal of maintaining a sense of community. The group was honored with a 2021 President’s Award for Outstanding Student Leadership by the office of UC President Michael Drake for its dedication to encouraging togetherness during the pandemic.

Rayann Eaves is just the sort of UC Davis student that the late Nancy Rupp Tibbitts would befriend—highly motivated, academically accomplished and fully engaged in the campus community.

Eaves is a senior in animal science, with an emphasis in livestock and dairy and a minor in global disease biology. She is an Aggie Ambassador, participates in the Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Field Day and is a leader in her sorority. After she graduates in June 2021, she hopes to become a large-animal veterinarian at the UC Davis Veterinary Medicine Teaching Hospital.