Grad student news

Sarah HulickCongratulations Sarah Hulick!

MS candidate Sarah Hulick (right) won best oral presentation at the Northeast Regional Meeting of the American Society of Horticulture Sciences January 3-4 for her talk titled “Black Plastic Mulch and Transplants Increase Yield and Economic Viability of Jack O Lantern Pumpkins.” Hulick’s research will be submitted for publication this spring. Her committee members are Steve Reiners, Chris Wein, and Brad Rickard in the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management.

Bryan Sobel helps mushroom growers in Rwanda

MS candidate Bryan Sobel’s recent trip to Rwanda — part of USAID Horticulture Collaborative Research Support Program’s Trellis Fund Project — was featured in a Horticulture CRSP news release:

Bryan Sobel (right), a Cornell graduate student studying horticulture, is working on a master’s thesis about mushrooms and recently returned from working on a Trellis project with a women’s cooperative in Rwanda, where mushrooms are a particularly high-value crop.

“I could tell that the women were very excited to learn to grow mushrooms and that they recognized this as valuable knowledge,” he said. “I think that I have given them the opportunity to make a difference. You can’t go and make a difference in lives in two weeks. This is their project, and now it is up to them. They’ve already had their first harvest of mushrooms.”

Sobel will continue to work with the project in the following months, as they attempt marketing their mushrooms and address nutrition-related objectives.

“I want to pursue a career in international ag development, so I’m very pleased with this program, to be able to travel and do this type of work,” he said.

Deanns Curtis in Garden Design

Deanna Curtis (MS ’10) has an article in the Feb./March issue of Garden Design, “Poetry in Motion,” about the recently revitalized azalea garden at the New York Botanical Garden, where Deanna is associate curator. The article is not available online, but you can read a previous work by Curtis: Our Guide to Conifers.

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