Dear SIPS Community,

Congratulations to Maria Harrison who was elected to the National Academy of Sciences earlier this week!

Dean Boor will attend our SIPS-wide faculty meeting

Friday, May 10, 1:30 – 2:30 pm, 404 Plant Science and by Zoom to A134 Barton Lab in Geneva. https://cornell.zoom.us/j/504313595

Active Learning Update. We are reviewing applications for the two active learning postdocs now and hope to bring these folks on board over the summer.

Plant Science Renovation update.  The State University Construction Fund (SUCF) has completed their development of a request for proposal to solicit consultant services. This is the first step in initiating the consultant selection process and we anticipate this effort to have a total duration of 6 months.  In parallel, Cornell staff will be working to obtain required University approvals and project authorization. We won’t know anything about design or timing until the consultant team is on-board (late 2019 early 2020) and everyone will be kept informed of this process. My guess is that construction could begin in 2022 – but I am an optimist.

Faculty search updates:

• Assistant Professor: Grape Disease Ecology & Epidemiology. Katie Gold has accepted our offer and will start Feb 2020!
• Assistant/Associate Professor: Specialty Crop Systems. An offer has been made and negotiations are in process.
• Assistant/Associate Professor: Digital Agriculture: Agronomy. On-campus interviews of the top candidates will be scheduled soon.
• Assistant/Associate Professor: Breeding for Sustainable Forage Cropping Systems. Zoom interviews are complete.

Congratulations to the following people who were recognized with a SIPS Kudos in the last month! Thanks for your effort and passion in support of SIPS.

• Amy Andersen (building mastery and skill)
• Ed Cobb (going above and beyond)
• Mike Colizzi (going above and beyond)
• Amy Collins (going above and beyond)
• Paul Cooper (going above and beyond)
• Craig Cramer (strong team spirit)
• Jason Dombroskie (going above and beyond)
• Nicholas Kaczmar (strong team spirit)
• John Keeton (going above and beyond)
• Mary Kreitinger (going above and beyond)
• Kirsten Kurtz (going above and beyond)
• Karl Niklas (going above and beyond)
• Reece Perrin (going above and beyond)
• Bob Schindelbeck (going above and beyond)
• Judy Singer (going above and beyond)
• Bill Srmack (going above and beyond)
• David Zakalik (building mastery and skill)

PLEASE remember to recognize people in our SIPS community that have gone out of their way to enhance our School. All you have to do is complete the brief form here:

https://sips.cals.cornell.edu/news-events/sips-staff-kudos

All the best,

Chris