I am writing to you this time in my last year as chair of the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology. The past five years have seen a large amount of change at Ohio State, with a new president and provost, new buildings going up all over campus and of course, the COVID-19 pandemic. It has been a challenging time for all of us at Ohio State, but the way our people have adapted and responded to these challenges has been heartening. It is great for our department that we are finally in a more normal mode with respect to teaching and research, with travel for fieldwork, meetings and the other regular activities of a busy department being once again possible. We are also looking forward to the possibility of new faculty hires, given that we have had several retirements over the past few years.
Once again in the newsletter we bring you stories from our faculty and students to keep you abreast of some of what is going on in EEOB. We had some great successes in the past year; I will mention just two here from among our junior faculty. Dr. Gerry Carter, who works on behavior in vampire bats, received the Outstanding New Investigator Award from the Animal Behavior Society, a strong endorsement of his very productive research program. Dr. Rachelle Adams, who works on evolution in leafcutter ants, was awarded our department’s first National Science Foundation CAREER grant — a highly competitive grant to supercharge the research and teaching programs of promising early-career faculty.
I also want to share a couple of personnel notes with you. Professor Hans Klompen retired this past summer. You may know that his research focuses on systematics of mites and that he was the director of the Acarology Collection. As an emeritus faculty member, he is continuing his research work but without the many other demands of being a faculty member. On a sadder note, Emeritus Professor Ronald Stuckey died this past January. Ron was a former head of the Herbarium and professor of botany, as well as having a strong connection to Stone Lab. His interests in the last few decades were focused on the history of Ohio botanical science.
In closing, I want to encourage you, our alumni, to keep in touch with us. We understand that your experience and diverse career paths are a testament to the education that you received at Ohio State and we hope that you can help us to nurture future generations of EEOBers.
