Surprise Retirement Zoom Gathering for Prof. Eastmond's Retirement

Monday June 29 marked my (Dave Eastmond's) last day as a full-time faculty member at UC Riverside.  Without my knowledge, my former graduate students and alumni from the Environmental Toxicology Graduate Program organized a Zoom meeting at 5 pm in recognition of my years at UCR.  It was a really nice occasion, and fun to see and hear from the many students and post docs who have moved forward and advanced in their careers. They also sent me a nice floral arrangement.  Some screenshots from the event are shown below.  A special thanks to Sharada, Virunya, and Naomi for organizing the reunion, and also to Elizabeth, my wife, who coordinated things at home to keep me in the dark.  

2020 Annual Symposium Held by Videoconference

On Monday June 15, 2020, the Environmental Toxicology Graduate Program held its annual student symposium by Zoom videoconference.  It was an outstanding event being well organized and showing a lot of creativity during these challenging times.  In addition to being a video conference, the format differed this year in a number of other ways.  The more senior students presented their research during the Spring quarter during the seminar series.  The symposium consisted of a smaller number of oral presentations as well as an online poster session (which I might mention was outstanding with online posters, a prerecorded explanation of the poster by the student and a Zoom link during the poster session where one could speak to the student and ask questions).  In addition, there was a raffle, a yoga session just before lunch and a presentation of awards and recognition of recent graduates.  The symposium was well attended; I counted 60 people connected during the final award session.  Winners of the various awards are shown below.

We would like to especially recognize Victoria (Tori) McGruer who, with Prof. Ying-Hsuan Wang and Prof. Wenwan Zhong (shown in red below), took the lead in organizing the symposium.



Various screen shots illustrating aspects of the event.

 

Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award to Dr. Nicole zur Nieden

Last Lecture in my Risk Assessment class

Today was a historic day for me (David Eastmond). I finished teaching the last of my 10-week class on risk assessment by Zoom. The class was pretty successful but I (and I think the students) prefer in-person instruction.  I had an excellent group of 18 students this quarter. It is also the last class that I will be teaching as a full-time faculty member as, after 30 years, I will be retiring from UC Riverside at the end of the month. I may teach in the future but it will be on a part-time basis. I still have to correct papers and assign grades so I am not done yet.