TWO RECOGNIZED WITH ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY AWARDS

COLLEGE STATION –- The Entomological Society of America will honor a retired professor and a graduate student from Texas A&M University at its annual meeting this week in San Diego.

Dr. Don R. Rummel, retired entomologist with the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, will be named an ESA honorary member, and Ronald D. Weeks, a doctoral student with the department of entomology, will receive the 2001 John Henry Comstock Graduate Student award.

Rummel earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in entomology from Texas A&M. He was a professor and project leader for cotton insect research at the Experiment Station in Lubbock for 22 years until he retired in 2000. He also was an adjunct professor at Texas Tech University and a member of the graduate faculty at Texas A&M. Earlier in his career, he was an entomologist with Texas Cooperative Extension.

Among the numerous awards he has received are the ESA Recognition Award in entomology in 1989 and the ESA Southwestern Branch Taquenewhap award for distinguished leadership and service in 1999.

Rummel was a member of the ESA governing board, director of the ESA certification board and was the Southwestern Branch secretary-treasurer, vice president and president.

Members of the ESA who are eligible for honorary membership must be at least 60 years old, have served the field of entomology with distinction and have had significant involvement in the activities of the society, according to the award citation.

Weeks is a member of ESA’s southwestern branch. He earned his bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Nevada-Reno. For his master’s thesis in entomology from Colorado State University, he described ground-dwelling spider communities. Also in Colorado, he worked on a project to study and describe the movement of beetles in grasslands.

For his doctorate at Texas A&M, Weeks is studying how the environment affects the foraging for food by the red imported fire ant.

He also is a graduate research assistant for Extension.

Weeks served as vice president of the Texas A&M entomology graduate student organization, was the departmental representative on the Texas A&M Graduate Student Council, and president of the Colorado State University Gillette Entomology Club.

Weeks is one of five graduate students to receive the Comstock award. These awards were designed to promote entomology at the graduate student level. Each award – for a graduate student from each ESA geographic region or branch – includes an all-expense-paid trip to the annual meeting, plus $100 and an awards certificate.

Founded in 1889, ESA is a non-profit organization committed to serving the scientific and professional needs of entomologists and individuals in related disciplines. ESA’s membership of more than 6,000 entomologists includes representatives from educational institutions, government, health agencies and private industry.

-30-