Day, Baylie

Dowling, Ashley

Jones, Austin

English

ScholarWorks@UARK

Discovery, The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences Volume 25 Article 5 Fall 2024 Featured Faculty Mentor/Student Team Austin Jones University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Ashley Dowling University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Baylie Day University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uark.edu/discoverymag  Part of the Agribusiness Commons, Agricultural Economics Commons, Agricultural Education Commons, Agronomy and Crop Sciences Commons, Animal Sciences Commons, Botany Commons, Communication Commons, Entomology Commons, Environmental Studies Commons, Family and Consumer Sciences Commons, Food Science Commons, Horticulture Commons, and the Nutrition Commons Recommended Citation Jones, A., Dowling, A., & Day, B. (2024). Featured Faculty Mentor/Student Team. Discovery, The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences, 25(1). Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/discoverymag/vol25/iss1/5 This Front Matter is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Discovery, The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact scholar@uark.edu, uarepos@uark.edu. The STudenT Journal of dale BumperS College of agriCulTural, food and life SCienCeS       5Featured Faculty Mentor/Student TeamAs an entomology instructor, outreach coordinator, and Direc-tor of Education for entomology and plant pathology minor programs I have had many mentoring opportunities. However, none of these experiences have been more exciting than co-mentoring my first honors project with Baylie. From the first interactions with Baylie in my undergraduate course, Insects, Science and Society, I knew she not only had the mindset, but also the skillset to go far with a career in the natural sci-ences. She truly “caught the bug,” so to speak, and joined our then newly-retooled entomology minor program with zeal and absolutely immersed herself and absorbed it. When the opportunity arose to co-mentor her honors project with Dr. Dowling it felt like a chance to finally provide the level of challenges she had been needing. When Baylie approached us with the honors project idea of creating a pub-licly accessible database of specimens housed within the University of Arkansas Arthropod Museum (UAAM) it hit all the right notes. Our museum has been without curator for quite some time and ac-cess to museum specimens for research has been difficult at best. I truly hope that others will follow her lead and methods to continue this work beyond the bees to one day make information on the entire museum holdings digitally accessible.  Because we do not have an undergraduate program in entomol-ogy, mentors like myself and Austin rely on our large ento-mology courses to make first contact with aspiring entomologists and excitable bug enthusiasts from a diversity of departments. The Honors program then provides the opportunity to engage with these students in a research or creative project to really get their bug juices flowing and send them down an entomology-related career path.My first interactions with Baylie were during an Ento Club tour of the arthropod museum and then in my Introduction to Entomol-ogy course in Fall 2023. Within a week of that semester starting, we were meeting with Baylie to discuss an Honors project and my first thought was “man, why do the good ones always show up when they are seniors?”. Baylie was on a very reduced thesis schedule, but I knew she had the right mindset to be fully engaged in the project and produce a very nice final product.Ashley Dowling Faculty Mentor of Baylie DayAustin Jones, Instructor, Director of Undergraduate Education & Outreach Coordinator, and Ashley Dowling, Professor,  Department of Entomology and Plant PathologyAustin Jones Faculty Mentor of Baylie Day6   DISCOVERY   •   Vol. 25, fall 2024I didn’t follow the typical honors program path. I had previous projects fall through, and by the time I reached my senior year, I thought it was too late to start over. However, I was lucky that my aca-demic advisor, Dr. Lisa Wood, encouraged me to try again and pushed me to get back on track. Her advice led me to meet with Dr. Ashley Dowling and Dr. Austin Jones in the Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology.The entomology courses I had previously taken with Dr. Dowling and Dr. Jones left a lasting impression on me. Their knowledge and passion for the subject inspired me. I am fortunate that they were both very supportive of my thesis idea and willing to co-mentor me, despite being short on time. They gave me the freedom to cultivate my own creative project while assisting me through the process of project devel-opment, timeline creation, and thesis defense. Throughout my project, they also helped strengthen my data recording, writing, and communi-cation skills. I am thankful for my time at the University of Arkansas. Being a part of the Dale Bumpers Honors Program has presented additional oppor-tunities and support. Completing an undergraduate honors project gave me the chance to forge stronger relationships with my mentors, who have provided me with invaluable guidance not only on my project, but in my future aspirations. I can confidently say that my honors project made my college experience more valuable. I know that the skills and connections I developed will benefit me in my career path.  Baylie Day, May 2024 Honors graduate in Environmental, Soil, and Water ScienceIN THE MUSEUM: Ashley Dowling, Baylie Day, and Austin Jones look at Bombus specimens at the University of Arkansas Arthropod Museum.Baylie DayBumpers Student  Featured Faculty Mentor/Student Team

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