Posted: 8-19-2008
Darnell begins term as VP-elect of American Society for Hort Sciences
IFAS horticultural sciences Professor Rebecca Darnell is embarking on a three-year leadership role with her field’s leading professional organization.
She recently began a one-year stint as vice president-elect of the American Society for Horticultural Science (ASHS) and will follow that with a two-year term as the organization’s research vice president.
As research vice president, Darnell will be responsible for organizing a general-interest symposium for ASHS’ research division. Her main role will be to oversee the organization’s roughly 45 research groups, which meet at least once a year, and plan workshop or colloquium topics for annual meetings.
Darnell was elected to her new post by the entire ASHS membership.
Besides promoting opportunities for research funding, Darnell hopes to use her position to help increase public understanding of horticulture and its importance in daily life.
“My feeling is that if we do not communicate the work we’ve done, we might as well not have done it,” she wrote in an e-mail.
Ensuring that potential graduate students and the public understand the breadth and relevance of horticultural research is a key ASHS mission, she said.
“It’s up to us, on both a national and local level, to let people know who we are and why what we do is important.”
Darnell, associate chair of UF’s horticultural sciences department and its undergraduate coordinator, has been at UF 21 years, coming here from University of California, Davis in 1987.
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