Distinguished Professor of Entomology Jay Rosenheim noticed a trend during his office hours a few years ago: Many of his undergraduate students wanted research lab experience but were unsure how to get started. Alongside colleagues Louis Yang and Joanna Chiu, they collectively decided to try something different in 2011.

“Our basic idea was to get students into the labs really early in their undergraduate programs,” Rosenheim recalled. “There’s a whole new set of skills that are very different from what students are typically working on in their formal coursework.”

Professor Jason Bond starts today (Feb. 1) as the new director of the UC Davis R.M. Bohart Museum of Entomology, which houses the 7th largest insect collection in North America. Bond succeeds Lynn Kimsey, distinguished professor with the Department of Entomology and Nematology, who retired last month after serving as the museum’s director and curator since 1990.

Bill Patterson, longtime butterfly collector and supporter of the University of California, Davis, is giving $1 million to the university’s R.M. Bohart Museum of Entomology to help maintain its permanent insect collection. This gift will provide the museum with the necessary financial security to support its ever-growing collection.                             

In 1946, the contents of two small, wooden boxes with about 200 insects helped create what would become the R.M. Bohart Museum of Entomology. Seventy-five years later, the museum now houses the seventh largest insect collection in North America featuring more than seven million specimens.