Plant Center Retreat!

 About two weeks ago I had the chance to attend the Plant Center Retreat, an internal UGA conference that is put on by a number of plant-related departments here at Georgia. It was a really great experience! The venue was top notch: Unicoi State Park and Lodge, in the north Georgia mountains about two hours north of Athens.

It was a great opportunity to network and spend time with professors and students, both those that I had known previously and those I was meeting for the first time. I enjoyed being able to attend lectures of plant biologists both local and far away (many of the speakers were new faculty at UGA, but others came as far away as New Jersey or California!). One of my favorite speakers was Mary Williams, who works for the American Society of
Plant Biologists and gave a great talk all about how to be a great teacher.

A highlight of the Retreat for me was participating in the poster session. Dr. Donovan, chair of the Plant Biology department, had kindly offered to pay the poster printing costs if I wanted to present my masters' research. It was a really great experience to both design another poster, and present it. I had many great interactions with the attendees, and it was a lot of fun sharing about my research (plus, I have a hankering that I was the only participant with a thirteen-lined ground squirrel on their poster!!).

I hope to attend the Plant Center Retreat again some year!