Dr. Marvin Harris
Dr. Frank Gilstrap
Two Entomology Faculty Members Receive High Honors from Entomological Society of America
COLLEGE STATION—Two faculty members from the Department of Entomology were awarded high honors from the Entomological Society of America.
Professor Dr. Marvin Harris received the Entomological Society of America’s (ESA) Honorary Member award and Dr. Frank Gilstrap was elected an ESA Fellow earlier this summer.
Honorary members cannot exceed more than 1 percent of the regular membership and recipients must reflect the highest level of extraordinary contributions to the organization.
The award is given to individuals that have provided 20 years (or more) of outstanding service and contributions to the ESA. Harris began his career at Texas A&M in 1972 studying the pecan weevil.
As he studied other pecan pests, he discovered that the nut feeders were particularly destructive, especially the pecan nut casebearer (PNC). Harris (with current Louisiana State University extension entomologist Dennis Ring and others) developed an action threshold for treatment of the pecan nut casebearer moth.
Harris followed up, with the help of Dr. John Jackman and Bill Ree, with the development of an online prediction model to help growers improve the timing of treatment based on pheromone trap captures.
Harris will receive complimentary lifetime membership to the ESA, as well as complimentary lifetime registration to the ESA Annual Meeting.
Harris will be presented with an inscribed plaque and an Honorary Member pin at the annual meeting in Reno, Nevada later this year.
Harris has been a member of the ESA for more than 40 years and has served on the governing board for the Southwestern Branch and helped coach the TAMU Linnaean Games.
"I am deeply honored that the society supports education after graduation and has been a very significant source of professional development throughout my career," Harris said.
Dr. Frank Gilstrap was tapped in July as an ESA Fellow. The election as a fellow acknowledges outstanding contributions in one or more of the following: research, teaching, extension, or administration.
Gilstrap joined Texas A&M University in 1974 as a teaching and research faculty member in the department of entomology specializing in biological control. He was later named an associate director of Texas AgriLife Research from 1996-2003, and retired as director of the Texas AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Dallas in 2010.
As an administrator, Gilstrap developed agency protocols and processes for protecting and managing intellectual property; managed production on nearly $5 million in state-appropriated funds and was administrative liaison to numerous Texas commodity groups.
In his role as a center director, Gilstrap developed and implemented the Dallas Model-a business approach for managing center research and education in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. He also established more than 60 regional partnerships and collaborations with private and public leaders in the metroplex and elsewhere, and facilitated changes for acquiring grant and contract funds which grew the Dallas center’s annual revenue from an average of $250,000 in 2000-2004 to more than $2.1 million in 2007-2011.
Gilstrap has been an Entomological Society of America member since 1972.
Gilstrap has served as an elected officer , president of the International Organization for Biological Control/Nearctic Regional Section in 1989, as a member of the Entomological Foundation Board of Directors, as 2003 president of the Foundation Board, as a project leader within the International Sorghum-Millet Collaborative Research Support Program, and as a member of the Sorghum-Millet Program Board of Directors.
Within the Entomological Society of America, Gilstrap served as president, chair of the program committee, and as both a section and subsection chair. He was also a member of the society’s governing board, a member of the Entomological Foundation Board of Counselors, chair of the society’s annual meeting posters sessions, chair of the group’s annual meeting student competition for the President’s Prize, a member of the Certified Entomologists Board of Directors, a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Economic Entomology, and from 1979-1989 held offices within the entomological society’s Southwestern Branch and the Central Texas Chapter of Association of Registered Professional Entomologists.