2014 Highlights: UC IPM Annual Report

Joyce Strand Retires

Associate Director for Communications, Joyce Strand, retired in early 2014. She held numerous titles in her 32 years with UC IPM—biometeorologist, computer systems manager, program manager, information systems manager, agricultural meteorologist, associate director for communications, and interim director.

When asked if she could relive any year, Strand says it’d be 1995. “That was a year where all the work I’d been doing for 15 years blossomed and we were able to put our online systems and all the information we created onto the web, “ says Strand. “We were ready for it.”

A computer system to support IPM research and extension was a part of the original vision of the UC IPM Program, and its IMPACT computer system went on line in 1981. More online resources continued to be developed, but users had difficulty connecting with IMPACT. That all changed in the mid-90s with the World Wide Web. Suddenly Strand had another medium to work with and UC IPM’s website—ipm.ucanr.edu, the most content-rich online site available for pest management—was born.

Incorporating her love of meteorology into her work, UC IPM’s weather tools benefited from her expertise. She was first hired to obtain and organize weather information needed to support IPM programs so that extension personnel could access weather data and perform degree-day calculations. Strand integrated California Irrigation Management Information System (CIMIS) weather data with UC IPM’s weather database to increase its capacity for degree-day modeling. She helped develop California PestCast, a research weather network used to validate disease management models.

Throughout her career, Strand developed online tools to deliver information in support of pest management research, extension and in-field management. Notable was her work on the Pest Management Guidelines, UC Guide to Garden and Landscape Pests, UC Guide to Healthy Lawns, and the WaterTox pesticide hazard database, which helps users select least-toxic pesticides. She was responsible for several large grants administered by UC IPM, such as the UC Pierce’s Disease Research Grant Program, Exotic/Invasive Pests and Diseases Research Program, and the Smith-Lever IPM Extension Grants program.