EPM Social Committee hosts Earth Day end of the year celebration
EPM's student-led Social Committee has worked over the last six months to plan EProM, an event that brings together the EPM community to celebrate the end of the academic year. EProM has been a tradition since 2018, when students from EPM's first cohort came up with the idea for the event. It is one of the many ways that the EPM program fosters a sense of community between students, alumni, staff and faculty outside of the classroom setting.
Each year, the Social Committee develops an EProM theme that highlights an important environmental issue. Previous themes have included global warming, sea level rise, wildfires, agriculture and species conservation. This year's theme being the latter, the "Floral Fiesta" was all about saving the bees and featured dried flower bouquets from the UC Davis Student Farm!
The event was hosted at Putah Creek Lodge. With the backdrop of the UC Davis Arboretum, the evening consisted of dinner, refreshments, dancing, backyard games and even a pinata! Around 90 people showed up to enjoy the festivities. Students and staff donated items for the evening's raffle drawing including a crochet flower bouquet, crochet bee plushy, a plant, handmade candles, handmade beaded earrings, and organic produce basket with items from the UC Davis Student Farm. All proceeds from the raffle were donated to the UC Davis Bee Haven, a unique outdoor museum that provides resources for local bee pollinators, inspires and educates visitors to create pollinator habitat gardens and provides a site for the observation and study of bees and the plants that supports them. In all, EProM guests raised over $400 to donate!
EProM Chair, Rachael Alcala commented "Putting EProM together was definitely a lot of work, but it was amazing to see it all come together and pay off. My favorite part was easily the piñata, it seemed like a hit with the guests."
Stay tuned to see what we plan for next year's celebration!
A special thank you to this year's Social Committee: Jessica Chalfin, Rachael Alcala, Jess DellaRossa, Jeff Palm, Thomas Miller, Yalin Li, Kriti Shah, Natalie Kataoka and Saurabh Harohalli.