Douglas Walsh: C. W. Woodworth Recipient

UC Davis doctoral alumnus Douglas Walsh, a professor and Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Entomology, Washington State University for nearly three decades,  will receive the C. W. Woodworth Award, the highest honor from the Pacific Branch, Entomological Society of America (PBESA), at its March 30-April 2 meeting in Phoenix.

Walsh, internationally known for his integrated pest management (IPM) research, serves as the hops, alfalfa and wine grapes entomologist at WSU, and directs environmental impact studies on alfalfa leafcutting and alkali bees, the key pollinators of alfalfa produced for seed. His IPM efforts, including the control of spider mites, have resulted in the documented reduction of more than 100,000 pounds of insecticide use in the Pacific Northwest annually. 

Active in the Entomological Society of America (ESA), Walsh was elected a fellow in 2023. He served as PBESA president in 2010, and as a member of ESA’s governing board from 2013 through 2019.

Walsh received his PhD from UC Davis in 1998, studying with major professor and integrated pest management (IPM) specialist Frank Zalom, now a distinguished professor emeritus on recall.

“I can honestly say that I cannot think of another active member in the Pacific Branch who is more deserving of this recognition than Professor Walsh,” Zalom wrote in a letter of support. “He has truly earned this award through his many contributions to our discipline. His career achievements in research, extension, graduate student mentorship and service are outstanding. He is well respected nationally for his leadership in integrated pest management, and his expertise has been recognized not only by the entomological community but by the stakeholders that he interacts with.”

Zalom is an Honorary Member of ESA, the organization’s highest honor, and is an ESA past president and fellow. He received the Woodworth Award in 2011. 

Zalom, who has known Walsh for more than 35 years, recalled meeting him when he was an Extension field assistant in Santa Cruz.  In 1991, Walsh left his five-year Extension position to become a PhD student in the Zalom lab. “Doug was a self-starter and highly motivated,” Zalom said.

“It was clear that he was not only bright and hard-working but that he had very special interpersonal skills that simply can’t be learned," Zalom said. "He is a brilliant communicator and is as comfortable working with colleagues in an academic setting as he is interacting with stakeholders in meetings or on their farms.”

Walsh’s great communication skills “enabled him to become one of the very best, if not the best, Extension educators I have ever known,” Zalom noted.

Walsh joined the WSU faculty and Extension program in 1998, the same year he received his doctorate from UC Davis.  Walsh maintains a well-funded (more than $30 million) and productive program as the research director of the Environmental and Agricultural Entomology Laboratory, located at the WSU Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center in the Yakima Valley near Prosser. He is the Extension IPM coordinator for Washington State and the Washington State Liaison Representative to the USDA IR-4 Program.

“In most states, even those with far less agricultural diversity and production than Washington, these would be three separate positions,” Zalom said. “Doug has done them all exceedingly well.” The International Hop Growers Bureau inducted Walsh as a Knight in the Order of the Hop (Chevalier), its most prestigious honor, in 2017. 

Born in New York City

Born in New York City in 1963 but a resident of California from 1969 to 1998, Walsh completed his primary and secondary education in Goleta, Santa Barbara County, and then obtained his bachelor’s degree in biology from UC Santa Cruz in 1985. 

Walsh has authored more than 200 publications and annually delivers more than 35 Extension presentations. At WSU, he has directly mentored 12 PhD and 11 master’s degree students.

Within ESA, Walsh received the Excellence in IPM Award and led two teams that received the IPM Team Award. Within WSU, he was awarded the Sahlin Award for Outreach and Engagement, the Excellence in Extension Award, the Team Interdisciplinary Award, and the Excellence in Integrated Research and Extension Award.

Academic Lineage

In their entomological careers, Walsh and Zalom can trace their academic lineage back to C. W. Woodworth (1865-1940). Zalom, who holds a doctorate from UC Davis, studied with major professor Al Grigarick whose major professor at UC Berkeley was William Harry Lange Jr. (1912-2004). Lange, who received the Woodworth award in 1978, "was among the cadre of applied agricultural entomologists that made the move from UC Berkeley to the farm at UC Davis as the Bay Area urbanized,” Walsh said.

 Lange's major professor at UC Berkeley was E.O Essig (1884-1964), a contemporary of Woodworth “and when Woodworth died in 1940, Essig wrote his academic obituary which was published in Science. (Vol. 92. 20 December 1940 pp 570-572). When Essig died in 1964, Lange wrote his academic obituary."

“So, the bottom line is that both Frank and my academic lineages go back directly to C.W. Woodworth via E.O Essig at UC Berkeley in the early 20th century,” Walsh related. Wilson, Lange, Zalom and Walsh all served as PBESA presidents. Both Essig and Zalom were elected national ESA presidents. Essig, Lange, Zalom, and Walsh all were elected ESA fellows.  

Economic Entomology

 “Al Grigarick was a solid professor at UC Davis where he served as the endowed rice entomologist for some 30 years,” Walsh noted. “As Frank's graduate student at UC Davis, I took Economic Entomology from Al in the fall quarter of 1990. Al mentored a number of top-notch entomologists including Frank and Steve Clement.  Frank and Steve are probably Al's two most recognized students.”

"Technically, I was the first PhD student Frank graduated directly from start to finish," Walsh said. "My  graduate work was on strawberries, but Frank also had me dabble in almonds, grapes, peaches, Brussels sprouts and processing tomatoes. Frank graduated two PhD students ahead of me, Mike Hoffman and Rachid Hanna. Both Mike and Rachid were orphaned at UC Davis when their advisor, Professor Ted Wilson, left UC Davis in the late 1980s to serve as an endowed professor in cotton pest management at Texas A&M."

Walsh recalled that in the fall of 1990, Jay Rosenheim (now a UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus) and I attended new employee orientation at UC Davis. I was 27. I was a little older than most of the new students at UC Davis. After serving for five years in  Cooperative Extension, I had substantially greater applied agricultural and pest management experience than most new students starting at Davis.”

For the UC Davis Picnic Day Parade in 1993, Walsh remembers dressing his daughter, Claire, as a spider mite and painting her Radio Flyer wagon green to mimic a leaf. "For about five Picnic Days I would get put in a booth that looked like Lucy's booth from the Peanuts comic strip with the sign "The Doctor Is In." I had my pesticide applicators license, and we identified insects, but I was the only graduate student that could tell people what to spray to control their insects."

“At WSU, I have technically replaced two of the former Woodworth Award recipients," Walsh shared.  "Wyatt Cone (1999 Woodworth recipient) was the hops and wine grape entomologist at WSU. Carl Johansen (1985) was an alternative pollinator specialist working with the alfalfa seed growers in Walla Walla County, with leafcutting and alkali bees. I am that person now.”

For his expertise on the alkali bee, Nomia melanderi,  Walsh will appear this summer in a newly completed PBS show, “The Human Footprint” in its episode on bees. 

Walsh shares his life with his wife of 37 years, Catherine (aka Kikie), who retired from her 40-year career as a healthcare software engineer. Together they raised three children Claire, Russ and Jeff. All three are WSU graduates who now reside with their spouses in Washington state. 

Numerous UC Davis entomologists have received the coveted Woodworth award.

• 2025: Douglas Walsh (Washington State University professor and Extension specialist, PhD from UC Davis)
• 2023: Robert E. Page Jr. (Emeritus, UC Davis Department of Entomology professor and department chair, and provost emeritus, Arizona State University)
• 2020: Lynn Kimsey (UC Davis distinguished professor emerita and UC Davis doctoral alumna)
• 2016: Timothy Paine (UC Riverside professor emeritus and UC Davis doctoral alumnus)
• 2015: Thomas Scott (UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus)
• 2014: James Carey (UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus)
• 201l: Frank Zalom (UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus)
• 2010: Walter Leal (UC Davis distinguished professor and former department chair)
• 2009: Charles Summers, 1941-2021 (UC Davis research entomologist emeritus)
• 1998: Harry Kaya (UC Davis distinguished professor)
• 1991: Thomas Leigh, 1923-1993 (UC Davis professor emeritus)
• 1987: Robert Washino (UC Davis professor emeritus and former department chair, and associate dean of the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences)
• 1981: Harry Laidlaw Jr., 1907-2003  (UC Davis professor emeritus and former department chair)
• 1978: William Harry Lange Jr., 1912 – 2004 UC Davis professor emeritus)

PBESA covers 11 Western states, plus parts of Canada, Mexico and U.S. territories.