Club History
    In 1862, Colorado State University opened its doors for the first time.  Fifty years later, in 1912, CSU had its first club: The Entomology Club.  Clarence P. Gillette, CSU’s first entomologist, established The Entomology Club, giving it the distinction of being CSU’s oldest student organization.  At that time the club consisted of four students and four faculty members.  In 1925, the club adopted its founder’s name and became the Gillette Club.  From 1936 until 1944, the club carried a different name:  The Gillette Infestation, but the name was changed back to the Gillette Club in 1945.  Today, the official name is the Gillette Entomology Club (GEC).
    Although the name has changed over the years, the purpose remains the same: to promote education and enthusiasm in the field of entomology.

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Our Philosophy
    The Gillette Entomology Club serves to provide open avenues for interdisciplinary communication, education, and enthusiasm among all people interested in insects and their relatives.  The Club hopes to open windows into the fascinating world of arthropods through monthly meetings, poster presentations, community outreach, guest seminar speakers, and the World Wide Web. The GEC enjoys dissecting information on entomological issues such as natural history, insect ecology, insect behavior, conservation biology, and insect pest management.  Club membership is diverse.  Faculty, undergraduate, and graduate members represent many backgrounds including forestry, plant pathology, weed science, fisheries and wildlife biology, biology, zoology, entomology, microbiology, liberal arts, and several other disciplines.

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What We Do
Community Outreach/Extension:
    Members present entomological information to schools and other groups using puppet shows, insects from our insect museum and zoo, which are located in the Plant Sciences Building.  If you are in the northern Colorado area, and have an interest in using any of these activities for a K-12 setting, please see the Products link.

CSU Events:
    We participate in Ag Day (College of Agriculture) and other pre-game events at Hughes Stadium each fall by holding cockroach races.  This is an extremely popular event that always seems to attract the most press attention during Ag Days.  This is an interactive and very fun way to promote our organization and to educate the public.  Club members also enjoy distinction in the Fort Collins community through our enthusiastic participation in the annual CSU Homecoming parade.  Participation has earned the Club several awards over the years for fun and creative float entries and the ever-popular Sweep Net Drill Team.

Seminars:
    Each year, the GEC sponsors noted speakers to visit CSU.  The seminars presented by each speaker cover a wide variety of entomological topics.  It is also a unique opportunity for students to meet and interact with notable people, where often such contact is limited to conferences held outside of Colorado.

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