Olathe speakers
Joye Gordon
Joye Gordon, associate professor of mass communications and journalism at the A.Q.
Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Kansas State University, studies
risk communication -- communication about physical hazards.
In October 2005, she and others traveled to her home state of Louisiana to gather information regarding how residents responded to evacuation orders issued with Hurricane Katrina.
Gordon, Lisa Harrington, a K-State professor of geography, and three K-State graduate students spent more than a week in southeast Louisiana gathering accounts from survivors to identify factors associated with compliance or rejection of evacuation orders with the hope that the information collected will, in the future, help in developing more accurate models of decision making and personal hazard mitigating behavior.
Throughout her career, Gordon also has been very active in researching and communicating about food-related hazards. She has been an active member of the Food Science Institute since 2001.
In 2004, Gordon joined other noted food safety experts at University College in Cork, Ireland, and addressed the conference on the challenges of communicating about food. She also was one of two U.S. invitees to attend a special workshop funded by the European Union Food Information Council in Cork in June 2004.
In 2003, Gordon, along with three other researchers from K-State, came together with the goal of educating the elderly on the prevention of food-borne illness. The group was awarded a $434,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Gordon served as the principal investigator of the project, which consisted of three phases: research, extension education and formal teaching.
Gordon received her bachelor's degree in finance from Nicholls State University in 1987. She received her master's degree in communication/public relations from Louisiana-Lafayette University in 1990 and her doctorate from Purdue University in 1999.
Prior to coming to K-State, Gordon served as an instructor in the department of mass communications at Nicholls State.
Jason D. Ellis
Jason Ellis’s career has focused on food, agriculture and food safety. He has experience
working with food safety in all aspects of the food chain, from producer through foodservice
to the consumer. In addition to being a faculty member with the Agricultural Communications
and Journalism program at Kansas State University, Ellis also has an appointment with
the KSU Agricultural Experiment Station where his focus includes effective communications,
issues management and crisis communications to help develop, complement and maintain
a technology transfer system that communicates food safety information. Ellis is a
collaborating partner with the Risk Analysis Group at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s
Food Processing Center.
Ellis has conducted training risk communications both domestically and internationally. He has presented risk communications workshops in nearly every Central and South American country in cooperation with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture.
Prior to joining the faculty at Kansas State Ellis was an assistant professor of agricultural journalism at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for five years. He has worked in marketing communications for animal health companies servicing the beef, dairy, pork, poultry, equine, companion animal, and aquaculture industries.
Ellis has a bachelor’s degree in agricultural journalism and animal science from Kansas State University, a master’s degree in meat science and a Ph.D. in agricultural education, both from Iowa State University.
Scott Rusk
Scott Rusk's career has been focused for more than 25 years on the operational and
management side of biocontainment facilities supporting active research programs.
Rusk has advanced hands-on experience maintaining and managing biocontainment facilities. He was assistant center director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Animal Disease Center -- the department's largest animal disease research facility -- and also worked as a biocontainment specialist for Flad & Associates before coming to K-State.
Prior to being named director of operations at Pat Roberts Hall, Rusk was associate director for operations at K-State's BRI – Biosecurity Research Institute. Rusk will continue to work in that capacity, but will also be responsible for leadership and management in support of research and training and education programs.
Rusk has a bachelor's degree in biology from the University of Northern Iowa and a master's in veterinary microbiology and preventive medicine from Iowa State University.