About the Editors
M. Susie Whittington
M. Susie Whittington, PhD, is a Distinguished Professor of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences and Executive Director of the Second-Year Transformational Experience Program at the Ohio State University. She was the first woman inducted as a Fellow in the American Association for Agricultural Education.
Dr. Whittington taught Methods of Teaching for twenty-five years. She created and taught for ten years a university general education course, Toward Cultural Proficiency. Online she teaches Advanced Methods of Teaching. For more than twenty-five years, she directed a research project, Improving the Cognitive Capacity of Students by Fully Engaging Professors in the Teaching and Learning Process, which received national recognition from her professional organizations. This body of work took Susie and her husband to India, Taiwan, and Kenya to build capacity in student-centered teaching. Dr. Whittington is the junior author of Methods of Teaching Agriculture and Toward Cultural Proficiency. Her teaching has been awarded the USDA National Teaching Excellence Award, and the North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture’s Teaching Award of Excellence. She received the Josephine Sitterle Failer Award for Outstanding Service to Students by the Ohio State University Alumni Association. Dr. Whittington earned her BS, MS, and PhD from the Ohio State University.
Rick D. Rudd
Rick D. Rudd, PhD, is the Community Viability Chair of Excellence and Professor of Agricultural and Extension Education (ALCE) at Virginia Tech. Rudd served as ALCE Department Head from August 2006–July 2019. He served as Interim Associate Dean and Director of Virginia Cooperative Extension and Professor in 2009–2010. He received his PhD from Virginia Tech in 1994. He earned his bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from the Ohio State University.
Rudd is currently serving as the Director for Workforce Education and Development in the Center for International Research, Education and Development at Virginia Tech. In this role, Rudd is responsible for seeking and securing international projects that utilize Virginia Tech’s expertise in agriculture, workforce education, youth development to cultivate social and economic advancement. Rick recently accepted the role of Faculty Principal in the Leadership and Social Change Residential College at Virginia Tech. This role is an addition to his other responsibilities. He and his wife live in the residence hall with more than three hundred students!
Dr. Rudd is working on community viability models that can lead to regenerative communities, community centered youth development, as well as methods for planning, designing, delivering, and evaluating international agricultural and workforce education and development programs. He has directed and codirected over ten million dollars in funded scholarship efforts. Rudd has international experience in Russia, Senegal, Tanzania, the Dominican Republic, South Sudan, Jordan, Palestine, and Honduras.
Jack Elliot
Jack Elliot, PhD, is the Regional Director for Africa for the Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture and Development. He serves on the USAID Higher Education Learning Network Steering Committee and leads the Council of Research and Evidence (CORE). He is a professor in the Texas A&M Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communications (ALEC) where he served two terms as the Department Head, providing leadership for almost 1,500 students, and 80 faculty and staff. As president of the International Association for Agricultural and Extension Education (AIAEE), he organized the first non-US annual conference in Trinidad and Tobago. He established and became the first AIAEE journal editor. Elliot received his BS and MS in Agricultural Education and Agricultural Economics from Washington State University. He earned his PhD in Agricultural Education from the Ohio State University. He was awarded the FFA National VIP Award in 2023.
Currently, he leads four USDA/FAS International Agricultural Education Fellowship Programs. Prior to his career in academia, Jack was a dryland grain farmer, cattle rancher, and operated a custom harvesting business in Belt, Montana, for seventeen years.
