Dr. Kirsten Pearsons is a distance education adjunct faculty member with a focus on Integrated Pest Management (IPM). She is passionate about improving the efficacy, sustainability, and safety of pest management strategies used in agriculture and ornamental plant production. She has had an eclectic career path, which she hopes she can use to highlight the diverse opportunities that exist for students with a background in Integrated Pest Management.

Kirsten studied environmental toxicology at the University of California, Davis, before moving to the entomology graduate program at the Pennsylvania State University. During her PhD, she studied how sustainable farming practices and different pest management strategies interactively affect soil health and soil arthropod communities. After her PhD, she spent two years working on a long-term agronomic field trial at the Rodale Institute, exploring the agronomic and economic benefits and challenges associated with organic field crop production. With this broader understanding of agriculture, she accepted a Farm Advisor position with the University of California to support small-scale farmers along California’s Central Coast. She transferred to an Integrated Pest Management / Entomology Advisor position to re-focus on her expertise before taking a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to live in New Zealand for six months. Upon returning to the United States, she accepted an IPM coordinator position for a wholesale ornamental plant nursery. In her free time, you can find her running, hiking, or mountain biking in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest.