Erica Irlbeck, Ed.D.

Originally raised in Northwest Oklahoma, Dr. Erica Irlbeck was shaped by an agricultural upbringing on her family’s wheat and cattle farm. Youth organizations such as 4-H and FFA were a large part of her childhood, but it was her family heritage that inspired her love for agriculture.  
  
Irlbeck earned her undergraduate degree in agricultural communications from Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma. She then built a career in broadcast journalism and public relations. She worked for various news media outlets such as KLBK-TV, Clear Channel Radio, and AgDay Television. Irlbeck returned to academia and completed her master’s and doctoral degrees in agricultural communications at Texas Tech University. 
 
Those experiences in broadcast journalism gave Irlbeck a firsthand understanding of the importance of risk and crisis communication in the agricultural communications discipline, which led to her dissertation project and inspired her to write The Crisis Communications Guide for Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources. Although risk and crisis communication is her primary focus, Irlbeck’s research also explores broadcast and agricultural communications curriculum. She is primarily a qualitative researcher but also expanded her horizon to include survey research. 
 
As the Associate Dean for Outreach and Engagement in Davis College, Irlbeck connects college and university collaborators with one another and external partners. In her role, she also provides oversight of all outreach and engagement for the Davis College. Irlbeck specializes in community-engaged teaching and service-learning workshops across the college. She excels in reporting research findings in ways diverse community audiences can understand and learn from. 
 
Irlbeck’s contributions to the field have received many notable accolades, including the Distinguished Agricultural Communications Educator Award from American Association for Agricultural Education (2024), the Teaching & Student Engagement award from USDA Excellence in Teaching (2021), and the Chancellor’s Council Distinguished Teaching Award (2020).