Slosser Receives Regents Fellow Award

Writer: Tim W. McAlavy, (806) 746-6101, email: t-mcalavy@tamu.edu

VERNON – Jeffrey E. Slosser, professor and Texas Agricultural Experiment Station entomologist, was one of
seven faculty receiving the Texas A&M University System Regents Fellow Service Award from the Texas A&M
Board of Regents on Dec. 5 in College Station.

The award is the highest honor the university bestows on research faculty. It recognizes a lifetime commitment to
public service. Recipients are chosen from nine TAMUS universities, eight agricultural and engineering agencies
and its health science center. Each recipient receives a $9,000 award, a medallion and a commemorative
certificate.

Slosser is an internationally recognized cotton entomologist whose expertise covers ecology, population dynamics
and management of the boll weevil and cotton aphid. He has studied a diversity of pest and beneficial insects that
affect crops, livestock and rangeland. He is headquartered at Texas A&M’s Agricultural Research and Extension
Center here.

During his tenure as a research entomologist, Slosser has made significant scientific contributions to our
knowledge of biology, ecology and control of insects. For more than 30 years, he has strived to reduce chemical use
by emphasizing biological and cultural methods of insect control.

In addition to his cotton work in the mid-South, desert Southwest, and on the Texas Rolling Plains, Slosser has
extensively studied the biology and control of greenbugs and Russian wheat aphids -- two serious wheat pests in
the U.S.  He also developed management guidelines for vegetable pests that can infest cabbage, potatoes and
tomatoes; and for oilseed crops such as guar and canola.

He has identified the grasshopper species complex in juniper- and mesquite-dominated rangelands on the Rolling
Plains; including an evaluation of those that should be considered beneficial species, and pest species which
compete with livestock for forage resources. He is also developing sampling procedures and cultural control
recommendations for the cedar fly -- a biting fly that attacks livestock and wildlife.
 
Slosser served as past editor of The Southwestern Entomologist. He received the TAMUS Award in Excellence for
Off-Campus Research in 1990, and the Entomological Society of America Agricultural Recognition Award in
1994.  He has written or co-written more than 150 scientific publications; served as a consulting cotton
entomologist on the World Bank cotton project in Uzbekistan in 1996; and currently serves on the Texas Boll
Weevil Eradication Foundation’s technical committee. He has managed more than $1.3 million in research funds
during his career.

Slosser and his wife, Chris, have lived in Vernon since 1975.  They have twin daughters; Tamara, of Lubbock; and
Tracy, of Dallas.