Allison Taisey Earns IPM Award

GENEVA, N.Y. —  “Engaging.” “Always ready to help.” “Enthusiastic and visionary.” It’s praise like this that has earned Allison Taisey an Excellence in IPM award from the New York State Integrated Pest Management (NYS IPM) Program at Cornell University.

 

 

“Allie has an infectious humor, powerful work ethic, deep knowledge base, and easy confidence in communicating with all sorts of audiences,” says Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann, NYS IPM’s community IPM coordinator. She’s an outstanding example of what the principles of the Excellence in IPM award reflect.”

 

Beginning in 2008, Taisey created NYS IPM’s What’s Bugging You and FAQs for Bed Bugs, still two of the most popular links on the program’s website. At the same time she worked for the Northeastern IPM Center (NEIPM), leading training workshops for urban pest managers that had attendees learning with their hands as well as their heads. How? By decking out classrooms with an abundance of real-world household goods, then getting attendees to “think like a bug” as they homed in on the hidey-holes of problem pests.

 

Pests like cockroaches. Lice. Bed bugs — especially bed bugs. “She made it look easy,” says former NEIPM colleague Susannah Reese. Underlying it all: Taisey’s passion for people — especially for urban housing residents who might find it hard to have a sense of ownership for dwellings they don’t own. Yet a sense of shared ownership is crucial in solving some of the toughest pest puzzles that people face. Taisey helped provide that sense of ownership through her work at www.stoppests.org, funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

 

Each year, the Excellence in IPM award recognizes exceptional IPM practitioners who do exceptional work, says NYS IPM director Jennifer Grant. “As the nominations come in, we’re reminded again of the dedication and determination of the Allie Taisey’s of the world — people whose work truly makes a difference,” says Grant. “A difference not just for New Yorkers, but for people all over North America.”

 

That “far beyond” part is particularly apropos now, as Taisey recently took the lead of the Quality Pro program for the National Pest Management Association in Farifax, Virginia. It’s qualities like this that Robert Corrigan, senior research scientist with the New York City Department of Health, had in mind when he noted that Taisey will become “ one of urban IPM's future superstars”

 

Taisey received her award on March 25, 2015 at the “Getting More Green in Professional Pest Management” session during the 8th International IPM Symposium in Salt Lake City, Utah — one of many sessions that Taisey had, of course, organized. NYS IPM promotes low-impact ways to deal with pests. Learn more at nysipm.cornell.edu.