Ron Russell
Ron Russell grew up on a small cattle farm in Sturgeon, Missouri. Raised by two teachers, he developed an appreciation and passion for teaching at an early age. After receiving his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Missouri, Russell accepted a lecturer position working in what was then known as the Meat Science and Muscle Biology Laboratory in the UW–Madison Department of Animal Sciences. He recently retired as a senior lecturer after 36 years of teaching and outreach service to the university. He had a tremendous impact on hundreds of students, teaching courses such as Animal Growth, Composition and Evaluation; Introduction to Meat Science and Technology; and Meat-Animal Evaluation, Products and Marketing. He was able to utilize his relationships with livestock producers and meat processors to enhance his teaching efforts by providing hands-on experiences for students. He coached the university’s collegiate meat animal evaluation teams, coordinated the annual national collegiate meat animal evaluation contest, served as a county and state fair carcass judge, and supported a variety of other animal agriculture events and activities in Wisconsin. Russell has been a passionate and highly visible ambassador for the UW meat program around the state, and he also represented UW–Madison internationally with teaching and consulting assignments in Costa Rica, Russia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.