Starting off studying education, Jessica Jordan wound up embarking on a career in occupational safety and health.
Jordan has now come full circle as the department chair and associate professor of Occupational Safety and Environmental Technology at Odessa College where she earned her associate degree in the same field.
She went on to earn her bachelor’s and master’s from Columbia Southern University in Occupational Safety and Health and she’s all but a dissertation away for her doctorate of education in curriculum and technology from Liberty University.
Jordan started at UTPB, but “that one just didn’t take.”
Born in Snyder, she lived in Gail but moved to Odessa when she was 18 months old.
Jordan worked for Schlumberger as the health safety and environmental specialist working for them in Laredo, Hobbs, N.M., and Midland.
“I was a contract trainer for them first and flew back and forth. Horseheads, New York, Colorado, Louisiana, West Virginia and did training for them in 2009, and 2010. And then they hired me full-time in December of 2010 and sent me to Laredo, so I stayed there for 18 months and that’s when the Eagleford was really picking up,” she said.
Jordan had never been to Laredo before, but said she worked with some amazing people.
“(I) loved the guys that I worked with there. It was just tough because my husband was still here working for Schlumberger and I was down there by myself. The kids would come back and forth between the two of us,” Jordan said.
Together, she and husband Archie have eight children, nine grandchildren and a great-grandson. Her husband also worked for Schlumberger.
Jordan said she decided to go into teaching after her husband retired. He was a safety specialist as well. “When he retired, it just wasn’t fun anymore, so I started looking to make a move since he was leaving. I did hazardous waste consulting for a little while, but I was traveling a lot,” Jordan said.
She found the advertisement for the safety instructor at OC and applied for it. Jordan started as an adjunct professor in the summer of 2016 and was full-time faculty that fall.
While Archie was taking classes online from OC she decided the courses looked interesting.
“I was quizzing him one night on his DOT because he had a test coming up … and I’m like, this is cool. I like this,” Jordan recalled.
Her husband told her to take the class and just get the certificate if that’s all she wanted.
“I was hooked,” Jordan said.
Over the years, the courses have changed quite a bit.
“What we’re working on right now is to marry our program with the Associate Safety Professional blueprint for the ASP Professional certification. If we can do that, and with (OC President) Dr. (Gregory) Williams’ blessing, what we would like to do is apply to be a QAP school, which means that we would have a Qualified Academic Program,” Jordan said.
ASP is a professional designation. You have to sit for an exam.
“If we’re able to achieve the QAP, then our students would skip that exam. They would earn a graduate safety professional designation and then be able to sit for their certified safety professional exam. The CSP is kind of the gold standard in our field,” Jordan said.
Being a Qualified Academic Program means OC’s program teaches students everything that they would need for the Associate Safety Professional certification.
There are anywhere from 300 to 450 students every semester.
“We have students from across the United States,” Jordan said.
She added that their pathway is designed for a student to become “a very well-rounded safety professional.”
“We don’t focus just on oil and gas. We focus on a wide variety of industries,” Jordan said. “That was one of the challenges that Dr. Williams gave me when I first applied to be department chair. He didn’t want the focus to be just oil and gas. He wanted us to have oil and gas, but also include other industries where our students could and would know that they could take this as a very portable degree anywhere, in any field, or any industry.”
In her office, Jordan has different courses written on a whiteboard that show the variety of classes offered.
“In toxicology, we actually look at the chemicals and how they would affect the worker in the field. We look at if they’re a mutagen, or a carcinogen, or a teratogen, or if they affect you neurologically; if they attack your organs,” Jordan said.
“And one thing about our degree path, it covers all three areas of what a safety professional is usually asked to do. We have safety; we have health; and then we also have environmental classes, as well. A lot of times, companies will hire someone for safety, and you wear all three hats. You wear that health hat as an industrial hygienist. You sample air; you sample personal air; you sample air in a workspace; you may do water analysis. You’re taking care of a lot of different things as that safety professional, so we’ve made sure that our degree was very well rounded. You get the safety. You get the health classes; ergonomics; toxicology; industrial hygiene. We have the management classes, so if you move up into the company, you learn how to do cost-benefit analysis and record keeping,” Jordan said.
She added that they look at their workforce as worker-athletes because if they’re not healthy and not moving properly, they’re going to get injured and they’re not going to have a lot of longevity.
Workers may look at her like she’s the regulatory police, but when something goes wrong she’s the first phone call they make and it doesn’t matter what time of day or night it is.
“Then you load up and you go to the field and you start the investigation. You start pulling the data. You collect the evidence and show them what happened and we start talking about how we’re not going to have that type of accident again,” Jordan said. “We start that risk assessment and that hazard analysis process” to figure out why the accident happened.
In Occupational Safety and Environmental Technology, also take samples of soil, water, air, chemical, sludge and more.
Currently, Jordan said she’s seeing more students move into the bachelor’s and master’s programs.
“We have a lot of our students that are moving into our BAAS (Bachelor of Applied Arts and Sciences) program and now they’re leaving that program and transferring to Columbia Southern University to get their master’s degree,” Jordan said.
Additionally, a lot of students are already working in the field when they start their degree at OC so they can move up.
Jessica Jordan is an outstanding professor and leader at Odessa College. As the coordinator of both the associate degree and bachelor degree OSET programs, she brings a wealth of hands-on safety experience to effectively train the future talent in the safety industry in the Permian Basin. Her leadership extends beyond the OSET department; and most recently, she led the development of the Quality Enhancement Plan which is required by the regional accreditation agency.
OC Vice President of Institutional Effectiveness Janice M. Hicks said Jordan is an outstanding professor and leader.
“As the coordinator of both the associate degree and bachelor degree OSET programs, she brings a wealth of hands-on safety experience to effectively train the future talent in the safety industry in the Permian Basin. Her leadership extends beyond the OSET department; and most recently, she led the development of the Quality Enhancement Plan which is required by our regional accreditation agency,” Hicks said in an email.
