Joseph Parsons, M.S. ’95
Earlier this summer, the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) appointed Joseph L. Parsons, the first M.S. graduate of the University of Maryland’s Joint Program in Survey Methodology (JPSM), its next administrator.
Parsons has been with NASS for the last 37 years, most recently serving as its acting administrator, and before that, as an associate administrator.
“I am honored to have the opportunity to continue to lead the great and dedicated people at NASS as their Administrator … I am truly excited for the future of NASS and look forward to continuing to serve America’s producers,” said Parsons in a release.
It was through NASS that Parsons heard about the JPSM program in the first place. One day, while working at a field office and taking statistics classes in Nebraska, he received a call from a NASS administrator who told him he should leave the program he was a part of and join Maryland’s JPSM program. At first, he hesitated due to being halfway through another program and wife partially through her studies too, but his wife told him he “can’t say no to the administrator,” and so Parsons and his wife moved to Fairfax, Virginia and Parsons became a part of the first M.S. cohort of JPSM.
About that time, he remembers discussions about JPSM’s logo design and driving in a car with manual transmission from Virginia to College Park, staying in Lefrak Hall for the majority of the day to study and avoid rush-hour traffic.
Parsons recalled some of these details at JPSM’s 30th Anniversary Ceremony, and also expressed his appreciation for JPSM.
“Every one of my instructors were awesome … the amount of knowledge and experience they had was just incredible,” he said. “The program has given me a framework by which to address all sorts of challenging problems, in surveying farmers, ranchers, and agribusiness men and women, and in making sense of administrative data.”
In his role as administrator, Parsons leads NASS, which is the federal statistical agency responsible for producing official data about U.S. agriculture, and that is committed to providing timely, accurate and useful statistics in service to U.S. agriculture.
Parsons grew up on a family dairy farm in southwestern Missouri and worked on several farming operations throughout high school and college. He attended the University of Missouri-Columbia for his bachelor’s degree and graduated with honors in agricultural economics. He then earned a master’s degree in survey methodology from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1995.
Parsons was appointed to the Senior Executive Service in 2011 after completing USDA’s Senior Executive Candidate Development Program and American University’s Key Executive Leadership Certificate Program. As part of his leadership training, he served a detail as a visiting executive at Statistics Canada.
Parsons other senior executive roles include serving as chair of USDA’s Agricultural Statistics Board, director of the NASS Methodology Division, and NASS’ Chief Information Officer. Parsons’ federal service has also included serving as chief data officer, senior research statistician, and providing leadership in multiple field offices.
Professor Partha Lahiri, JPSM’s Director, said, "Joe’s leadership role at NASS not only highlights his remarkable achievements but also reflects the strength and impact of our JPSM program. We are incredibly proud of his success and his ongoing commitment to serving NASS. Congratulations to Joe, on this well-deserved recognition. His story is an inspiring example of how our alumni continue to make a significant difference in their fields and in their communities.
This article originally appeared on the Joint Program in Survey Methodology's website.
