Steven L. Klose, Ph.D., professor and Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service economist, has been appointed the new associate department head for AgriLife Extension in the Department of Agricultural Economics of Texas A&M’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Klose will take on this role upon the retirement of Mark Waller, Ph.D., on Aug. 31, after a 34-year career with Texas A&M AgriLife and the Department of Agricultural Economics.
About Steven Klose
Originally from Haskell, Texas, Klose graduated from Texas A&M University in 1992 with a bachelor’s degree in agricultural economics. He also received master’s and doctoral degrees in agricultural economics from Texas A&M in 1995 and 2001, respectively.
Klose has extensive experience and expertise in farm management, strategic business planning, risk analysis, crop insurance, policy and finance. He is currently serving as coordinator of the FARM Assistance program, a highly intensive AgriLife Extension effort to assist agricultural producers individually with strategic planning and risk management analysis. For more than 22 years, FARM Assistance has provided strategic decision information for over 2,800 crop and livestock operations across Texas.
“Dr. Klose is coordinator of the FARM Assistance program that supports the broader Texas Risk Management Education Program efforts of AgriLife Extension,” said Rodolfo Nayga, head of the Department of Agricultural Economics. “Building on the department’s solid foundation of farm-level simulation modeling, Steven has been responsible for the research, design and development of the FARM Assistance Model and Extension Program.”
Klose also coordinates enterprise budget publications and the Texas Custom Rates project, as well as serving as co-coordinator of farm management content for Southern Ag Today — a region-wide collaborative outreach effort of the Southern Region Extension Economists. Klose is also a member of the Agricultural and Food Policy Center in the Department of Agricultural Economics and works with this group in applied policy research and farm-level simulation modeling to determine the implications of policy alternatives on farms and ranches across the country.
“We are excited to have Dr. Klose as the new associate department head for AgriLife Extension. His knowledge and experiences in program management and supervision, as well as his analytical and organizational abilities, will greatly benefit the department and the people of Texas,” Nayga said. “We also wish the very best for Dr. Waller and are grateful for his more than three decades of service to the department, university and state.”
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