Contact: Carol Gifford

STARKVILLE, Miss.--Domenico “Mimmo” Parisi, executive director of the National Strategic Planning and Analysis Research Center (NSPARC) at Mississippi State University, has been appointed to the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) by Gov. Phil Bryant. He will serve through June 30, 2017.

SREB is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that works with 16 member states to improve public education at every level, from pre-K through Ph.D. programs. The board includes the governor and four gubernatorial appointees from each member state.

“It is an honor to represent the state of Mississippi and MSU, and I appreciate the opportunity to serve on this board,” said Parisi.

“I intend to share information about our successes in education and listen to others so we can learn about the advances in neighboring states,” he said.

A professor of demography and applied statistics in the sociology department at MSU, Parisi founded and continues to lead NSPARC, a multidisciplinary research center that uses smart data and analytical techniques to connect social science research to real-world problems. He also is the director of Mississippi’s longitudinal data clearinghouse, also known as LifeTracks.

SREB was created in 1948 by Southern governors and legislators who recognized the link between advancing education and improving economic vitality. Member states are Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. (For more, see http://www.sreb.org.)

For more information on NSPARC, visit http://www.nsparc.msstate.edu. For more information on LifeTracks, visit www.lifetracks.ms.gov.

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.