Penn State alumnus brings GIS background to agriculture leadership

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Jimmy Kroon’s work at the Delaware Department of Agriculture has changed over the years, but the focus has stayed rooted in the same place: helping people solve problems.

Kroon, a Penn State alumnus who earned his master of geographic information systems (MGIS) in 2011, recently was appointed deputy secretary of the Delaware Department of Agriculture after more than two decades with the agency. In the role, he helps oversee agricultural policy, boards and commissions and broader efforts tied to the future of agriculture in the state.

That work matters to him, he said, because agriculture reaches far beyond the farm.

“Food is something everybody cares about, because everybody eats,” Kroon said. “It’s a huge part of our industry, economy and land use in Delaware.”

Kroon joined the department in 2003 as a summer employee and stayed, taking on a range of roles as his career developed. Along the way, he built experience in fieldwork, GIS and program leadership, eventually stepping into positions with broader responsibility across the agency.

Kroon said one of the realities that has stayed with him throughout that work is how closely agriculture is tied to people’s daily lives.

“It’s people’s lifestyle as well as their occupation,” Kroon said. “For people who are in agriculture, it’s quite often their whole life, from sunrise to sunset.”

That has made the work especially meaningful at a time when many farm operations are under economic pressure.

“A lot of farm operations really struggle to be profitable,” Kroon said. “We’re trying to figure out how to help, whether through financial programs like low-interest loans or by improving agricultural markets so producers can sell their products for more. That’s really what’s needed.”

Long before he moved into senior leadership, Kroon found himself drawn to GIS as a practical way to connect his interests in the environment and technology. He began using GIS in field crop surveys for pests and plant diseases, then decided to build on that work by enrolling in Penn State’s online MGIS program while continuing to work full time.

“GIS is really a way to combine my interest in the natural world and computers,” Kroon said. “I’ve always found computers intuitive, and I’ve always seen value in combining different areas of expertise. GIS gave me a way to bring those interests together through technical problem-solving tied to the environment and the world around us.”

That mix of natural resources work and GIS is also something Kroon shares with his spouse, Lori Brown, who earned her MGIS degree from Penn State in 2020 and works as an environmental scientist at the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.

Kroon said part of what interested him most was how GIS could put geographic data and analysis into the hands of more people, not just technical specialists.

“Web applications are the portal where people who are not GIS experts do their own work,” Kroon said. “They get access to their own data; they can even perform their own analysis now. It’s really been a revolution in who is a GIS user.”

After graduating with his MGIS degree, Kroon said he kept thinking about how GIS could be useful not only in his own work, but across the department he worked in.

That interest helped lead to a new opportunity in 2015, when the department created a GIS coordinator position. In that role, Kroon worked with programs across the agency, including forestry, pest survey and pesticide operations.

He said one of the projects he was most proud of was creating a GIS database that improved how the department organized and accessed easement records and monitoring information. The system brought key records together in one place and made them easier for staff to use in both the office and the field.

“All the monitoring is done using field maps now,” Kroon said. “We can click on the boundary, open the mobile app, take photos, record the information and store it right there. Now staff can open a web application and view the data themselves.”

In 2020, Kroon was promoted to lead the department’s farmland preservation program, a role he held until his appointment as deputy secretary this year. Even as his work moved further from day-to-day GIS use, he said some of the Penn State coursework that stayed with him most was not limited to technical training.

“Some of the coursework I found most valuable, even after I stopped using GIS every day, was systems analysis and project management,” Kroon said. “Those courses focused on the people side of GIS projects, but every project has a people side, and in many ways that can matter as much as the technology.”

That perspective, he said, continues to shape how he approaches leadership and problem-solving.

“If you can take a problem and break it down into steps and understand the logic behind it, that helps outside of coding, too,” Kroon said. “If something isn’t working, you have to ask where the break point is and what is causing it to go wrong.”

Kroon also stayed closely connected to Penn State after finishing his degree. While working full time with the Delaware Department of Agriculture, he remained involved with the online geospatial education program, first as a grading assistant, then later teaching GEOG 863, the program’s web application development course and advising capstone students.

He said teaching became one of the most rewarding parts of that connection.

“I really loved working with students,” Kroon said. “I always liked interacting with students and being able to provide feedback and guidance. It’s been rewarding to hear from students later and learn that the course shaped the way they think about GIS and how they use it in their full-time jobs.”

This summer will be Kroon’s last teaching semester with Penn State, at least for now, as the demands of his new role continue to grow.

Now, as deputy secretary, Kroon is working at a broader scale than ever before. The tools and responsibilities have changed, but the through line remains the same: using information, systems and problem-solving to support an industry that shapes communities across Delaware.