William Parquette, a recently retired professor of practice in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), had a diverse, thrilling career in the intelligence community before joining the faculty at Penn State.

He held the highest security clearance and lived and traveled in almost every corner of the world. So how did he get from working internationally on highly classified operations to our own State College?

Parquette attended Northeastern University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. After college, he served 22 years in the Army working in field artillery. During his last few years in the military, he completed classified work as an operator.

He worked for Lockheed Martin for six years within the intelligence community as an operator, continuing with the work he was doing while on active duty.

His committee was the Foreign Denial and Deception Committee, or FDDC. The committee worked to uncover and determine what information foreign adversaries were trying to keep hidden from the United States.

He worked his way up to chairman, and one of his major duties was outreach.

“I did training all over the world with seminars a week or two long in different governments, different agencies, and different areas literally throughout the world,” Parquette said.

Parquette also ran a graduate certificate program for 13 years through the National Intelligence University, where he taught a student who ultimately got his PhD and came to Penn State to teach.

His student invited Parquette to guest lecture in the College of IST, and he began to visit frequently. After a few years of enjoying guest lecturing, one of the professors he was lecturing for suggested he apply.

Parquette didn’t believe he’d ever get the job.

“I’m not an academic. I’ve got a couple of master’s degrees, but I don’t have a PhD, and I never considered it myself, although I love teaching and I love dealing with students,” he said.

He was hired in 2019 and began teaching within the security risk analysis degree program, including classes surrounding terrorism, denial and deception, the introduction to security risk analysis, and the SRA Capstone course.

Because of his background and personal field experience, he was able to help students learn everything the career had to offer.

Parquette says working with students was one of the best parts of his career.

“I loved teaching. I really loved the interaction with the students. They challenged me; it’s rewarding, and I miss that interaction. I miss it,” Parquette said.

The change from the previous settings he was working in was “refreshing,” and he appreciated getting to settle down a little.

“I’ve either lived or worked in all but one continent,” Parquette said.

One of his favorite stories from his time in the Army is when he was a paratrooper and got to jump out of planes. He and his crew loaded up their plane in North Carolina, stopped in Sicily to refuel, and then flew directly above the Mediterranean Sea to Cairo to avoid Libyan air defense systems, according to Parquette.

Parquette was the jumpmaster in charge of the plane, and while he leaned out the door to make sure it was safe, he saw the Great Pyramids off in the distance.

“I can’t make that up,” Parquette said. “I could still feel the breeze and the wind, and I was the last one out of the aircraft.”

He also marvelled at the different spaces he got to enter and the briefings he attended over his career.

No matter how many times he attended one, he often left and thought, “I can’t believe I was just in there.”

“I had the security clearance and the badges to get into any U.S government building, anywhere in the world,” Parquette said.

Even before these impressive operations that most Americans can only wonder about, he still managed to hold intriguing jobs. In college, he was a private detective and a security guard at the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston, and he even worked at a dairy farm earlier in life.

Parquette explained that after so many years of saying “I used to work here,” his family began to question his stories.

“I think after a while they kind of got old and I’m not even sure they believed me,” Parquette said with a laugh. “I don’t blame them.”

Now, even after retiring from the university, Parquette is staying busy. He is working on multiple projects and an autobiographical book to capture his career and life. He is also continuing his love of teaching with more guest lecturing in his free time.

“I learn a lot,” Parquette said. “And I continue to learn every time I walk through a classroom.”