Nancy Bates is the senior researcher for Survey Methodology at the U.S. Census Bureau. She graduated from OU with a bachelor’s degree in public administration in 1985 and with a master’s degree in sociology in 1987. Bates joined the U.S. Census Bureau in 1988 as a survey statistician and has spent the past 25 years in a variety of positions across four different directorates at the agency. She conducts research to reduce survey measurement error, improve coverage and response to censuses and surveys, and facilitate the bureau’s transition toward adaptive survey design.

Bates serves on the Executive Council for the American Association for Public Opinion research where she is secretary-treasurer elect. She currently is the president-elect of the Washington Statistical Society and publications officer and past program chair of the Government Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association. Bates recently served as co-chair of the 2012 American Statistical Association International Conference on Hard to Reach Populations. She also is a member of the Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology and, in 2011-2012, she served as a member of the Committee on National Statistics, National Academy of Sciences panel: Nonresponse in Social Science Surveys: A Research Agenda.

Bates has coauthored book chapters and published in a variety of social science journals including Public Opinion Quarterly, Contexts, Survey Methodology, Survey Practice, Journal of Economic and Social Measurement and Journal of Official Statistics. Bates also is an associate editor of the Journal of Official Statistics published by Statistics Sweden.

Her Distinguished Alumna presentation, "An insider view: social science research methods and the planning, monitoring, and evaluation of the 2010 U.S. Census," will be presented beginning at 1:30 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 21, in the Regents Room, Oklahoma Memorial Union.

Kenneth Gage is the chief of the Flea-Borne Diseases Activity in the Bacterial Diseases Branch, Division of Vector-Borne Diseases, National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. He received his bachelor’s degree in biology from Wichita State University in 1980. He pursued his master’s degree in aquatic entomology in 1983 under the direction of Harley Brown and went on to attain his doctoral degree in 1987 in medical entomology and disease ecology under the mentorship of Cluff Hopla.

Gage received postdoctoral fellowships on tick-borne diseases at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas and the National Institutes of Health’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana. In 1992 he accepted a position in the Plague Section at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Vector-Borne Diseases. He later became chief of this section and in his current role as chief of CDC’s Flea-Borne Diseases Activity, Gage continues to supervise many of CDC’s efforts to monitor, prevent and control plague, as well as other vector-borne and zoonotic diseases.

In addition to his disease prevention and research activities in the United States, Gage often has served as a short-term consultant on plague and other rodent-borne diseases for the World Health Organization and its regional affiliates in many countries. His work has been recognized with several Special Service Awards from the Department of Health and Human Services, including those for responses to the 1993 hantavirus outbreak in the American Southwest, the 1994 plague outbreak in India, a 2002 tularemia outbreak in prairie dogs in an exotic pet facility, and a plague outbreak in Uganda in 2007.

His Distinguished Alumnus presentation "The Spread of Plague in Ancient and Modern Times," will be at 1:30 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 21, Scholars Room, Oklahoma Memorial Union.

P. Kyle McCarter is the William Foxwell Albright Professor of Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the Johns Hopkins University.

McCarter graduated from OU in 1967, receiving a bachelor’s degree in English. In 1974 he received his doctoral degree from Harvard University, where he studied in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures specializing in Hebrew Bible and Northwest Semitic philology. For the following 11 years he served on the faculty of the University of Virginia, except for a one-year interlude spent as a visiting lecturer at Harvard University and Dartmouth College. He came to Johns Hopkins in 1985 as the first occupant of the newly-created Albright Chair in the Department of Near Eastern Studies.

McCarter spent much of the early part of his research career writing his two-volume commentary on the Books of Samuel in the Anchor Bible. His translation of I and II Samuel was the first to make use of the then-unpublished evidence of the Dead Sea scrolls, three fragmentary manuscripts from Qumran Cave 4. This work led to further study of ancient manuscripts, including a handbook on the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, comparing of ancient biblical manuscripts written in Hebrew, Greek and other languages in order to establish the original reading of a text. His most recent contribution to the study of the Dead Sea scrolls is a new edition of the Copper Scroll, the most enigmatic of the Qumran manuscripts.

More recently, McCarter devoted an increasing portion of his work to the analysis and publication of newly found inscriptions found in excavation at various sites in the Middle East. He serves as epigraphist, a consultant on epigraphy, for a number of ongoing archaeological projects, both American and Israeli, at sites in Israel, such as Tel Zayit and Tel Beth Shemesh, both in the Judean shephelah, and Tel Ashkelon, on the coast north of Gaza. All of these sites have produced significant inscriptions dating to the last part of the second millennium B.C., a critical period in the history of the alphabet.

His Distinguished Alumnus presentation "The Origin and Early History of the Alphabet," will be at 3 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 21, Regents Room, OMU.

Angela Riley is professor of law at the UCLA School of Law, and director of the UCLA American Indian Studies Center. She also is the director of UCLA's joint J.D./M.S. degree program in law and American Indian Studies. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in letters from OU in 1995 and went on to receive her juris doctorate from Harvard.

Her research focuses on issues related to indigenous peoples’ rights, with a particular emphasis on cultural property and Native governance, and her work has been published in the Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, California Law Review, Washington Law Review and others.

After clerking for Chief Judge T. Kern of the Northern District of Oklahoma, she worked as a litigator at Quinn Emanuel in Los Angeles, specializing in intellectual property litigation. In 2003 she was selected to serve on her tribe’s Supreme Court, becoming the first woman and youngest Justice of the Supreme Court of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation of Oklahoma. In 2010, she was elected as Chief Justice.

She was recently appointed to serve on the United Nations - Indigenous Peoples’ Partnership Policy Board, which is a commitment to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and calls for its full realization through the mobilization of financial and technical assistance. She also is also an evidentiary hearing officer for the Morongo Band of Mission Indians.

Her Distinguished Alumna presentation, "Cultural Property in a Globalized World," will be at 3 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 21, Scholars Room, OMU.

Judy Berry is the chair of the Department of Psychology at Tulsa University. She has been a member of A&S Board of Visitors since 2004 and chaired the Kaleidoscope Committee for six years. Under her leadership the committee created a fun and festive atmosphere for our returning alumni to be honored and for funds to be raised to aide our Leaderships Scholars. Each year she selected a creative theme to build the event around and helped to increase the amount of money raised for scholarships each year.

During her tenure on the board of visitors, Judy also mentored many students from our Leadership Scholars program.

John Long graduated from OU with a degree in history. He went on to serve a long and decorated career in the U.S. Army. He joined the A&S Board of Visitors in 2006 and has a rich history of mentorship to seven of the college's Leadership Scholars.

John has applied his superior leadership skills from a life of military service to his role as one of our most outstanding mentors to our students. He goes far beyond his assigned mentor duties and continues to do so beyond his students graduation, and well into their chosen careers. He has attended their weddings, military promotions, family reunions and vacations. He stays in constant contact with all of his current and former mentees.

Beyond serving as an outstanding mentor to our students, John has recruited other members to the board of visitors, and participated in panels for students on topics covering life after graduation and running your own business.