Barry L. Bloyd (M.S. 1972) recently retired as the director of Oklahoma Field Office of USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. The Service publishes official estimates of crop production, livestock inventories, prices and value in Oklahoma. They do this through surveys of farmers and ranchers, objective yield surveys and administrative data. As director, Bloyd supervised a full-time staff of 18 and part-time staff of 80.

Jared Carlberg (Ph.D. 2002) says his training at OSU prepared him for his tenure-track academic position at the University of Manitoba. The department’s course offerings were broad enough to choose from several areas of specialization, while providing excellent instruction in core fields. Carlberg says the teaching experience he gained in the department was impressive to his employer when he was a candidate for his current position. Carlberg teaches courses in agribusiness, econometrics and industrial organization. He also conducts research on problems in agricultural marketing.

My current job responsibilities are:

1. Lead the efforts to critically evaluate the risk model implementation of state member banks, bank holding companies, non-bank subsidiaries and foreign banking organizations;
2. Assess the quality of the overall methodologies at the supervised institutions;
3. Present supervisory conclusion to management at various organization level, including top executives;
4. Monitor developments in capital markets through the supervision processl;
5. Develop peer perspective on institutions' overall risk methodologies and individual risk modeling efforts;
6. Coordinate activities and approaches to risk model evaluation with other regulatory bodies;
7. Communicate the cross-institutional perspective on leading-edge risk management techniques within the Federal Reserve and within the international supervisory community; and
8. Provide intellectual leadership to bank supervision policy circle.

Dan Childs (M.S. 1973) is an agricultural economist for the Noble Foundation, where he provides information to land owners and operators that help them make informed management decisions. He says the agricultural economics graduate program at OSU not only provided him with a master’s degree, but also provided the training and knowledge base to develop the skill set necessary for a career in the agribusiness world.

Dale Davis (B.S. 1967, M.S. 1982) earned both his undergraduate and graduate degrees at OSU in agricultural economics with an emphasis on quantitative analysis. He currently works as the director of commercialization and innovative product commercialization for Halliburton, where he has worked since 1982. Davis says that OSU’s graduate program gave him an opportunity to place into practice powerful analytical and business tools that are often only taught in theory within business schools.

Angela Dzata (Ph.D. 1993) is an assistant professor of economics at Alabama State University. She teaches a variety of courses, is a faculty senator and serves on many university, college and departmental committees. She believes economic education is the foundation of a healthy nation’s economy, a building block for a successful financial future and an empowerment of consumers’ economic well being. Dzata says that the academic training and challenging experiences she received at OSU effectively prepared her to evolve into who she is today.

John Wesley Elliott (M.S. 1997) serves as vice president of Legacy Bank, focusing primarily on agriculture lending. His duties include inspecting livestock and farm equipment, typing and closing loans and preparing loan proposals.

Robert J. Hogan, Jr. (Ph.D. 2003) deals with cutting edge technology and practical application as an extension economist for the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service. He says his training in agricultural economics prepared him for any marketing/management challenge he may face, and specifically prepared him to work one on one with producers by answering their questions and presenting research findings in a way that is easily understood and implemented. Hogan says that as a non-traditional student, getting back into the study groove was difficult, but his advisers and professors helped him to tailor a program specifically for his needs.

James "JJ" Jones (M.S. 1994) is an Area Agricultural Economics Specialist for the Oklahoma State Cooperative Extension Service. Jones helps farmers, ranchers and landowners to better understand balance sheets, cash flow statements, income statements, marketing and tax planning, among many other economic issues. He says his graduate degree training gave him the technical expertise and confidence he needs to explain and educate producers about complicated economic situations.

Muhammad Ehsan Khan (Ph.D. 1993) is a Project Economist with the Asian Development Bank based in Manila, Philippines. His responsibilities include working with the governments of Indonesia and Philippines in bringing development to agricultural and rural sectors. Khan was a key member of the bank’s response team for the Asian Tsunami on Dec. 26, 2005. As a part of the team focusing on Indonesia, the country to suffer the most devastation, his contributions included damage assessment and the development of a recovery strategy for the agricultural sector. Khan says OSU set him on the right path by equipping him with the theoretical background and analytical tools to meet requirements of his job.

Eric Kocher (Ph.D. 1989) is the Vice President of International Consumer Card Acquisition Capabilities for American Express. He says that when he joined American Express, the combined knowledge of economics, statistics, and hands-on experience with data analysis from OSU proved very useful and applicable in his work.

Dave Marcouiller (Ph.D. 1992) serves as a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning. With a joint appointment as a resource economist with the University of Wisconsin-Extension, much of his work centers on the practical application of knowledge to solve real-world problems in rural development throughout the Midwest. Marcouiller says that his years at OSU were transforming because even though his classes spent much time studying complex theoretical elements of macro and micro economics, the professors never allowed them to stray too far from reality. He says graduate training at OSU provided him the multi-disciplinary basis to be an effective teacher, researcher, and extension specialist.

Everett C. Olbert (M.S. 1994) is an agricultural statistician for the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service. After graduating, Olbert began working at the USDA-NASS’s Iowa Field Office and through the next 10 years of transfers and promotions received a position at the USDA-NASS Headquarters in Washington, D.C. He is responsible for designing, programming, deploying to 45 field offices and maintaining computerized data collection and editing survey instruments for NASS’s national survey program. Olbert says the training he received at OSU was instrumental in preparing him for his career and the professionalism and dedication he witnessed from the professors and staff at OSU have been a model in his career.

Kullapapruk Piewthongngam (Ph.D. 2000) is a lecturer and assistant dean for academic affairs at Khon Kaen University in Thailand. She is also an advisor for Thailand’s Department of Trade Negotiations. She says that her suggestions to the department have been directly formed through knowledge gained from taking classes such as international trade, macroeconomics, econometrics and policy analysis at OSU. Moreover, Piewthongngam believes that OSU is a home for students from all over the world, the experiences with different cultures and beliefs are priceless.

Per Pinstrup-Andersen (M.S., Ph.D.), a 2001 World Food Prize winner, 2005-2006 American Agricultural Economics Association President, Chairman of CGIAR Science Council and professor of Food, Nutrition and Public Policy at Cornell University, say the Ph.D. in agricultural economics he earned at OSU led to much success in his career. Pinstrup-Andersen, who has worked for the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, the International Fertilizer Development Center, and the International Food Policy Research Institute, encourages students who are interested in pursuing a professional career in economic and agricultural development to seek admission to the graduate program of agricultural economics at OSU.

Megan J. Provost (B.S. 2002, M.S. 2003) is the trade economist for the American Farm Bureau Federation in Washington, D.C. She says that without a doubt, she owes the job she has today to the education, experience and contacts she received during her time at OSU. Provost says that while not every person can truly say they enjoy what they do, she can; and she owes that to the guidance and support of the OSU agricultural economics department.

Hubertus Puaha (Ph.D. 2002) is a manager-economist for American Express. At American Express his responsibilities include building statistical models and decision science tools to support the Global Network Services group in delivering the best business decisions to American Express business partners worldwide. Puaha says that the agricultural economics program at OSU greatly helped him to achieve his career at American Express.

Nolan Quiros (Ph.D. 1997) is the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development Studies for the School for Field Studies in Costa Rica. As director, he coordinates the center’s curriculum, the research agenda of an interdisciplinary faculty team and the relationship between the Center and the government and private institutions in Costa Rica

Terri Raney (Ph.D 1986) is the Senior Economist and Editor for the Food and Agriculture Organization's publication, The State of Food and Agriculture. Published in five languages, this publication provides comprehensive data and analysis of the food and agricultural economy at the global, regional and national level. Raney has also served as faculty at Washington State University, and as Senior Economist with the Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture. She won the 2005 Quality of Communications award from the American Agricultural Economics Association for her report on agricultural biotechnology in The State of Food and Agriculture 2003-04. She says she credits her success in tackling the diverse range of subjects in The State of Food and Agriculture to her OSU education.

James W. Richardson (M.S. 1973, Ph.D. 1978) is known for his internationally recognized and award winning research program in economic theory and quantitative methods. Richardson is a Regents Professor at Texas A&M University and currently serves as co-director of the Agricultural and Food Policy Center. Richardson says that the professors at OSU challenged him to extend his mind, and the training he received was the springboard he needed to develop new techniques that made his job of teaching and doing risk analysis research easier and more accurate.

Ken Starks (M.S. 1978) currently serves as the President of BancFirst in Stillwater, where he supervises lending in the Stillwater area and oversees the overall administration of the bank including customer service, public relations, personnel and sales. Starks says he is proud to be a graduate of the OSU agricultural economics department and the training and curriculum has proven very beneficial in his work.

Do Van Xe (Ph.D. 2000) serves as the vice-chancellor of research and graduate affairs for Cantho University in Vietnam. Because Cantho University is located in an area where agricultural products are important to the economy, the knowledge Van Xe learned about agricultural economics at OSU helps him help society to solve economic problems in marketing, planning, human development and regional development.