Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff
ALLEN L. SCHIRM (Chair) is vice president and director of human services research at Mathematica Policy Research. His principal research interests include small-area estimation, census methods, and sample and evaluation design, with application to studies of child well-being and welfare, food and nutrition, and education policy. For the National Research Council Committee on National Statistics, he has served on the Panel on the Design of the 2010 Census Program of Evaluations and Experiments, the Panel on Research on Future Census Methods, the Panel on Formula Allocations, and the Panel on Estimates of Poverty for Small Geographic Areas. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and was recently chair of its Social Statistics Section. Dr. Schirm holds an A.B. in statistics from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
DAVID M. BETSON is an associate professor of economics and public policy in the College of Arts and Letters and former director of the Hesburgh Program in Public Service at the University of Notre Dame. He is a research affiliate with the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin and the Joint Center for Poverty Research at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. His previous positions have been at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin and the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. At the National Research Council, he has been involved in many activities of the Committee on National Statistics, including the Planning
Group for the Workshop to Assess the Current Status of Actions Taken in Response to Measuring Poverty: A New Approach; the Panel on Estimates of Poverty for Small Geographic Areas; the Panel on Evaluation of USDA’s Methodology for Estimating Eligibility and Participation for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Program, for which he served as chair; the Panel on Poverty and Family Assistance; and the Panel to Evaluate Micro simulation Models for Social Welfare Programs. He is currently serving on two additional National Academy of Sciences panels: the Panel on Redesign of the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey and the Panel on Measuring Medical Care Risk in Conjunction with the New Supplemental Income Poverty Measure. In 2004, he was designated a lifetime national associate of the National Academies. Dr. Betson’s research has dealt with the impact of tax and transfer programs on the economy and the distribution of income. A particular research interest is child support policy, on which he has written academic papers and consulted with numerous state governments regarding the development of their child support guidelines. In 2007, he was appointed to the Washington State Commission on the Review of Child Support Guidelines. Dr. Betson has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
MARIANNE P. BITLER is an associate professor of economics at the University of California, Irvine, and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Children’s Program and Health Economics Program. She is also a faculty affiliate in demographic and social analysis at the University of California, Irvine; a visiting scholar at the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank; and a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn, Germany. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow and then an economist at the RAND Corporation, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, and an economist on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve in the Division of Research and Statistics (where she worked on the Survey of Small Business Finances). Her research interests include labor economics, health economics, public economics, and applied microeconomics. Her publications include several on participation in WIC, which appeared in the Journal of Human Resources, the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, the Review of Agricultural Economics, and the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Dr. Bitler holds a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
F. JAY BREIDT is professor and chair in the Department of Statistics at Colorado State University. Previously, he spent nearly 10 years in the Department of Statistics at Iowa State University, starting as an assistant
professor in 1991. While at Iowa State, Dr. Breidt was a member of the Survey Section, a part of the Statistical Laboratory with a major focus on design and estimation for large-scale environmental surveys, particularly the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) National Resources Inventory. His research interests include time series, environmental monitoring, and survey sampling. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and winner of the 2004 Distinguished Achievement Award from the American Statistical Association Section on Statistics and the Environment. At the National Research Council, Dr. Breidt served on several panels: the Census Bureau’s Reengineered Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP); Review of Recreational Fisheries Survey Methods; and Enhancing the Data Infrastructure in Support of Food and Nutrition Programs, Research and Decision Making. He prepared two papers for the workshop sponsored by the Committee on National Statistics’ Panel on Using Data from the American Community Survey (ACS), one of which explored alternatives to the multiperiod estimation strategy for the ACS. Dr. Breidt holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in statistics from Colorado State.
ROBERT E. FAY is senior statistician at Westat, Inc., in Rockville, Maryland. He joined Westat in January 2008, after retiring from the U.S. Census Bureau. He is experienced in multiple aspects of sample surveys, including survey design, estimation, variance estimation, imputation and analysis of missing data, statistical modeling of data from complex samples, and small-area estimation. He is member of the Advisory Committee on Statistical Methods to Statistics Canada and served on the Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology, as well as its Subcommittee on Small Area Estimation. Dr. Fay’s recent presentations and papers deal with using model-assisted estimation to integrate survey and administrative data in the ACS. He has done considerable research on variance estimation. He received the Roger Herriot Award for Innovation in Federal Statistics in 2005 and the Gold Medal Award from the Department of Commerce in 1999. He was a member of the CNN Election Night Decision Team in 2004, 2006, and 2008. Dr. Fay holds a Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Chicago.
ALBERTA C. FROST is a consultant regarding school nutrition and other food assistance programs. She was director of the Office of Analysis, Nutrition and Evaluation at the Food and Nutrition Service of the USDA until her retirement in 2007. There she directed a staff that conducted research and developed data analysis systems to evaluate the performance and effectiveness of all U.S. food assistance programs and advised senior policy officials on nutrition policy and long-term planning. During her career, she directed research on the Food Stamp Program; the Food
Distribution Programs; WIC; and the child nutrition programs, including the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs. She has in-depth experience in food assistance policy and management systems, as well as nutrition education and outreach strategies, and has been the recipient of numerous USDA awards. Ms. Frost holds an M.A. in human resources development from American University.
MICHAEL F. GOODCHILD is professor in the Department of Geography and director of the Center for Spatial Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the associate director of the Alexandria Digital Library, director of the Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science, and chair of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a foreign fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. At the National Research Council, he serves on the Board on Research Data and Information and the Committee on Increasing National Resilience to Hazards and Disasters. Dr. Goodchild has served in many other capacities, including most recently as a member of the Committee on Strategic Directions for Geographical Sciences in the Next Decade, and the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics. Among his awards are the Prix Vautrin Lud, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Geospatial Information and Technology Association, the Robert T. Aangeenbrug Distinguished Career Award from the Geographic Information Science and Systems Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers, the Founder’s Medal from the Royal Geographical Society, and the designation Educator of the Year by the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science. Dr. Goodchild’s research achievements center on the measurement, description, and analysis of phenomena on the surface of the earth. He has explored using digital information gathered by remote-sensing satellites to create spatial and environmental models of the planet, construct maps, and create digital libraries of geographic information that can be widely accessed electronically. He has also developed mathematical models to help quantify the difference between these geographic measurements and the real world. Dr. Goodchild has a Ph.D. in geography from McMaster University.
NANCY J. KIRKENDALL (Study Director) is senior program officer for the Committee on National Statistics. Previously, she served as director of the Statistics and Methods Group of the Energy Information Administration (EIA). She spent 3 years as senior mathematical statistician in the Statistical Policy Branch of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. There she served as desk officer for the U.S. Census Bureau and chair of the Federal Commit-
tee on Statistical Methodology and led a variety of interagency activities. Dr. Kirkendall is a fellow and past vice president of the American Statistical Association and a past president of the Washington Statistical Society. She received the Roger Herriot Award for Innovation in Federal Statistics in 2007 and the American Statistical Association’s Founder’s Award in 2001. At the National Research Council, she was a member of the Panel on Modernizing the Infrastructure of the National Science Foundation’s Federal Funds Survey. Dr. Kirkendall holds a Ph.D. in mathematical statistics from the George Washington University.
PARTHA LAHIRI is professor of statistics in the Joint Program in Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland and research professor at the Institute of Social Research, University of Michigan. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. He was a senior research fellow at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1990-1991 and 2004-2005; a senior research fellow at the U.S. Census Bureau from 1990 to 1991; and a member of the ASA Census Advisory Committee from 2002 to 2007, serving as its chair from 2006 to 2007. His research interests include survey sampling, small-area estimation, record linkage, model selection, Bayes and empirical Bayes inference, and multi level models. He has delivered many workshops and short courses on small-area estimation. Dr. Lahiri holds a Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Florida.
PENNY E. McCONNELL is director of Food and Nutrition Services for Fairfax County Public Schools. She has been a leader in establishing creative programs to improve nutrition in the nation’s eleventh largest school district for the past four decades. She has spoken and written widely on a variety of topics related to feeding and managing a multigenerational, diverse school and community clientele. Ms. McConnell was president of the School Nutrition Association (formerly, the American School Food Service Association) and serves on the Global Child Nutrition Foundation Board and Global Child Nutrition Forum. In this capacity she has attended and spoken at several international meetings. She was president of the Virginia School Nutrition Association, Virginia Dietetic Association and received the Lifetime Achievement Award and Distinguished Dietitian Award respectively. She received the 1999 Silver Plate Award in the elementary and secondary school category and the 2011 Medallion Award, Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. She is a registered dietitian and chartered School Foodservice and Nutritionist Specialist. Ms. McConnell holds a B.S. in home economics from the University of Manitoba and an M.S. in education from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
SARAH NUSSER is professor in the Department of Statistics, affiliated with the Center for Survey Statistics and Methodology, and faculty member in interdisciplinary graduate programs for Human Computer Interaction and for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Iowa State University. Her research interests include the use of geospatial data in survey data collection and estimation, estimation methods assessing the accuracy of land cover maps, and sample design and measurement in surveys. She is familiar with the ACS and other Census Bureau surveys through her work with Census Bureau researchers on using geospatial data for address listing and her service on the Census Bureau Scientific Advisory Committee. She also has experience with administrative records databases through research involving evaluation of welfare programs and numerous operational survey projects. Dr. Nusser was a senior research fellow at the Bureau of Labor Statistics through the American Statistical Association/National Science Foundation/Bureau of Labor Statistics research fellowship program from 2000 to 2001. She received the 2007 Distinguished Achievement Award from the Section on Statistics and the Environment of the American Statistical Association. She is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. At the National Research Council, she served on the Panel on Social Security Representative Payees and is currently serving on the Panel on Redesign of the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey. Dr. Nusser holds a Ph.D. in statistics from Iowa State University.
JOHN PERKINS is a consultant on issues of school nutrition programs and planning. He was formerly the senior director of the Child Nutrition Programs Division in the Texas Education Agency and assistant commissioner for food and nutrition in the Texas Department of Agriculture. As state director, he administered the child nutrition programs in more than 1,100 school districts and 8,000 schools in Texas. His role as state director involved interpreting and implementing federal and state regulations, directing monitoring and compliance reviews of participating school districts, and disbursing more than $1 billion in federal and state funds. Mr. Perkins was the primary architect of the new comprehensive Texas Public School Nutrition Policy. He worked with school administrators, parents, and medical, health, and nutrition groups to develop and implement this policy, which was designed to improve the health of children and the nutrition environment in schools. He was USDA Southwest Region State Director Representative for more than 10 years and a member of the School Nutrition Association Regional Advisory Committee. He has chaired the Food and Nutrition Subcommittee of the Council of Chief State School Officers and served on numerous national and regional com-
mittees. Mr. Perkins holds an M.A. from the University of Texas, Austin, with a major in accounting and finance.
JAMES H. WYCKOFF is Curry Memorial Professor in the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. He directs the Center for Education Policy and Workforce Competitiveness at the University of Virginia and is a member of the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education (CALDER) New York team. He is a member of the editorial board of Education Finance and Policy and was an American Statistical Association fellow at the U.S. Census Bureau. Dr. Wyckoff’s research focuses on education policy and the economics of education. He has published on a variety of topics in education policy, including issues of teacher labor markets, school resource allocation, and school choice. Currently, his research examines policies intended to improve the quality of teaching, especially in schools with large proportions of poor students. At the National Research Council, he was a member of the Committee on National Statistics Panel on Estimates of Poverty for Small Geographic Areas and the Committee on the Study of Teacher Preparation Programs. Dr. Wyckoff holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
