Tickets available for Renfro Lectureship Program featuring Andrew Natsios 

Andrew S. Natsios

Andrew S. Natsios, executive professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service, will present “Is Putin’s Russia a Threat to the United States?” sponsored by the Carl and Carolyn Renfro Endowed Lectureship Program and Northern Oklahoma College.

Tickets may be purchased on a first come, first served basis for the dinner event scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Thursday, April 27, in the Renfro Center at NOC Tonkawa.

Individual tickets are $20 each. A reserved table with seating for eight may be purchased for $300. The public is invited and encouraged to attend. Dress attire is business casual.

Tickets may be reserved by calling (580) 628-6214 to purchase tickets by credit card or by purchasing tickets in person at the NOC Development Office, Vineyard Library-Administration Building, Tonkawa campus. Overflow tickets will be available at no charge for the lecture program only, which will be live streamed into a Renfro Center classroom.

Natsios serves as Director of the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs at the Bush School of Government at Texas A&M University and as Co-Chairman Emeritus of the Committee on Human Rights in North Korea, a research center in Washington, D.C.

The Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) from 2001-2006, he was Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University from 2006-2012.

In 2006-2007 he served as US Special Envoy to Sudan to deal with the Darfur crisis and the implementation of the South Sudan peace agreement.

Retired from the U.S. Army Reserves as a lieutenant colonel after 23 years’ service, Natsios is a veteran of the Gulf War. From 1993 to 1998, he was vice president of World Vision US, the international non-governmental organization. Earlier in his career, Natsios served in Massachusetts State Government as a member of the House of Representatives in Boston for 12 years and later as Secretary of Administration and Finance, the chief financial and administrative officer of the Commonwealth. He also served in 2000-2001 as the CEO of Boston’s Big Dig, the largest construction project in American history, after a cost overrun scandal.

He is the author of three books: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1997); The Great North Korean Famine (2001); and Sudan, South Sudan and Darfur: What Everyone Needs to Know (2012). In addition, he has contributed to 13 other books, including two on North Korea.  His areas of research are in food security, famines, humanitarian assistance during conflict, human rights and foreign aid.

Former Oklahoma State Regent for Higher Education Carl Renfro and the late Carolyn Renfro established the Carl and Carolyn Renfro Endowed Lectureship Program with a gift in 2006 to provide support for cultivating and enhancing the cultural and community enrichment offerings to northern Oklahoma on the Tonkawa campus and in the Ponca City area.