Michael Lauderdale (1941-) was born in Kiowa County in western Oklahoma and completed his doctorate in social psychology, anthropology and social work at the University of Oklahoma. He studied with a founder of social psychology, Muzafer Sherif, and directed his natural group studies in Oklahoma, Texas, Pennsylvania and New York in the 1960s. He worked for the Executive Offices of the President and then the OEO after completing his doctoral studies and organized programs in the states of the Southwest and taught psychology at New Mexico State at Las Cruces and in sociology at the University of Texas as El Paso. He joined the University of Texas at Austin with a professorship in 1970 and teaches there today and conducts research in organizational assessments with the State of Texas. For 40 years he has worked in Mexico, the Border area and written about the challenges to schools and policing as Texas undergoes the transition from a rural to a largely urban state. In the 1980s he directed a large Federally-funed research project with the Mexican Federal government to adapt computer-based forecasting models to assist that nation in making investments in state services to a quickly urbanizing and changing population.