his newsletter provides news and updates on the state of the Department of Economics and its activities. Contained in this edition are highlights of the research and other accomplishments of the faculty, students, and alumni of the department.
The quality of our faculty, students, and programs remains high. We have a winner of the Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching and several Distinguished Scholar Award winners on our faculty. We are publishing in the economics profession’s top journals and receiving research grants from the NSF, NIH, and other prestigious sources. One of our professors, Bruce Weinberg, was awarded the 2022 Distinguished Scholar Award for his important contributions to the understanding of how technological change and industrial shifts affect wage inequality, the determinants of life outcomes and behaviors, and the emerging science of creativity and innovation. Additionally, Senior Lecturer Ethan Doetsch was awarded the 2022 Provost’s Award for Distinguished Teaching by a Lecturer in recognition for his excellence in teaching. Despite the impact of COVID-19, our Ph.D. job market candidates received job offers including offers at Office of Management and Budget, Oklahoma State University, and several high ranking universities in China.
One of our main goals over the next several years is to restore the Department to full strength, in terms of the number of tenure track faculty and graduate students. This goal has been a challenge, due to retirements and tight budget conditions at the College of Arts and Sciences. We are optimistic that we will make progress towards this goal as we emerge from COVID-19. Another main goal is to move from Arps Hall to a modern new space for the Department, which will better support our teaching and research missions.
Your support of the Department is more important than ever. A key source of support for the Department is gifts from alumni and friends. These have become quite important for activities that help the department improve: funding undergraduate scholarships and prizes, graduate research scholarships, support for graduate students to travel to conferences to present their research, and seminar programs that bring scholars to campus to discuss their research. We now have a coordinated effort thanks to the hard work of our Economics Advisory Board. They have provided key leadership in reaching out to our alumni and encouraging faculty engagement.
I hope you enjoy reading about our faculty members research, graduate student, Rohan Shah, undergraduate student, Enan Srivastava, and alumnae, Gabe Englander.
Cordially,
James Peck
Department Chair
