SCU Economists Spring 2015

Page 1

SPRING 2015

THE SCU

ECONOMIST

Leavey School of Business

S a n ta C l a r a Un i v e r s i t y In This Issue 1-2 » A Message from Linda Kamas 2-3 » Graduation Photos 4

» 2015 Student Awards

4

» Students in the News

5

» Economics Department Recruits New Faculty

5

» A Message from the Economics Association

6-15 » Faculty News

We invite your comments and questions - economics@scu.edu. On the web at: http://www.scu.edu/business/economics

A Message from Linda Kamas Economics Department Chair I am very excited to announce the resumption of our Economics Department Newsletter. It has been a few years since we have sent one out and we are happy to have the opportunity to introduce our new faculty and to share our research and teaching activities with our alumni and friends. The financial crisis has shown us once again just how important the economy is to our well-being and interest in studying economics has never been higher. Ten years ago, we had about 120 majors; that has grown to over 400 majors and 100 minors today. Our 2015 graduating class has 129 students. Since I took the position of department chair last fall, I have been working very hard with the faculty and Marianne Farag, senior administrative assistant, to improve our program and better connect with our community. In order to help the department identify areas in our program that need improvement, we conducted a survey of the 2014 and 2015 graduating seniors and we would also like to invite alumni to fill out a very short survey here. We plan to put together a future newsletter with short bios on alumni to keep people up-to-date on what we are all doing, so it would be great if you would provide a short bio in the survey or email it to us at economics@scu.edu. Some of our recent innovations include expanding course tutoring to include upper

www.scu.edu/business/economics

division courses and we now have teaching assistants who hold weekly review sessions. We have also improved access of majors to core economics courses and electives to ensure they make timely progress toward their degrees. We have scheduled a largely expanded set of economics electives to broaden the course offerings and to accommodate our growing number of majors while keeping class size down. Each quarter we have sponsored an event for economics majors to meet with faculty to discuss economic issues. In the fall, we had a reception where students and faculty enjoyed a pizza dinner. In the winter, Professors Alex Field and Bill Sundstrom made presentations on economic inequality and the recent book by Thomas Piketty, Capital in the TwentyFirst Century. In the spring, a panel of three faculty members presented their research: Professor Serguei Maliar, “Supercomputers – What are They? Parallel Computations and Supercomputers in Economics;” Professor Teny Shapiro, “A’s from Zzzz’s? How School Schedules Affect Academic Achievement;” and Professor Linda Kamas (that would be me!), “Competing with Confidence: The Ticket to Labor Market Success for CollegeEducated Women.” We also have been working to update our LinkedIn group and invite you all to join the SCU Economics Network. We have lots of plans for the future, working with the Economics Association, including implementing a peer advisor program, increasing the use of math and statistics

Spring 2015


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.
SCU Economists Spring 2015 by Santa Clara University - Issuu