At this year's departmental banquet, we recognized the accomplishments of a number of fantastic students.  Some of the highlights included the fact that both Caleb Dahl and Nicole Doemel received UWO Faculty-student Collaborative Research Grants for Summer 2003 (the Economics Department received 13% of the total student-faculty grants this year).  We also honored students for getting into graduate schools, including the economics PhD programs at UC Berkeley, Syracuse University, and North Carolina State University and the MA program at UW Milwaukee.

Over 50 people attended our banquet at the Gardenview Restaurant!  Our guest speaker was UWO Alumni Chad Cotti (right).  Chad has a MA in Public Policy from UW Madison, and he's currently pursuing a PhD in economics at UW Milwaukee.

I think Professor Grunloh had a good time.

"Rookie of the Year" is an award that recognizes the most outstanding new major--anyone who declared their major after the last banquet is eligible.  This year the award went to Caleb Dahl, who not only has a perfect GPA in his economics classes, but also received a Student Faculty Collaborative Research Grant for Summer 2003 to study whether risky behavior while in college negatively influences the return to education using NLSY data.  He will present his research at the UW System Undergraduate Research Conference in April 2004.  This year, he's serving as an officer of both the Economics Student Association and ODE.  Sorry about your head, Professor McGee.

"Research Paper of the Year" went to Lucas Jackson for his paper on the academic effects of labor market participation for college students.  Luke used a series of multiple regressions, including probit, to understand how hours worked affects student academic performance.  Luke found that there are positive benefits to working 10 hours or less per week while taking college classes.  The optimal number of hours to work per week was 5.  Luke presented his paper at the UW System Undergraduate Research Conference at UW Eau Claire in April.

"Outstanding Graduating Senior" went to Jordan Beck.  Jordan previously won the "Research Paper of the Year Award," (April 2002) for his work looking into game theory and federal reserve decision-making.  That paper subsequently won the nation-wide Omicron Delta Epsilon Frank Taussig Award for best undergraduate paper for 2003.  Wow!  Jordan presented his paper at the Midwest Economics Association Meetings in March 2003.  Jordan also worked several years as a tutor for the Economics Department and served as the Vice President of the ESA for two years.  Jordan was an economics and math double major and is currently working on a PhD in economics at UC Berkeley.

We also had a number of new ODE members including Jeffrey Albright, Cliff Moll (left), Alan Stockinger (right), Melissa Pezutto, Troy Cox, Brett Holly, Michael Del Debbio, Drew Galow, and Caleb Dahl.  Cliff is the 2003-2004 Treasurer for the ESA and Alan is the president of ODE for 2003-2004.

And, of course, we needed a field trip photo... Having fun at Wrigley Field in April 2003.

This year the weather was great for our annual field trip to Chicago.  After seeing the opening of the Chicago Board of Trade and learning about the Federal Reserve, we headed over to Wrigleyville for some sports economics.  The Cubs won, the weather was warm (for April) and sunny, and we all had a great time!  Especially Alan and Ryan.  Maybe we'll be able to say we saw the World Series Champion Cubs...