Message to Students and Alumni from the Graduate Advisor:

Welcome to the Eastern Illinois graduate education in the Department of Economics. We are a small graduate program focusing mostly on applied economics in an environment that ensures close consultation with faculty for students in research and learning. The M.A. program continues to flourish in diverse ways. We are trying to restructure the program by adding courses to offer more choices, consolidating fields to exploit faculty expertise, and making incoming students more welcome.

Over the last few years, the M.A. program has introduced two important new courses: the natural resource and environmental economics, and applied econometrics. Optimal commercial exploitation of natural resources is a central issue in the first of these courses, as is the issue of sustainable development. The applied econometrics course greatly complements the introductory econometric course, ECN 4973, through lessons on more applied aspects of data analysis and econometric modeling. Thanks to Dr. Hui Li who, with the assistance of graduate faculty, has been instrumental in making such course offerings possible.

Dr. Tesa Leonce, who joined Eastern in 2007, specializes in industrial organization and has recently developed an undergraduate elective course in that area, ECN 3780. This will lead to a graduate IO course soon adding substantial strength to our menu of applied micro courses. Also, in the field of macro and monetary economics, the Department acquired two new faculty, Des' Adom and Ahmed Abou-Zaid, in 2008.

Diversity of our pool of graduate students and faculty is a matter of great pride for us. Currently representing at least nine different countries of the world, our graduate program promotes cultural interaction in a way that can lead to highly rewarding academic and social experiences for students.

The Department is on the verge of further streamlining the graduate program by offering several concentrations within economics that students can select for specialization. Based on current faculty strengths, fields such as global economy, applied microeconomics, resource economics, and public policy can emerge as important tracks students can choose from. With the addition of a couple more courses planned for the near future, we are confident our graduate course structure will better meet the challenges posed by the evolving nature of economics discipline. While we continue with our rebuilding process, we have recently offered, thanks to Dr. Bruehler, independent study courses for several graduate students on game theory (Spring 09) and mathematical economics (Fall 09).

Graduating students have repeatedly told us of the value they place on close consultation with our faculty in exploring research possibilities or acquiring a richer learning experience. Recently, several faculty including Drs. Dao, Ghent, Leonce, Li, and Upadhyay have provided guidance to the thesis writing students who receive training on all aspects of research. Many of our graduate students, however, complete the requirements of comprehensive knowledge by taking advantage of the non-thesis "graduate forum" option under faculty supervision. Both groups indicate their highly rewarding experiences with research. Occasionally, the faculty-student interaction has also resulted in research collaboration leading to publication in significant refereed journals. We expect such student faculty partnership to grow further in future.

Another way our students acquire training in responsibility and maturity is by competing for graduate assistantships. A graduate assistant provides tutoring help to Principles students and helps faculty in their research. Besides regular assistantships, our Department has also won a presidential assistantship during 3 of the last 5 years. Note that the GA application deadline is March 1 of each year. Several economics students have also been awarded graduate assistantships in various departments around campus while pursuing their economics degree. After graduation, many of our students have secured professional jobs in recent years with the Federal and local governments and large and small businesses, while some have gone on to Ph.D. schools for higher education.

As you can see, the Department of Economics has undergone significant changes in the last few years and continues to evolve further. The goal of all these changes is to make our undergraduate and graduate programs stronger through quality education and provide a sound environment to students for their personal enrichment.

We invite you to stop by the Department if you are in the area or contact Dr. Upadhyay (217-581-3812 or mpupadhyay@eiu.edu) for any graduate program questions you may have. Please follow the links on the left panel for more information.

Recent happenings in the grad program:

• New Course: Applied Econometrics Ecn5433 to be offered in Spring
• Intro to Econometrics to be offered in Fall to sequence with Ecn5433
• Independent Study by Bruehler on Game Theory Sp09
• Independent Study by Bruehler on Math Econ Fa09
• New (last 2 yrs) grad faculty on Macro-Money and IO
• Hiring of a labor economist expected in 2010 Spring
• Li continues to teach EnvEc
• Research by grad faculty: 13 publications in 2008-09 on Poverty, Income Dist, Regional Integration, ...

Last updated: Monday 14th of September 2009 04:31:11 PM