Dirlam Award established

Mead takes on China

Two University of Rhode Island economics professors have been involved in the development of the Honors Colloquium programs since 2003.

         According to the Honors Program Web site, every fall the program sponsors a series of lectures, art exhibits, concert, films and plays. URI Economics Department Chairman Yngve Ramstad worked on the colloquium in 2005, “Contemporary Sport: Healthy Pursuit or Obsession?”

         Ramstad said the idea for the colloquium came from Dan Doyle, the executive director of the International Institute for Sports, who was primarily responsible for the list of speakers. Professor Galen Johnson asked Ramstad if he would help Doyle organize the colloquium.

         “The academic side of the colloquium was in my hands,” he said.

         Along with his co-instructor, communication studies professor Kristen Maar, Ramstad taught the 75-minute discussion class, which met twice a week and allowed for students to meet the speakers before the lecture. Each student was also able to attend a dinner with the invited guest.

         “I think it was a positive aspect of [the colloquium],” Ramstad said. “It allowed students to meet face-to-face with famous people.”

         Speakers included University of Connecticut men’s basketball coach Jim Calhoun, NCAA president Dr. Myles Brand and Richard Pound, the president of the Anti-Doping Agency. Legendary Boston Celtics point guard Bob Cousy and International Olympic Committee member Anita DeFrantz also gave lectures. For anyone interested in seeing first-hand the generation gap, it was there for all to see on the night Bob Cousy spoke.  Those who have been around "for a while" probably remembered having seen Cousy dazzle on the court, while most students had no idea who Cousy was and what he did for professional basketball.  This is what happens when the incoming students were born in the waning years of the Reagan presidency.

         Ramstad said students, who had learned about topics such as performance-enhancing drugs and parenting issues in sports, were required to write papers at the end of the semester answering the question of whether they thought competitive sports were healthy or an obsession. “About half thought [sports] was a positive,” he said. “The other half thought it was negative.”

         Although it was a lot of work, Ramstad said he thoroughly enjoyed the experience. “Many students have stopped me and said it opened their eyes to things they didn’t know about in big-time sports,” he said.

         In addition to his job as department chairman, Ramstad also serves on the Athletics Advisory Board and is the designated URI faculty member representative of the NCAA, where he is responsible for monitoring academic integrity in compliance with NCAA regulations.

         “I have three half-time jobs,” Ramstad said in regards to his jobs as professor, department chairman and role in athletics. “It’s pretty tricky to balance what you’re doing with your normal family life, which I haven’t given up.”

         Economics professor Richard McIntyre was also involved in the fall 2003 Honors Colloquium, “The Futures of Globalization,” which was organized by professor John Grandin. Guest speakers included former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, World Social Forum co-founder Bernard Cassen and Fidelity Investments senior vice president Eric Roiter.

         McIntyre said he was happy with the turnout of the lectures. “In a lot of them, we packed Chafee 271,” he said. “Not all of them, but we had pretty good attendance.”

         He added that the colloquium was taped and later shown on cable, allowing people to see it on television if they were unable to attend.

         Along with his work in the Honors Program, McIntyre is finishing a book on international labor standards and rights. He is also the URI advisor for the Fulbright and Boren scholarships. “I always keep my hand in economics one way or the other,” McIntyre said. “But this place [the Honors Program] has become the focus of my attention.”

            McIntyre said the colloquium was a positive experience and he would consider doing another one in the future. “It was an enormous amount of work, but it was a lot of fun,” he said. “I think the students had a great experience.”

         Anderson, a double major in economics and political science, took on her required senior research project this semester with fellow student Aaron Arcello. She said they decided to focus on the Rhode Island state lottery and determine whether or not it is a regressive tax.

         “It’s definitely in-depth,” Anderson said. “You have to use everything you’ve learned in economics to do it. It’s a great way for seniors to show how much they have learned, and they have a project to show for it.”

         For her research, Anderson looked at previous lottery studies for data. She said there had been none conducted in Rhode Island, so she had to rely on studies from other states.

         “There’s a lot more variables that you have to take into account,” she said. “Professor [Arthur] Mead said this could be a master’s thesis because of the sheer amount of information.”

         Anderson said they talked to the Lottery Commission and were able to get access to a data set that required them to master Geographic Information System to manage the lottery data and merge it with socioeconomic census data - something that had not been done in other studies. They were then able to analyze trends in their information, and concluded that their hypothesis was correct.

         “From what our evidence shows, it suggests that Rhode Island’s lottery is regressive,” she said. Anderson added that she and Arcello would present their findings in May before graduation.

         Anderson praised the economics department for all of the help the professors gave her. “With the project almost done, they’ve been really helpful,” she said. “Mead is our advisor, but there are other professors who we could go to if we had a question. They were really helpful with the process.”

         In addition to her schoolwork, Anderson is heavily involved with the URI women’s track team. Emily was selected as URI’s outstanding freshman athlete in 2002-03, and at last year's Atlantic 10 Indoor Championships, she finished second in the mile and won the 1,000 meters, prompting her coach, Laurie Feit-Melnick, to write that “Emily is one of the best middle distance runners in the history of the URI."  This year Emily "ended the season with a personal best time in the 800-meter,” the third fastest time in New England.

        And in her "spare" time Emily has served in Professor AL Killileas's Mentor/Tutor Internship, tutoring local children who were falling behind in school, and this year she will be a leader in MTI in charge of classes where younger URI students talk about their experience as volunteers in schools.  Emily was also been a driving force behind efforts to establish a van system at the University to help reduce drinking and driving problems, and worked in the Provost's Office as an intern.

         Next year, Anderson will return to URI to earn her master’s degree in political science. She is also going to England in June to pursue graduate studies at Oxford University. “It’s only a month program, but I’m looking forward to studying abroad,” she said.

         Anderson said she was glad to have the chance to go through the economics program at URI, calling it one of the best departments in terms of helping students. “From my experience, they have always been there to talk about your future plans,” she said. “They are interested in all the students who go through the major.”

            When asked how she would feel once her project presentation was over, Anderson said, “Definitely a sense of relief. Relief and satisfaction.

When taken out of context, the number 45 doesn’t seem like a very impressive number. But when it signifies your ranking in Forbes Magazine’s 100 World’s Most Powerful Women list, it adds a much greater significance.

            University of Rhode Island alumna Nancy McKinstry received such an honor in 2005, and was also ranked 69th in 2004. It is a culmination of the years of hard work she has put into her career since graduating from URI in 1980.

            After getting her bachelor’s degree in economics and political science, McKinstry went to work in Boston for New England Telephone for two years as an assistant manager, and then went to Columbia University to obtain her master’s degree in finance and marketing.

            “Obtaining an MBA at Columbia was a key turning point in my career because it provided me with an opportunity to go work as a consultant for Booz Allen [a large international consulting firm],” she said. “I worked there for seven years and this provided me with a deep knowledge of business strategy, finance and access to senior executives at a variety of industries.”

            Following her experience at New England Telephone, McKinstry worked as a CCH Publishing senior executive until 1994, when the company was sold to the Dutch global information, software and services company Wolters Kluwer, which has revenues of $3.4 billion euro and operates in 25 countries.

            McKinstry said she held a variety of positions at Wolters Kluwer prior to becoming chief executive officer and chairman of the executive board in September 2003.

“My role is to provide a broad vision to the company, offer operational leadership, communicate with customers, employees and shareholders and develop a strong management team,” she said.

McKinstry also began implementation of a new strategy to transform the company by investing in growth around leading market positions, restructuring the cost base, and reorganizing to deliver growth by getting closer to customers.

            “The company has made significant progress in implementing the strategy,” she said. “Growth has improved, cost savings have been achieved and the management team and operational rigor have been enhanced.”

            She is proud of the strategy, McKinstry said, because it has been critical in better fulfilling customers’ needs, creating new employment opportunities, and generating incremental shareholder value.

            A successful career isn’t the only thing McKinstry has had to manage. She said she has been able to combine her job with her family life. “I have a wonderful husband and two children who have been supportive of my career,” she said. “Their support has been critical, particularly when it has involved significant changes for them.”

            McKinstry’s family moved to the Netherlands when she took on the role of CEO at Wolters Kluwer. Her husband, who is a physician at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, goes back and forth between working in the United States and spending time in Holland as a “house husband,” she said.

            “In this way, we both can maintain our careers,” McKinstry said.

            The education McKinstry received at URI and her job as a teaching assistant for professor Joel Dirlam were instrumental in preparing her for the real world, she said. McKinstry was able to learn how to think logically, write clearly and communicate persuasively, all skills that have been critical for her throughout her career.

            McKinstry also combined her URI education with her work assignments, which were often needed to help finance her tuition and played a vital role in helping her to determine her future job path. “I got to see how theory merged with practice, especially in economics,” she said. “This experience was, in part, what influenced me to pursue a business career.”

         “Teaching is one of those things where you don’t have a lot of rewards, and a lot of what you do doesn’t show up for years,” Mead said. “So to have students identify me and recognize me as excellent, it is a sense of great satisfaction.”

         Before coming to URI in 1976, Mead was a graduate assistant at Boston College, and taught one year at Simmons College. “This will be my 30th year here,” he said. “It’s an amazing number.”

         Mead, who had been a finalist numerous times prior to this school year, described his students’ reaction when President Robert L. Carothers came to his class and announced that he had won the award, which includes a citation and a $1,000 check. “One of my students made the comment, ‘That’s not that much.’ Another asked what they would get out of it,” he said with a laugh.  It turns out he he used the stipend that went with the award to open the account for the Dirlam Award, so please check it out - and maybe even consider helping out with a donation.

         Besides his introduction classes with up to 350 students and a research methods class, Mead also teaches in the Honors Program. He is currently developing a “Made in China” class for the program, as well as writing a chapter for a book on China.

         Mead said he is glad he has been able to make a difference in the lives of his students. “You’ve got to look at it as, ‘you must have done something right,’” he said. “It’s like a thank you, and everyone likes a thank you.”

         The previous winners in the economics department are professors Richard McIntyre and Glenworth Ramsay.

         Ramsay, who received the Teaching Excellence Award in 1976, had only been teaching at URI for three years prior to winning. “I have to admit when I got the award, I didn’t know much about teaching,” he said. “It was more instinctual.”

         In addition to the introduction classes, Ramsay has taught research methods, microeconomics and a class on industrial organization. He also worked in the administration for the president’s office in the 1980s for six years.

         Ramsay described the way he felt when notified he would be receiving the award. “I was shocked, thrilled and frightened because I thought I’d have to give a speech at graduation,” he said. “But I didn’t.”

         He also talked about his philosophy on teaching. “One of the most important parts of teaching is having a healthy respect for students,” Ramsay said. “And I’ve always had that.”

         McIntyre, the 1997 Teaching Excellence Award winner, taught at Springfield College before officially starting as an economics professor at URI in 1987. He is a URI alumnus from the class of 1979 and even had Ramsay for a professor.

         McIntyre has taught international economics and a Marx in economics class. “I also regularly teach labor in economics, introduction to economics, and also international finance,” he said.

         When Carothers informed him of the honor, McIntyre said he was thrilled. “It’s a part of your identity,” he said. “It’s nice to be recognized by your students and peers. I feel very good about it.”

        The University of Rhode Island Economics Club has started to rise up from the ashes, due large in part because of junior Meghan Skira.

         Skira, a double major in economics and Spanish, is also a teaching assistant for professors Richard McIntyre and Arthur Mead. She said she first heard about the Economics Club during her freshman year, and felt the need to revive the club once it dissolved last year.

         “A good friend and I, we restarted the Economics Club last semester,” Skira said. “We had to do a lot to get it started and get people back into it.”

         The goal of the club is to “get a group together so we can discuss things, make the economics department more active on campus,” she said. “We thought it would be a good idea to bring in more economics majors. Also, bring in more non-economics majors, because it is a subject that affects everyone.”

         Other ideas include more updates to the department Web site, a Economics Honor Society dinner at the University Club, possible guest speakers and a film series.

         Junior Rich Ryan was in the Economics Club last semester. “We like to hear about if people are working on a project, they should present it to us,” he said. “We could offer feedback and it would be helpful to us and them.”

         Ryan added that the club considered going on a field trip to the New York Stock Exchange or the Federal Reserve, where he recently received a summer internship.

         “There’s been like a core five or six of us,” Skira said. “We’re so new that we are trying to get the word out and get people aware.”

         She added that most of the members would be seniors next year, so the club will be recruiting younger students to keep it going and get them interested.

         The club held a Career Night on April 6, after being postponed from its original date in March. “It went well,” Skira said. “Everyone that was supposed to come in March came back in April. We want to do a similar thing next semester.”

         In addition to her involvement in the Economics Club, Skira recently won the NSF Undergrad Research Award in the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences. She will be in a summer internship program at Georgia State University in the Andrew Young School where she will learn about international studies in South Africa.

         From May to July, Skira will live in Atlanta, mainly working with a professor mentor and 10 other interns. She said at the end of the seven-week program, she has to present a graduate level project.

         Skira said applying for the internship at the end of March was very important to her. “I was really hoping this was something I would be doing this summer,” she said. “So it was a first priority.”

            The chance to work with students from all over the country is only one of the reasons Skira is excited for her internship, among other things. “It will help me decide on what I want to pursue in economics,” she said. “And it will prepare me for grad school. So I think it will be a good experience.”

 Want to know the present state of the Rhode Island economy? Two University of Rhode Island economics professors might be able to help you out.

         Professors Leonard Lardaro and Glenworth Ramsay are both in the business of economic forecasting and have created their own respective indicator indexes.

         Lardaro started his current conditions index in 1995, when he was forecasting the state economy for a regional group. “If you’re going to forecast, you have got to know where you are,” he said. “And to publish this [index], it would better allow people to know what is going on.”

         According to his Web site, http://members.cox.net/lardaro/current.htm, the CCI is a monthly indicator that details the present state of the Rhode Island economy by following the behavior of 12 key economic indicators pertaining to housing, retail sales, fiscal pressures, the employment situation and labor supply.

         The index ranges from zero, where none of the indicators show improvement when compared to year-earlier levels, to 100, when all 12 show improvement. Values above 50 indicate that the economy is growing, while values below 50 show contraction.

         Lardaro said the entire process of finding the right indicators took a few months. “Back then we didn’t have the Internet like we do today,” he said. “I had to manually enter months of data and work with the numbers until I got a combination that worked.”

         The Providence Journal reports the numbers each month, and Lardaro said he has been interviewed in various media outlets. He added, “I have a mailing list of about 50 people that I send it out to, but indirectly I’m sure there’s a greater number who use it.”

         Lardaro said his forecasting index serves as a free service to Rhode Island. “UConn has one for Connecticut, but you have to pay hundreds of dollars for it,” he said. “I looked around and found that pretty much everywhere else you have to pay a fee.”

         Ramsay’s index was put together in 1991 from a grant from the Providence Journal. “It’s purpose is to predict turning points in the Rhode Island economy with about a six month lead time,” he said.

         The index uses nine indicators, including single-family housing units, Providence help wanted advertisements, redeemed Newport Bridge tokens, and passenger traffic at T.F. Green Airport. Two components from the national index are also implemented, initial claims for unemployment benefits and vendor performance.

         Ramsay said the data taken from the indicators is monthly, but the index comes out quarterly. He also seasonally adjusts all the data himself.

         “You do a bunch of mathematical mumbo jumbo, and you get a single number,” he said, explaining the index in laymen’s terms. “If it goes up, it’s a good thing. If it goes down, it’s bad.”

         Ramsay also offered his thoughts on the present state of Rhode Island’s economy. “It’s been flat the past couple years,” he said. “The economy just can’t get going, it’s having trouble finding traction.”

            People can read Ramsay’s index of leading economic indicators in the Providence Journal.

 Many jobs require employees to take a few business trips during the year away from home. But if you are Colleen Stadelmann, you should plan on staying in hotels almost 340 out of the 365 days.

         “I’m not in one place at any given amount of time,” said the 2002 University of Rhode Island graduate. She majored in economics and French, and was also involved in the Honors Program and jazz band.

         The day after graduation, a General Electric Company employee interviewed Colleen. After several phone interviews, she went to Connecticut to interview in person for a position in the GE financial management program, which is a two-year rotational program that offers various positions in corporate finance. There are about 400 FMPs throughout the world.

         “I was shocked at how fast things happened,” she said. “I remember being nervous when I graduated, not really knowing if I was going to even have a job.  One week later I was moving to Fort Wayne, IN.”

         Colleen currently works in GE as a member of the Corporate Audit Staff, auditing and validating the processes and controls in place in the GE businesses throughout the world.  The auditors work long hours (averaging 16 hours a day during the week), but they have the chance to travel all over the world. In the past 5 months she has been to Hungary, Mexico, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, China, Kenya and London. And that’s only some of the countries.

         “You get a global mindset that you might not necessarily get with other positions in other businesses,” Stadelmann said. “At this point, I could go to almost any country and have a good chance of knowing someone. It’s nice to have that support system and that global network.”

         Although she does not get to spend much time in the United States, Colleen still keeps in close contact with her former professors at URI. “I’m still close with [Arthur] Mead and [Richard] McIntyre,” she said. “They pushed me to grow and do better ... it’s nice coming from that background at URI.”  She also added that it is helpful to stay in touch and ask them for non-business perspectives on her personal development.

         Despite all of her traveling, Colleen still has a slight fear of flying. “I’m not really a fan of it,” she said. “They used to tease me for having white knuckles on the takeoff. But at least I don’t get jet lag like I used to.”

As for Bryan, he is MIA, and as sooon as he gets back in touch, we'll fill you in on him.

It is with sorrow that I report Joel Dirlam died recently, but I am happy to report that in honor of Joel's relentless pursuit of truth the Department has established a permanent Joel Dirlam Research Award for the year's most outstanding research project. Joel and I met in 2005 and agreed that it was essential in today's world to have good, independent research and that it would be good for the Department to promote this with a reward for student excellence.  The outgrowth of that meeting was the decision to establish an endowment in Joel's name to fund annual awards for research excellence and for overall excellence.  The fund was started with Joel's match of my donation of my University Teaching Excellence Award, and I am glad to say that at this time the fund has reached $26,000.  If anyone would like to contribute to the Joel Dirlam Award, please send that contribution to the Economics Department.  

To those who knew Joel, it was obvious we were part of something special, and you will probably be able to relate to some of the sentiments expressed below by a former colleague,  Richard Vangermeersh and Nancy McKinstry. For me, Joel was all that I thought was right about academia.  He was tireless in his pursuit of truth, and he left many younger students and faculty exhausted trying to keep up with him - and that included me. What I remember most of Joel were those "did you read ___?" questions that too often I had to answer no to, and the swarm of students who surrounded him, attracted by his energy and enthusiasm.  Joel was a prolific writer, as you can see from his list of publications, a I will miss Joel, but thoughts of him will always be there with the annual award for research excellence, which is what I know Joel would want. 

In addition to the annual Dirlam Awards the Department now has two annual scholarships and one biannual scholarship.  Each year students can apply for the Elton Rayack and Nancy McKinstry scholarships, while every other year students can apply for the Sky Pardee scholarships. 

Upon his return Ric took on the job of Associate Director of the Honors program. 

im Starkey, in 2003, was invited to speak on “Public Finance in Political Perspective” at the Zeijiang University Institute of Economics and Finance in Hangzhou, China.  While in Hangzhou, Professor Starkey was able to meet with officials responsible for enforcing China’s environmental laws to discuss the problems of environmental regulation in China.   Professor Starkey has been invited to return to China and plans to do so for an extended stay on a future sabbatical leave.