Graduate Research Spotlight
In 2024, Economics Ph.D. candidate, Myera Rashid, was awarded the Robert Eisner Graduate Fellowship, given in memory of Department of Economics Professor Robert Eisner. A year after receiving the fellowship, Rashid shares the impact that this gift from a former faculty member had on her research:
"[Because of the fellowship] I was able to dedicate my time to several projects, one of which I am now revising for the American Economic Review." The Eisner Fellowship allowed Rashid to make significant advancement on six papers as well as provided her the time to apply for additional research grants and fellowships. As a result, Rashid was subsequently awarded a Russell Sage Foundation Dissertation Research Grant, the Economic History Association Sokoloff Dissertation Fellowship, and the Engerman-Goldin Prize.
"I, and other Eisner fellows in the past, are extremely grateful for the generous funding which allows us to make uninterrupted progress on our research. As a result of this generous fellowship, past fellows have done exceedingly well on the job market and have gone on to obtain tenure-track positions at top-ranked universities. Some of the most recent fellows are assistant professors at institutions such as UCLA, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, Duke, and MIT Sloan." - Myera Rashid
Last year, thanks to support from our donors, the Department of Economics was able to sponsor 21 undergraduate research assistant positions to work with current Ph.D. students. Revisit how this novel program has benefited both the undergraduate and graduate student participants.