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Job Title: Associate Professor Of Economics
Type of Company: Tufts University - Post-Secondary Education
Education: BA in Math, Swarthmore College •• PhD in Economics, University of California San Diego (UCSD)
Previous Experience: Assistant Professor, Economics Dept, Tulane University
Job Tasks: I typically teach two classes a semester in the Economics Department at Tufts University. I teach statistics and econometrics classes (using data to answer economics questions). My classes usually have about 25 students each. Classes meet for 2.5 hours a week - either three 50-minute classes or two 75-minute classes. The semester lasts for 13 weeks. The Tufts students are very smart and motivated. They are a real joy to teach - I can really push them hard in terms of the difficulty of the material I present and the number of assignments I give them.
I also spend a lot of time working on my own research. In fact, this year I am a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. I am doing research on household mobility in response to new jobs and how the housing market affect this mobility. I also do research in the economics of education, housing and urban economics, environmental economics, and labor economics. My research in the economics of education has looked at different factors that affect student performance. One example is a student's peer group at school - how is your performance affected if you hang with the nerdy kids, with the jocks, or with the popular kids? Another example is how school organization affects student performance; that is, are you better off going to the same school from kindergarten through 8th grade or to an elementary school from kindergarten through 5th grade and a middle school for 6th through 8th grades? (my evidence supports the former).
Best and Worst Parts of the Job: The best parts of my job are teaching smart and motivated Tufts students and the freedom and flexibility of my job that allows me to carry out research on any topic that interests me.
One downside is that I had to go to graduate school for six years and work very hard early in my career to get to my current position.
Job Tips: Teaching college is a great career - you get an incredible amount of freedom and flexibility once you get tenure. But it is hard work getting there. It is something that you have to really want to do if you are going to make the sacrifice if takes to get tenure in an academic institution.
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