Tutors Needed

The Hunter College Society for Economics is in need for BA/MA or MA students that have demonstrated above average proficiency and are willing to tutor in the following classes:

Intermediate Macro and Microeconomics
Economic Statistics (Both 221 and 321)

Tutoring brings a myriad of benefits including:

• Experience in teaching / practicing with students
• Dusting off material that you may find useful in the future, but have forgotten about (I had this experience trying to explain the formula for variance to someone the other day)
• Students with tutoring experience will often be the first ones considered for any open TA positions
• It looks great on a resume for a future job / PhD prospects.
  

Please contact myself or Tamara if you're interested in participating. We'd like to have a schedule for distribution to students by the middle of next week.

Interested in becoming a PhD? Better read the following.

Many thanks to Melanie for providing the following link. Those of you thinking about going all the way may find the information useful.

Also, this site provides some insight on how the whole process works.

Internship Opportunity

If you've been interested in development, then you know that a hot topic for the past decade has been the usage of microcredit in underserved communities. The posting below is for a well-respected non-profit that has attracted funding from companies like the Citigroup Foundation.

From Prof. Conning:

.....I'm forwarding below an invitation for interns at ACCION New York sent to me by Anne Sormani, a recent Hunter MA grad. ACCION is one of the most influential organizations in the field of microfinance worldwide. This is one of their domestic operations, focused on providing microcredit in NYC. It's obviously not much pay as an intern and a substantial commitment, might be of interest to any students with a strong dedication to social entrepreneurship, microfinance, or poverty issues. Accion also seems to promote talent quickly, so it could perhaps evolve into something else. Anne started at ACCION last year as an entry-level underwriter, and is now vice-president of lending.

ACCION New York
Lending Intern
ACCION New York (www.accionnewyork.org) is a non-profit microenterprise development organization dedicated to increasing incomes and creating jobs in low-income communities. Subsequent to 9/11, ACCION developed the American Dream Fund to assist businesses affected by the events of September 11th. Through this program, we have distributed more than $2.5 million to nearly 250 businesses, many of whom continue to struggle to return to profitable operations.
Academic background in business, financial analysis, providing sufficient skills to read income statements and understand cash flow. You are also street smart and generally savvy with matters of money. You are preferably bilingual (English/Spanish) and are comfortable using your Spanish in a business setting, and have experience communicating with Latino and immigrant populations. Excellent communication skills, allowing you to communicate with a wide variety of potential clients including those with lower levels of financial literacy. You are a persuasive person who is not afraid to “sell” (a product, an idea). You are an adaptable person with demonstrated initiative who knows how to “roll-up-your-sleeves” to get a job done. You are detail-oriented, organized, and thrive in a fast-paced work environment. You are familiar with Microsoft Excel. You are willing to make a 2 semester commitment.
ACCION New York seeks dedicated, hard working individuals interested in promoting microfinance. Through our lending and other services, we help entrepreneurs strengthen their businesses, stabilize their incomes, create additional employment and contribute to the economic revitalization of their communities. Individuals will have the unique opportunity to contribute to our mission by meeting and interviewing potential borrowers, analyzing their businesses, assessing their credit needs and ensuring quality lending.

Contact:
Alex Stein
VP, Finance & Administration
ACCION NEW YORK
115 East 23rd St., 7th Fl.
New York, NY 10010
212-387-0377 ext 314
212-387-0277 FAX
astein@accionnewyork.org

Anne has offered to be a resource for those that are interested. You can contact her at asormani@accionnewyork.org.

Economics Society Elections

Ariel, the Economics Society's outgoing president, has announced upcoming elections for the club's new officers. As of yet, it's a mystery as to who might run........

I'd like to publicly announce that my vote could be easily swayed by any variety of bribes. Those interested could meet me for happy hour at the Phoenix Park bar. Paying for the beers consumed during that meeting would help.

All kidding aside, my experience has been that events like this can set the tone for the rest of the year. Many of us Hunter veterans have griped about the lack of support/organization that we've received as students. This is your chance to do something about it.

Here's how to get involved:

Elections are to take place this coming Thursday, September 22 at 4:30 in HW 1537 or 1538. You can make it - Prof. Deb just postponed the due date for Homework 2.

If you are interested in running, e-mail both Ariel (ariel_tal2010@hotmail.com) and Prof. Chernick (Howard.Chernick@hunter.cuny.edu). Officer positions include President, Vice-President, Treasurer, etc. Elected terms last for 1 year. Be prepared to make a short speech supporting your candidacy.

Also, for a primer on school campaigns see the movie election or napoleon dynamite.

Best of luck.

Study Group Malarkey

Many of you have asked about participating in Study Groups for your various classes. Midterms for most of the grad classes will take place from the middle to the end of October.

In anticipation of this mid-autumn downer, I am asking for those of you interested in attending several study group sessions (one for each class) to send me the following information:

My e-mail: fselck@hunter.cuny.edu

• E-mail address along with your name (I can probably guess who diggydrawers@hotmail.com is, but your real name would make it easier)
• Grad classes that you are currently enrolled in
• Highest level math course taken (this is in the interest of appointing a facilitator for each group, and in my experience, the math whiz was the best go-to person for everybody)
• Preferred location to meet (i.e., coffee shop in the immediate environs versus Hunter Library)

The first round of sessions will take place the first week of October. Also, I'll compile e-mail addresses by class - that way, members can exchange questions/answers when you're not able to make the group.

I'll see to it that a space is reserved, and notifications go out to everybody. Remember, this will only work as well as the number of people involved - the more the merrier.

Econ MA Scholarship Opportunity - Urgent response required

Please note that this is only relevant for MA students paying graduate tuition.

Profs. Filer and Honig send the following:

We are pleased to inform you that you may be eligible for scholarship aid made available by Hunter College and CUNY to defray some of the increases in graduate student tuition approved by the CUNY Board of Trustees for fall 2005.We all want to assist you in every way we can to stay in school and successfully complete your studies. As you may recall, President Raab wrote a memo to you in early July detailing the various financial assistance options open to you at Hunter College. Our aim in writing at this time is to reinforce her earlier note and to encourage you to apply for this worthwhile scholarship.To begin the process, log on to this link. Once you are on the financial aid page, click on Hunter College Scholarships Application.Simply fill out and submit the on-line scholarship application by October 14, 2005 and you will be notified of your eligibility at the earliest opportunity.We sincerely hope this source of financial support will help you succeed in your studies.

In other words - free money. Apply.

Stata Resources and Graphing Functions

For those of you that are looking into tips and insight on using Stata, the UCLA portal for the software is an excellent resource. On it you will find basic command usage, how to examine different variables, modifying your data, etc.

The link is permanently posted on the right under 'student resources'.

Stata 9.1 is now available for download from http://www.stata.com (thanks to Chris Month for the update).

Also, for those of you that are having trouble graphing functions (a recent assignment comes to mind) go to this link. It's not the current homework assignment, but the idea is to be able to mimic the formula and data resulting in the graph. It's a spreadsheet written in Excel, so if you have Microsoft Office, there's no need to download additional software.

As always, if you have additional suggestions, let me know and we'll post it.

Mandatory Thesis Meeting September 14th

There will be meeting for those interested in submitting their thesis before September of 2006 this coming Wednesday. It will be in the Economics conference room on the 15th floor of the Hunter West building at 7:30 p.m.

Attendance is required if you plan on handing in your thesis this year. Prof. Filer will review requirements, and also provide hints on how to get started.

Seminar series in Economics at Hunter

An invitation from Prof. Conning:

All BA/MA students are warmly invited to attend. The schedules for the two seminar series are the following:

Monday Brown Bag Seminar at Hunter College
http://urban.hunter.cuny.edu/RePEc/seminar/

Friday Labor and Human Resources seminar at the Graduate Center http://urban.hunter.cuny.edu/RePEc/seminar/gc.htm

Both are 1.5 hours in length (people are free to come and leave of course). The former is a bit more informal and often presents work in progress, while the latter has some pretty big names lined up and should be better attended.

For those of you working on your thesis

Prof. Golbe has suggested the following text:

Greenlaw, Steven A. ISBN: 0-618-37983-5
Doing Economics

The book can be found at www.college.hmco.com.

A quick note about the blog....

I'm anticipating this to be a temporary address / format for this website. There are plans to add an indexing function for each posting (otherwise this blog will get very, very long) along with the ability for many students (and not just the three to the right) to add things to the site. Feedback is both welcome and appreciated.

In the meantime, if you do have something to add (or have something to announce), feel free to e-mail me at fselck@hunter.cuny.edu.

Informal study group for Micro and Metrics

For those of you interested, a few of us are getting together to go over homework for Microeconomics (ECO 701) and Econometrics (ECO 721) tomorrow, September 8th.

We plan on meeting at around 1 pm on the fourth floor in the library. While we do not have a reserved space on the floor, we should be a group of at least four, and therefore hard to miss. Some of us will be there up to class time.