President's Column
March 2024
The AAEA Teaching Academy is set to debut at the 2024 AAEA Meetings Pre-conference on Saturday, July 27th, from 8 am to 5 pm. This initiative aims to elevate teaching standards within our profession by providing comprehensive teacher training and mentorship opportunities for students and early career professionals. The academy's mission is to foster consistent and dedicated efforts across our discipline to enhance teaching skills. This is open to all AAEA members including graduate students, faculty, and early career professionals. To join, please visit https://www.aetrjournal.org/teaching-academy. Steering the Teaching Academy are Na Zuo, Jason Bergtold, Hannah Shear, Jennifer Clark, Ross Pruitt, Rui Chen, Jerrod Penn, and Kathleen Liang.
The AAEA and AERE boards are proposing a virtual fall workshop centered on actionable economic research for policy-making, structured around sessions dedicated to specific agencies such as CEA, USDA, EPA, OMB, and the Federal Reserve. Each session will feature discussions with panelists who have either served or currently serve in these agencies, addressing key topics such as the working environment, acquisition and utilization of economic research, opportunities for early career researchers, relevant research types, and future directions for economic research. Panelists will share insights on funding opportunities, visibility of research within agencies, the evolving role of data and computing power, perceptions of economists by policymakers, and the influence of economics compared to other social sciences in governmental policy-making. Committee members are Karen Fisher-Vanden, Amy Ando, Valerie Mueller, Ariel Ortiz-Bobea, Gabe Lade, Kent Kovacs, and Gabe Sampson. We will keep you posted.
The AAEA Trust is the non-profit fundraising arm of AAEA. It is an important entity of our association since it supports the work of agricultural and applied economists by funding programs and initiatives designed to advance our profession. To donate, please visit https://www.aaea.org/trust/donate. One of the important programs it is supporting is the Early Career Professional and Graduate Student Travel Grants to help attendance at the 2024 AAEA Annual Meeting in New Orleans and to foster inclusivity. The deadline for submissions is May 24, 2024. To apply, please visit https://www.aaea.org/meetings/2024-aaea-annual-meeting/registration-travel/travel-grants
Lowell Randel, our government affairs representative, Kristen McGuire, and I recently convened with Chairs/Heads of Agricultural/Applied Economics Departments to deliberate on initiatives aimed at advancing our profession and fostering additional funding avenues for AAEA members and the profession at large. Among our ongoing endeavors is our request to the Department of Homeland Security to reclassify agricultural economics and agribusiness as a STEM field, which is still pending. Additionally, the department chairs underscored the importance of intensifying our efforts to secure funding not just for USDA agencies but also from other governmental bodies like the Department of Energy and the EPA to broaden the funding opportunities for agricultural and applied economics research. If you have additional ideas, please feel free to reach out to me, Kristen or any member of the AAEA Executive Board.
Registration for the 2024 AAEA Annual Meeting in New Orleans as well as registration for Luncheons and Pre-/Post-conference Workshops are now open. You can take advantage of early bird registration discounts if you register on or before May 31, 2024.