Dear Alumni and Friends,
As the new Chair of the Dornsife Department of Economics, I send you my warmest greetings. It is an honor to be the first woman to hold this position.
I began my career at USC as an assistant professor in 1994. My teaching and research focus is macroeconomics and international economics, bringing consulting opportunities with the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis and the Board of Governors in DC. But my greatest satisfaction comes from advising and mentoring doctoral students, many of whom have become friends.
Thanks to you, the department has evolved into a vibrant learning community with our research rankings moving from the top-30 to 13th. In addition, your gifts of time and philanthropic support have given us resources to provide students with a more holistic experience and to expand our academic talent.
My task now is to grow the faculty and build on these achievements. Our ambitious goal is to become a top-10 economics department. To attain top-10 research productivity, we must substantially increase the size of our core faculty which is at least 25% smaller than other departments we aspire to join. It is also essential if we are to continue serving our exploding student population.
There will be challenges to meeting this goal, but they are exciting challenges born of terrific recent success. With your support, it is achievable. I thank the past chairs of the Economics Department who have led us to this exciting place of opportunity. I thank the alumni leaders for their dedicated support.
Warmly,
Caroline
