The W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research annually honors the best doctoral dissertation on employment-related issues. The 2013 Dissertation Award is shared by Gregory Leiserson and Will Dobbie. Dobbie is 2004 graduate of Kalamazoo College (major–economics and business; study abroad–Nairobi, Kenya; athletics–varsity cross country). His dissertation comprises three essays in the area of labor economics. The first essay estimates the impact of Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection on subsequent earnings and mortality. The second explores why market failures may exist in subprime credit markets. The third asks whether high quality primary/secondary schools are enough to significantly reduce social disparities. Dobbie earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University. The W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan, independent research organization devoted to investigating the causes and effects of unemployment, to identifying feasible methods of insuring against unemployment, and to devising ways and means of alleviating the distress and hardship caused by unemployment.
business
K Business Students Claim Project Management Prize
Four Kalamazoo College students won a fourth-place team prize—and a $1,000 check—in an intercollegiate project management competition in Grand Rapids hosted by the Project Management Institute (PMI) West Michigan Chapter.
Christian Giancarlo ’13, Forrest Todd ’13, Jack Massion ’14, and Marjorie Toshach ’13 worked as a team to improve the fictional business MichiganToStay, Inc.
“Basically we had to revamp the attraction and retention programs for employees,” said Todd.
In addition to meeting with each other and formulating a plan, the K students received help from mentors DeLin Shen and Harold Kaefer of Kalamazoo-based Stryker Corp. The team faced different deadlines and tasks throughout the competition and presented its entire process to a panel of judges.
K Senior Instructor of Economics Chuck Stull organized the team.
“I am proud of how well all of the K competitors did and excited to see their hard work recognized,” Stull said. “This project took an impressive amount of work and I’m very appreciative of all the time contributed by the local business mentors. The students learned so much working closely with business professionals from Stryker, Kellogg, Pfizer, Deloitte, Jacobs Engineering, and Chaucer Consulting.”
Stull also thanked K alumnus Joel Mergen ’86 for bring the project to his attention.
“What drew me to [the project] was the experience of working with the mentors,” Toshach said. “I spent more time on it than some of my classes.”
The project happened independently of class, so team members spent their free time working on it. Toshach said the experience of working on a project allowed her insight into a process that would have been difficult to learn in the classroom.
“The material itself is dry, so you need a scenario to add to it right away,” she said. “I think that made a huge difference with the learning experience.”
Todd agreed. “It was cool because you got to learn how it’s applicable, what this stuff actually means in the business world and how we can actually help the customer, even though it was fictitious,” he said.