Alumni News

We want to make sure and keep all of you up-to-date on the news of the department. Enrollment is continuing to grow. UNT was over 32,000 in the fall and we have outgrown our facility. The university purchased the old Texas Instruments plant on the north side of town. This facility is known as the UNT Research Park and is the new home of the College of Engineering and many of our business service offices. This expansion created some open space on campus and in August we moved across campus to the second floor of the Engineering Technology Building.

While the move was stressful, we now have more space than was available in our Wooten offices. The main office is in suite 254. We have a much larger reception area, more office space, and our own conference room. The faculty offices are arranged in two suites and most now have windows. The graduate students experienced the biggest gains in space. The graduate students now have an office area with individual study carrels, a computer lab, a conference table with boards for study groups, and a lounge area with windows, a couch, refrigerator, freezer, and microwave. In addition, the Tutoring Lab has quadrupled its space. This has provided much more room to provide one-on-one tutoring as well as space for a conference table and 4 computers. The additional space has substantially increased the number of students using the lab. The lab has also become a location for weekly review sessions for Math Econ, Advanced Macro, Advanced Micro, and Advanced Metrics.

The continuing growth has also put more pressure on our course offerings. To help with the increasing demand, we have added some new members to our faculty. In the fall of 2004, Dr. Young Se Kim joined our faculty from the Ohio State University. His areas of specialization are macroeconomics, econometrics, and open economy macro. He is currently teaching Principles of Macro, Intermediate Macro, and Advanced Macro. Next year, Young Se will add Open Economy Macroeconomics to our spring lineup of classes. His research deals with adaptive expectations in the international financial markets. He is married and has two sons. The second was born in Denton on November 30th, 2004.

In late February, we received letters of acceptance from two new faculty members. Myungsup Kim and Jiyoung Kwon will be joining the department in August of 2005. Myungsup is an econometrician that studied with Peter Schmidt at Michigan State Univeristy. Given the outstanding job that Margie Tieslau has done with our econometrics program, we decided the best place to find her some help was to return to her alma mater and hire a student from her mentor. Myungsup specializes in panel data and micro econometrics. He will begin by teaching Intro to Econometrics and Research Methods. Once he gets settled, we expect to add a new panel data class for the graduate students. Econometric skills have been instrumental in the placement of our students and we are looking to continue to strengthen this part of our curriculum.

Jiyoung Kwon is a micro economist specializing in Industrial Organization, Applied Econometrics, and Transportation. She is also from Michigan State where she studied with Kenneth Boyer and Jeffrey Woolridge. Her work focuses on pricing in the airline industry and productivity in the trucking industry. She is also interested in telecommunications and is expected to work with Janice Hauge in this area. Jiyoung will begin by teaching Intermediate Micro and Industrial Organization. We have been increasing the prerequisites for our upper level courses and raising GPA requirements for ECON majors in recent years. Jiyoung will be instrumental to our efforts to revamp our applied micro courses.

We are working to update our alumni database and get as many alums as possible back to campus for 6th Annual Economics Alumni and Awards Dinner on Saturday, April 16th. This year we will be recognizing many of the past winners of departmental awards as well as the accomplishments of current undergraduate and graduate students. Michael Nieswiadomy is still our Coordinator of Placement Services, so don’t hesitate to contact him if you have a job opening. Michael McPherson is also working to increase our contact with current and potential employers of our students. We are making some significant improvements in the curriculum and we want as much industry input as possible. David Molina is the sponsor of the UNT ECON Club and would love to have you visit campus and speak to our students. If you have been away from campus for a while, we would love to hear from you. Please contact me at scobb@unt.edu so that we can catch up

Steven L. Cobb, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Chair