21 September 2009 12:00AM
“Tough love” is how the magazine described her style. “Students have been told for 15 or 16 years that they can get partial credit, but in the real world people don’t get partial credit,” she was quoted in Newsweek when describing her grading practices. Emma, along with Duke’s Career Center, leads the Financial Education Partnership that prepares students for careers in finance.
“Professor Rasiel’s Global Markets class challenged all of my skills,” Andrea Coravos said. “I had to write clean and precise five-page papers on financial topics every two weeks, I built DCF and NPV quantitative models on Excel, and I had to present to the class the market summary for all of the different sectors for a week. I doubt there is a better class at Duke to teach people about the real financial world or to help people prepare for interviews.”
And speaking of interviews, Andrea remembers well how Professor Rasiel guided her through the recruiting season – “through numerous denials, interviews, and ultimately right up until I got the job that I wanted the most, which was not even in finance. Professor Rasiel not only helped me figure out my academic and professional dreams, but inspired me to proactively take steps to make those goals come true.”
Abel Teklu, another student of Professor Rasiel’s, remembers walking to a dinner with her when they passed a student she knew was having trouble finding an internship. “Professor Rasiel pardoned herself for a moment, pulled the student aside for a few minutes, and after some discussion told him to make an appointment with her so they could try contacting some people and strategize on ways to find an internship.”
“I don't think you can find anyone from Duke in the Finance industry that does not know Professor Rasiel,” Abel said. “I had lunch at Goldman with an alum who graduated from Duke two years ago, and he fondly recounted how Emma helped him during the internship process, describing her as a remarkable woman.”
Now, back to that magazine article. Here’s where we’re supposed to say, “We didn’t need Newsweek to tell us that!” And of course we didn’t. But we could just as easily have said to the editors, “Why stop at Emma?” The truth is, Duke economics professors routinely win university awards for their teaching and service. To cite just a few recent examples, Huseyin Yildirim won the Howard D. Johnson Trinity College Teaching Award in 2008; the award recognizes faculty who encourage intellectual excitement and connect students to the processes of inquiry and discovery. Charles Becker won the spring 2008 Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Award, which recognizes individuals for their exceptional leadership and commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion within the Duke community. And in 2007 Tom Nechyba won the exclusive Scholar/Teacher of the Year award, which is given to only one Duke professor each year. Tom is at least the third economics professor to win the award in the past decade. As the largest major in Trinity College, the economics faculty at Duke are committed to teaching and service and to meeting the evolving needs of our undergraduate majors.By Paul Dudenhefer
Read original Newsweek article.
