16 May 2016 9:51AM
The Department of Economics held its Graduation Recognition Ceremony in Cameron Indoor Stadium on Sunday, May 15. This year the department recognized 17 graduates with a Ph.D., 68 graduates with a Master of Arts of Economics, 10 graduates with a Master of Science in Statistical and Economic Modeling, 7 graduates with a Master of Science in Economics and Computation, and 205 graduates with an economics major.
Professor Huseyin Yildirim spoke to the class of 2016, commending their accomplishments on behalf of the faculty. "Graduating from this great institution is huge. There is no overstating it," Yildirim said. "You survived countless exams, countless projects, and long nights … We asked excellence from you, and you made us excellent professors in return."
The professor also imparted some words of wisdom to those graduates soon entering the real world, stressing the importance of individualism: "I believe everyone has a unique view, and a unique approach to solving problems. See what you're made of. In the process, you will rise like a supply curve and fall like a demand cue; but, when they intersect, that's when you know you've found your own way."
The student speaker for the event was senior Rachel Anderson, who graduated with a double major in economics and computer science and a minor in Turkish. Anderson reminisced with her peers the common experiences they shared as economics majors at Duke, from struggling through multivariate calculus to memorizing Stata commands.
“Although we may forget how to use the Lagrangian method to maximize a function subject to a constraint equation, we have learned some lasting lessons from our economics training that we should not forget,” Anderson said. She drew upon three such lessons that will be particularly useful as they transition beyond Duke: “beware of conclusions that do not have supporting facts or data”; “scarcity and allocation of resources explain a lot”; and, “look ahead.”
Master's Awards
Ashley DeVore won the Duke Department of Economics Master's Program Award for Leadership.
Huidi Lin won the Duke Department of Economics Master's Program Award for Academic Excellence.
Undergraduate Awards
The following Allen Starling Johnson, Jr. Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Research allow for recognition of those outstanding students whose work stands out among the 30 honors students this year.
The Best Honors Thesis award was given to Clement Lee, whose thesis was titled “The Market for Apples: A Theory of Identity and Consumption.”
The Best Honors Thesis finalists were Rachel Anderson, Wei Jie Chia, and Suhani Jalota.
The Class of 2016 Award for Exceptional Growth in the Mastery of Economics was given to Chuka Obiofuma.
The Outstanding Symposium Presentation award was given to Clement Lee and Grant Kelly.
The Faculty Award for Outstanding Honors Poster was given to Rachel Anderson. The Student Award for Outstanding Honors Poster was given to Joshua Rosen.
Couldn't make it to our ceremony? Watch the event on YouTube.
Economics Department