Associate professor of economics Manfred Keil, who will serve as the new chair of the economics department for the 2006-07 academic year, will attend a July 11-13 retreat in Los Angeles on behalf of the Posse Foundation Inc., which identifies, recruits, and trains youth leaders from urban public high schools and places them in top colleges and universities across the country.
Keil will serve as mentor for CMC's third incoming group of Posse students, following in the footsteps of Susan Murphy, associate professor of psychology and associate director of the Kravis Leadership Institute, and James Higdon, professor of physics in the department of Joint Science. CMC became the first West Coast partner of the Posse Foundation in 2003, aided by a sponsorship from the Goldman Sachs Foundation.
Keil says he is pleased to be working with a foundation that puts education from leading college and universities within the realm of promising students from urban public high schools. "The philosophy is that these students will do well at a highly selective liberal arts college such as CMC, with help adjusting to the rigors of college life by staying together as a team for the first two years."
The team-building duties, he says, are not unlike his years as a youth soccer coach. "Our main asset was always the team, rather than the individuals."
On behalf of Posse, the professor attended last month's national meeting in New York City, and returns to the East Coast In August for a second national Posse gathering.
The role is just one of several academic activities for Keil, whose summer schedule included participation in the June 21-23 Fletcher Jones Foundation retreat in Anaheim, which addressed FITness, the College's efforts to increase Fluency in Information Technology in curriculum. Keil, who was accompanied by associate professor of mathematics James B. Pinter-Lucke, says he has always interpreted FITness to mean that students can, in essence, "analyze quantitative information and present it in an interesting format."
This cause will be benefited by a recent, second grant from the Foundation, spearheading a new initiative introducing "peer-to-peer teaching of FITness," says Keil, "in which advanced statistics students can help other students with statistical software packages such as SPSS and STATA."
In coming events, he will presenting his paper, What Can Uncovered Interest Rate Parity tell us about Exchange Rate Regimes? Empirical Evidence from Eastern Asia during an Aug. 8-9 conference at Vassar College. The event, he says, is an exchange for research ideas in macroeconomics at liberal arts colleges. Keil says he will use the Asian financial crisis as a litmus test to identify what interest rate interdependence reveals about Asian countries' exchange rate policies.
His return to campus this fall also comes with added responsibilities as a new department chair, with priorities to include filling faculty vacancies, working on the curriculum for economics majors, and offering more advanced elective courses.
"I want to make it easier," Keil says, "for students to plan their course choices in economics, and encourage closer academic relationships between faculty and econ majors."
-------Katherine Spada 08