I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the Economic Scholars Program at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas a couple of weeks ago. It was such a wonderful conference that I felt compelled to post something on the blog about it.

The really cool thing about the conference is that it is run entirely by undergraduate students. This means that the students review the papers for acceptance into the conference, present their research in the sessions, serve as discussants of the papers, and chair each of the sessions. Of course, there are faculty in attendance, but we were there as much for moral support as anything (and also because of the small detail that our universities and colleges required a faculty member to attend with their respective students). The faculty would ask some questions, but probably 95% or more of the questions came from students. And the questions they asked were outstanding, as were the responses to their questions.

Since coming back to St. Mary’s University where I teach, I have told my students that this was the best academic conference I have attended. I have certainly been to professional conferences where the quality of some of the papers was not nearly as high, the discussants were not nearly as prepared, and it was not run as well as this one was.

I should also mention that there was also a poster session that was very highly attended. They served food during the session, so when I walked into the room, I expected to see most of the students hovering around the food because what college students doesn’t want to indulge in good food (and the food at the Fed is always exceptional). However, I saw just the opposite. The students surely ate well, but they were all engaged around the various posters talking about the research that was being presented. They were very, very engaged.  As a professor, it was awesome to observe.

It was such a great experience for the students, and if you are a college professor in economics or other social sciences, I would highly encourage you to consider taking your students to this conference.

The conference is co-hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and Austin College – my alma mater (he states with great pride). The hospitality provided by the Fed staff was amazing. I greatly appreciate all of the effort that the Fed staff and faculty at Austin College put forth to organize and host this conference.

On a personal note, the faculty member from Austin College who was responsible for their part of the organization effort, Danny Nuckols, was my mentor and main economics professor when I was at AC. It was his passion, keen insights, and encouragement, along with being one of the best professors I have ever had, that lead me to follow in his footsteps and become an economics professor.

As always, it was great to see him, but to add to that, I also got to meet two more of his former students who also went onto to become economics professors. One is at the University of Texas at Arlington and the other one is at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. It is common for great coaches to develop a coaching “tree” as their assistant coaches branch off to assume head coaching positions at other teams. I guess the same is true with great professors like Danny Nuckols.