Econ grad student receives award in memory of late professor

November 6, 2006

Lauren Malone, a Ph.D. student in economics, has received the first award from the Eileen L. Brooks Memorial Fund.

The award honors the memory of faculty member Eileen Brooks (above) who died in February.

Malone received the award, which this year carried a $1,500 cash prize, on October 13 during the 9th Annual Conference on International Economics cosponsored by the Santa Cruz Center for International Economics (SCCIE).

The award honors the memory of Eileen Brooks, an assistant professor of economics at UCSC who died of cancer in February at the age of 33. The award, which will be presented annually, recognizes a graduate student of economics for outstanding work in international trade. The fund was created from donations by the Brooks family and Brooks's friends and campus colleagues.

Third-year graduate students were invited to apply for the award, and the selection was based on their performance to date in courses and on exams, as well as on evidence of their research potential, based on their dissertation prospectus or an academic paper. The selection committee was made up of faculty members of the economics Ph.D. program committee and department chair Lori Kletzer.

Kletzer presented the award and check to Malone during the after-dinner program on the first day of the annual SCCIE conference. Brooks was memorialized during the gathering by Kletzer, Andrew Bernard, the Jack Byrne Professor of International Economics at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, and Marc Melitz, associate professor of economics at Princeton University. The first session of the conference was also dedicated to Brooks's memory.