Update: What are our EEM graduates up to?

Well, we have a new boss here in the department and he asked me to update this previous blog post from early 2015 about what our EEM majors are doing after they graduate from our program. I spent a little time tracking some of them down and had some fun conversations – some I hadn’t spoken with for a few years so it was really nice to catch up!

You can see the previous list in last year’s blog post but here are what the graduates since then have been doing. We’ve had eight new graduates since the last post, and two I haven’t been able to get hold of. For the remaining six we have:

  • Recruiter for a staffing agency, Raleigh NC
  • Economic Development Program Manager at Mississippi Development Authority, Jackson MS
  • Legislative Assistant for Florida Crystals Corporation (producer of organic and low-environmental-impact sugar), Washington DC
  • Restaurant Manager, Starkville MS
  • AmeriCorps VISTA for the Center for Economic Education and Financial Literacy (here in our department)
  • Graduate school, joint JD & MA in Environment & Natural Resources, University of Wyoming

Besides these recent graduates, some of our earlier graduates from the EEM program who were mentioned in the previous post have changed jobs. They are now:

  • Peace Corps, Sustainable Ag Systems Extension Agent, Panama
  • Major Donor Manager, Republican National Committee, Washington DC
  • Speech Language Pathologist, Cumberland MD
  • Law School, Washington & Lee  U.
  • Unit Director, Boys & Girls Club, Starkville MS
  • Administrator, Fresh Thyme Farmers Market (natural & organic grocery store), Worthington OH

I should also point out that we had four Demmer Scholars who completed internships in Washington, DC this past summer. Three were current EEM students, one of whom will be working with the Foreign Ag Service in Washington, DC after graduating next spring. (Lesson: internships can lead to job opportunities!)

You can see our EEM graduates are spread out fairly well around the nation in a variety of endeavors. Also, it’s around that time of year when students in Dr. Little’s seminar class will be going around to their advisers asking questions like what job opportunities there are for our majors, whether internships are useful, how to be successful as an undergrad student, etc. I usually tell my advisees that economics is a way of thinking that helps you in any job in which critical, logical thinking is an important skill (and that’s important for many jobs as you can read about here!). But, if you want to actually do what most economists do, which is analyze data in order to answer important questions relevant to policy and to private decision-making, you’re going to want to consider going to graduate school to further develop your economic skills. Grad school isn’t for everyone – neither in terms of taste nor in terms of need – so our hope in the department is that we help our students develop economic thinking and knowledge and expose them to conducting economic analysis so that they can make great, best-informed decisions about their own futures, which can take any of numerous exciting routes. And maybe they have a little fun while in the program too…