Dear President Wagner,
The Economics program at Emory College is a mainstay of the undergraduate curriculum. Over the past decade, the department has climbed from a national ranking in the 70s to 43 (in terms of pages published in the top 50 economics journals). This is the highest ranking ever for Emory, and is well above that of any other Ph.D.-granting institution in the state.
This Spring semester, the Economics department was due for an external review which would have offered suggestions for the future of the department. However, Dean Robin Forman has proposed to suspend the Ph.D. program without seeking this external input. In fact, the decision was made without any consultation with the Economics chair, the Director of Graduate Studies, or the Executive Committee of the Laney Graduate School that oversees this program.
The Ph.D. program is the intellectual life-blood of the department, around which a vibrant climate of research and inquiry has flourished. Without it, the department’s hard-earned ranking will be lost, its most productive faculty are likely to seek positions elsewhere, and it will not be able to attract new faculty of high caliber. This will be detrimental to the undergraduate program, where the number of majors has soared in recent years, and will jeopardize the College’s primary mission of providing a quality liberal arts education.
We, therefore, urge you to support the continuing success of the Department of Economics and save its Ph.D. program for the sake of future generations of Emory students.