By Lily Bohlke

bohlkeli@grinnell.edu

The Economics SEPC, a group in equilibrium, has high supply and high demand at the same time. Noah Sebek ’17, Muhamad Sami ’17, Evelyn Weidman ’17, Dylan Ambrosoli ’18 and Anushka Joshi ’18 comprise the SEPC, which works together to give input to the Economics hiring processes, get to know professors and build community within the major.

“I really like the research aspect to it, and I talked about becoming [closer] with professors and figuring out where their interests lie. That’s not exactly what we do, but I think I’ve been able to use that to influence what we actually do,” Sebek said.

“A lot of it has been wanting to get more involved and have a student voice in the department,” Weidman added.

“I just wanted to be a part of the economics department. I had some ideas, related to finance, that I wanted to share with people,” Sami added.

The SEPC members all agree that being involved in the hiring practices is valuable as interested students. Not only do they get to voice their concerns and the concerns of other students, but also they get to interact with potential professors.

“We get to sell ourselves. Once we actually have candidates to campus, often they’re interviewing at 20-some other places as well. How can we convince them Grinnell is a cool place? We are the students that they see and we try to convince them we’re cool and representative of the Econ major as a whole,” Ambrosoli said.

“We’ve had candidates say this is the only school where they actually talk to undergrads. It is kind of a unique way to get them thinking about how Grinnell is different, and about student initiative and student involvement,” Weidman added.

“We try to reach out to a large sample of [students], and really get a lot of viewpoints,” Sebek said. “We know what people want, and what we can get.”

As representatives from the largest major on campus, the Economics SEPC enjoys a sizable budget to plan study breaks, events like bowling and the Economics picnic.

Some of their recent events included an Econ Department Pub Night to mingle with professors and students informally, Econ lunches to talk informally about economics and a Dari Barn run to allow majors to engage with each other.

Ambrosoli has begun to plan a “bowling league, or at least a couple of lanes of bowling going — things in town that we can do in groups.”