Appointment as dean of the School of Economics and Social Sciences
Developing faculty for the School of Economics
Faculty recruitment
Faculty support
Graduate programmes in economics
Graduate students in Applied Economics
Planning for the economics programme
Undergraduate economics student experience
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Appointment as dean of the School of Economics and Social Sciences
Roberto S MARIANO -
Developing faculty for the School of Economics
Roberto S MARIANO -
Faculty recruitment
Roberto S MARIANO -
Faculty support
Roberto S MARIANO -
Graduate programmes in economics
Roberto S MARIANO -
Graduate students in Applied Economics
Roberto S MARIANO -
Planning for the economics programme
Roberto S MARIANO -
Undergraduate economics student experience
Roberto S MARIANO
It was right along the kind of institution that I would like to see develop in Asia that would have international credibility, and be competitive with the top [economics] research and teaching institutions in the world. And that’s an interesting opportunity and an interesting challenge, something that is quite different from the usual mode of teaching. Hopefully I would still be able to do my research, which up to that point was the combination of teaching and research, was the primary main activity that I’ve always been doing up to that point [at the University of Pennsylvania].
There is another one major exposure which also made it much easier for me to accept the offer, when the offer eventually came sometime in 2000, [Singapore’s] Ministry of Manpower came to the University of Pennsylvania, Department of Economics, looking for me and Professor Klein. Professor Lawrence Klein, he’s a Nobel Prize winner in economics and is very famous for his econometric modelling work for forecasting and policy analysis. And MOM [Ministry of Manpower] people essentially asked if we could do a one-year project for them, constructing an econometric model for Singapore for the manpower needs assessment of Singapore.
And we ended up doing that. It ended up to be a two-year project and that was just finished shortly before I came to join SMU. So that’s another [Singapore-related work experience], and there was a lot of policy making analysis on employment pass holders, and of course, also on the other side, the unskilled workers. Little did I know that I was going to be one of those EP [employment pass] holders.
But even since, because I’ve been in Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania since 1971, from the early ’80s onwards I was doing a lot of consulting work in Asia and—so that I really was very much at home, even though Philadelphia was my base, to be in Asia. I spent one year in the Philippines. I’ve done consulting work for Bank Negara, the current central bank governor there was my student at Penn.
The other thing that I decided was that I’m not going to do a shotgun approach in terms of developing the faculty, because that’s going to be an exercise in futility and nothing will get done if you try to do everything all at the same time. And I already had five or six to work with anyway and they do cover different areas. And so my initial strategy was focus on econometrics and attract good, young econometricians, as well as senior ones, who are interested in being in Asia
But at the same time also hire other people, as opportunities arise in other [key] areas that we still need to fill up because you need macroeconomist, microeconomist, public economist, monetary theory and all sorts of other areas. But econometrics and statistics, partly because that is my area of expertise, that developed very quickly and we were able to attract very good people. Assistant professor level, those just getting their fresh PhDs, it was no problem attracting them over as long as they were interested in coming to Asia. My having taught at the University of Pennsylvania, where about three-fourths of the time I was teaching the PhD programme, also helped me identify students that were PhD graduates from Penn who might be interested. And I over the years attracted about six or seven of them to come. All of them were my former students in econometrics and I know them, they know me, and they felt very comfortable coming here. They’re still here, all of them, but now getting to the point of tenure decisions and things.
The senior faculty are always hesitant to come and because what you want are still relatively young, but pretty well established, who would provide mentorship, and at the same time project the image of the university internationally. From the beginning that was hard and up to now that continues to be, to me, one of the major [challenges]. The other is because it’s a new university, the policy making or policies in place sometimes get developed as we go along. Of course there are ways of looking at how other universities have done it and then, and then patterning your structure and processes after that. But you’ve got to remember we’re in Asia, we’re in Singapore, at the same time we want to be competitive internationally, and there are times when there could be clashes of priorities and of cultural perspectives on how these things should be done.
There’re also certain technical matters like the different tracks in the faculty, which is not common in many places, having a practice track that is of sizeable quantity and also performing very key functions and responsibilities in the university is not a common thing in the university scene in the United States, and so we have to develop a well reasoned out and consistent set of policies for this, we’re still doing it up to now. I mean the process continues, the process of improving how to approach all of this.
That was a given, the people that I was recruiting understood it, and it was also made clear to them that in order to get promotion—even renewal of midterm reappointment and eventual promotion to tenure—that they have to do research and that’s why these three programmes are being set up to really help them. It is also understood that it’s built into the budgeting of the schools that the university would support the research activities. There’s a very generous allocation of school money to support presentation of papers in conferences. In many universities in the United States there is not as much support for this simply because funds are limited, but here we give the [standing faculty] budget to support the trips abroad, to go to conferences and present papers.
Supplementary research funding up to as much as two-ninths of the base salary is also provided on an application merit basis, and sometimes this research funding support is automatic and built into the contract, written into the contract.
So all of these are really to support the young faculty any faculty’s efforts to produce research, but on the other side of it is a very strong statement that you are there expected to produce research. It’s very difficult, it’s a lot of pressure on the faculty because in addition to that they also have to teach well because of the requirements of our pedagogy—we’re still predominantly an undergraduate [institution] and so we cannot neglect teaching, teaching has to be important as well.
The Applied Economics programme, on the other hand, is really designed for part-time students like the MBA, but the content is very different from the MBA—and that one is being designed to be a revenue generator. Right now about twenty-five students per year are coming in but we would like to grow that to about forty. And while the other [research] ones, the master’s and PhD in economics really developed the academic foundation for economics, this one puts its emphasis on applications; understanding of concepts; being able to interpret, use this knowledge of concepts to interpret how things are working out in the real world; and essentially being able to apply methodology to answer real world problems. No need to learn how to prove a theorem—but what you need to know are the concepts, and what the theorem is saying, and what the theorem and concepts are offering by way of understanding what’s happening out there, and how to cope with problems that you see.
These are mid-level executives who work in different areas, some are engineers, some are lawyers—very few are economists obviously because they already know, if you are an economist you don’t need to go through this—but they want to learn a little bit more about economics to enrich their knowledge base and their ability to cope with the demands of their work. They’re not looking to become an economist. They’re not looking to change jobs, but to improve their understanding of economics. And so it’s highly motivated group of people, and as long as we deliver the goods this programme is going to do well. This is just in its third year, and it’s been going up in numbers. Despite the bad economic conditions in the past two years, we’ve been able to attract a reasonable number to make it at least.
The description of that was prepared by the people already in the economics group at SMU, especially done by Sock Yong Phang together with guidance from Janice Bellace—at that time she was outgoing [SMU] president. To me it described a very universal and internationally grounded vision for the school. To be a research and teaching institution that has international recognition, that can compete with the top [economics] departments anywhere in the world, in terms of the programmes that it offers to its students, to its constituencies in terms of the research.
And when I accepted the job that was, I put that [vision] as the main goal in terms of the decisions on how the curriculum should be set up for the undergraduate programme. That’s the beauty of coming in as the founding dean, then you can really start and have a real say from the very beginning.
So how to do the curriculum, how to do the faculty hiring, what kind of research programmes to support, and how all these different key phases or modules in the development of the school ought to be developed in coordination, collaboration, cooperation with the other schools [in SMU]? Because you don’t, the School of Economics doesn’t exist by itself, but rather as an integral part of a whole organism which you call a university, which is a conglomeration of units, each one having its own mind and sometimes very difficult to coordinate.
Because of my experience at the university [University of Pennsylvania], I also developed a fine sense of cooperation with other people. My philosophy is not to be an island but rather to really be an enabler and a cooperative collaborator with people on projects that I feel are important to carry out and exert influence on in terms of direction and what it does.
So all of this is also very important to develop, the right mentality for the students, especially the undergraduates. They are coming in not knowing exactly what they’re bargaining for, or what they’re paying for, because it’s a brand new programme.
In terms of a [economics undergraduate] curriculum NUS is doing a very good job as well, as well as NTU in terms of their design. But it’s really the whole university experience, the fact that….as a student of economics you’re also involved in the many, many different aspects of life as an SMU student that really distinguishes the experience. The other thing is about our programme and about our faculty; we’ve put together a very strong, strong faculty. It’s still majority are young assistant professors but what the students are learning from them is real exposure to the frontier of economics in terms of research topics in macro, micro and the courses that they’re teaching. And that’s a very important foundational development for the student that they may not realise now but later may …if…when they’re faced with problems, practical problems at work or when they decide to apply for graduate studies, this kind of training is going to be precious. And it’s showing already.
