He has completed his service as department chair, three taxing and productive years. During Vince's chairmanship, the faculty was renewed and strengthened by the appointments of assistant professors Leora Friedberg, Steven Raphael, David Riker, and Jason Schachat. Vince is now returning to his first love, economic research, as he holds a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship for the coming year. As our new chair, Professor Joel Sobel faces the challenge of administering one of the world's great economics faculties. That UCSD has achieved this prominence is well known, but some will find it surprising.
Great universities take generations to grow.
But in little more than three decades, UCSD has gone from a prominent oceanographic research institution to a leading research university. And the economics faculty has participated in that growth. Before setting off on his research fellowship, Chair Crawford surveyed the major economics departments to see how their external research funding compares. This is a moderately objective index of academic quality and research prominence. UCSD ranks sixth among American university economics departments in the number of externally peer reviewed grants per faculty member, after MIT, Stanford, Minnesota, Northwestern, and Chicago.