Awards

Marcela Giraldo wins 2019 Mangum Teaching Award

Marcela Giraldo was the very deserving winner of the 2019 Mangum Teaching Award. This highly-sought after award, endowed through a million dollar gift from distinguished alum Charles Mangum, is given annually to a non-tenured recipient in the Department of Economics who is extraordinary at student involvement. It is intended to promote and reward the art of teaching.

Marcela teaches Financial Economics, Introductory Econometrics and International Macroeconomics. Her first passion for teaching comes from Econometrics. Despite it being a very hard class for students, she manages to get them excited about learning and finds this very rewarding.

International Macroeconomics is also a passionate subject for Marcela because, coming from Colombia, financial crises in Latin America is actually why she started studying economics. And, her students really enjoy picking a real-world crisis to write their case-study assignments.

While teaching Econometrics and International Macroeconomics comes naturally to Marcela, Financial Economics has been much more of a learning experience in the classroom for her. While she enjoys teaching this class now, she is still looking forward to the challenge of improving and growing as a teacher in this class.
According to Marcela, “The award is an encouragement to keep trying to improve my teaching, and an incentive to try harder. It is an honor to be given an award when one works around so many excellent professors from whom I have so much to learn from”.

Elizabeth Wheaton wins ALEC's PAT Award

Elizabeth Wheaton was awarded the Altshuler Learning Enhancement Center (ALEC) Pretty Amazing Teacher (PAT) Award in April 2019. The award was first given in 2014 to Pat Feldman, the director of the ALEC until she retired in 2014.  Each year the ALEC awards an SMU professor the PAT Award for encouraging students to seek academic assistance for tutoring and training, helping students to understand they are responsible for their own success, and working with the ALEC on student development and programs.