Dr. Allen Klaiber and the Graduate Studies Committee have awarded the 2019-2020 Bernie Erven Teaching Award to Katerine Ramirez Nieto. This award is presented annually to the graduate student who best exemplifies the tradition of teaching excellence that Bernie Erven achieved throughout his distinguished career as a professor in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics.
Katerine was nominated by Dr. Abdoul Sam for her exceptional performance and dedication supporting AEDECON 6120 as Lab Instructor over the past two years. Katé has been a Teaching Assistant for five different classes over the past three years, providing support to students as they navigate the challenges of learning applied economics concepts. Student feedback in SEIs was consistently glowing, mentioning Katé’s helpful nature and positivity. Her dedication to student success and passion for teaching were evident to many of her students in class.
Dr. Sam noted specifically that "when some students were unable to access SAS software once the physical university campus was closed due to COVID-19 precautions, Katé proactively made preparations to write code to help students translate their work from SAS to STATA, which was more readily available to all students.”
Additionally, she spent much time leading lab sessions and interfacing with Risk Analysts at Huntington National Bank to help coordinate their semester-long class project working with these corporate partners. Her commitment to student success has led her to be nominated by the past two Master of Applied Economics Program cohorts for the Graduate School’s Graduate Teaching Award. Please join AEDE in expressing our thanks to Katé for her efforts in support of our students and the Department! It goes without question that we wish her the best of luck as she moves on to her career and we know she will continue to make us proud and reflect positively on our department.