Honors and Awards

Greg Gilpin promoted to full professor

Gregory Gilpin achieved the rank of full professor in recognition of his excellence in research and scholarship and sustained effectiveness in teaching.

Dr. Gilpin arrived at MSU as an Assistant Professor in 2009 and achieved the rank of Associate Professor in 2015. He became Department Head in 2016.

Since joining the DAEE faculty, Dr. Gilpin has taught more than 50 courses at MSU to over 4,500 students and established a national reputation within the fields of economics of education and labor, with specialties in for-profit colleges and public libraries.

He has published 16 academic peer-reviewed articles and two invited articles over the past 12 years.

Recognized as a national expert in public library research, he has received several local and national grants and has shared his research to national audiences. His recent research on the impact of public library use on children’s reading and math achievement was recently featured on NPR.

In 2020, Dr. Gilpin led a team of undergraduate students to compete in the Fiscal Challenge, a national policy competition to reduce the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio, calling it one of his highlights over the past five years.

The team met biweekly over a three-month period to research, debate, and craft policies to reduce the debt. Afterward, students constructed a presentation and submitted it in the competition, against teams from Harvard, Stanford, and other top schools.

"Our team made it through the initial rounds and then onto the finals in Washington, D.C. to present in front of policymakers," Dr. Gilpin said. "Our team was the runner-up, right behind Notre Dame – a frequent winner. This was a huge opportunity for the students to expand their networks and also hone their economics skills. I was proud of all they accomplished."

Professor Emeritus Myles Watts honored for contributions to community

DAEE Professor Emeritus Myles Watts says a few words while accepting
his award at the sixth annual 24 over 64 Prime Awards, held Aug. 30, at
the Hilton Garden Inn. This year, there were 25 honorees of the award,
which recognizes individuals 65 and over for community service.

The Bozeman Daily Chronicle selected DAEE Professor Emeritus Myles Watts as one of 25 honorees to receive its annual Prime Award. The award honors individuals 65 and over for personal and professional accomplishments, talents, and contributions to the community.

Dax Schieffer, director of the Montana Council for Economic Education, nominated Dr. Watts for the award for his 20 years of volunteerism with the council.

"Myles Watts teaches teachers," Schieffer wrote in the nomination materials. "Prior to the pandemic, Watts was doing around 50 presentations per year on economics for educators, primarily in Montana, but with some out-of-state excursions."

Dr. Watts says "teaching the teachers" is really about exposing students to economics before their college years.

"What we want to do, of course, is to help students have more fulfilling lives, and we think that economic knowledge helps them do that," he said. "Now the challenge is for these teachers to make economics relevant to their students."

When he's not volunteering with the economic education council or consulting wtih the agricultural financial institution, Farmer Mac, Dr. Watts is working on his ranch in Eastern Montana.

Eric Belasco promoted to full professor

Eric Belasco achieved the rank of full professor in recognition of his excellence in research and scholarship and sustained effectiveness in teaching.

Prior to joining the DAEE faculty in 2011, Dr. Belasco received his bachelor's degree in economics from Saint Mary’s College of California and his master's and doctorate degrees in economics from North Carolina State University.

At MSU, he has taught a range of classes, including advanced agricultural marketing, financial engineering, microeconomics, econometrics, and the economics of agricultural policy.

His research has made him a nationally recognized expert regarding crop insurance, farm policy, and risk management. This research has resulted in 36 peer-reviewed journal articles, two book chapters, and research highlights in the Washington Post, New York Times, the Hagstrom Report, NPR, MarketWatch, and many regional news outlets.

Dr. Belasco has managed more than $1 million in federal grants, working on interdisciplinary topics that include the development of engineering biodegradable mulches, the value and barriers associated with organic labeling, and the design of weather-based agricultural policy programs, among others.

His outreach efforts take him around the state to deliver programs to a range of agricultural audiences.

Professionally, Dr. Belasco recently completed his term as president of the Western Agricultural Economics Association. He is an associate editor for
the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, and serves as a visiting scholar at The American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.

One of his fondest memories thus far, he said, was leading the Ag in a Global Context class to China in May 2019, where they spent two weeks exploring the country and looking for U.S. marketed products. He also enjoys catching up with former students around the state.

Yang Yu earns honorable mention at AAEA annual meeting

Yang Yu received an Honorable Mention for the 2021 Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award from the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association at its annual meeting in August.

Dr. Yu's dissertation, "How Does Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Affect Household Food Waste? also earned him the 2019 Outstanding Dissertation Award from Penn State University.

Dr. Yu joined the DAEE faculty as an assistant professor in 2020. Since then, he has taught Honors Economics and the Economics of Agricultural Marketing.

His research interests are in food economics, industrial organization, applied econometrics and quantitative methods.

NBER appoints Mariana Carrera as Faculty Research Fellow

The National Bureau of Economic Research appointed Mariana Carrera as a Faculty Research Fellow of Health Economics at its spring meeting in April.  Faculty Research Fellows are nominated for outstanding scholarship that can contribute to NBER activities, and are appointed on the advice of NBER program directors and steering committee members.

Dr. Carrera specializes in health economics and behavioral economics, where she uses applied microeconomics tools to tackle questions of academic and policy relevance. The main areas of her research are agency and information problems faced by health care providers, the role of information and learning in consumer decisions regarding their health, and experiments on health behavior change.

Since joining the DAEE in 2018, she has taught classes in health economics, behavioral and experimental economics, and microeconomics.

Randy Rucker achieves Professor Emeritus of Economics

Before stepping into retirement this summer, Randy Rucker was part of the Montana State University Department of Agricultural Economics and Economics faculty for 29 years. In July, the MUS Board of Regents recognized his three decades of academic service to the university and his students by conferring upon him the title of Professor Emeritus of Economics.

An MSU Bobcat from the beginning, Dr. Rucker received his bachelor's and master's degrees from MSU before earning his doctorate in economics at the University of Washington. While at MSU, he played collegiate basketball and in 1976 was the first athlete from MSU to be named an Academic All-American.

Dr. Rucker remembers his interest in economics started after taking several calculus, business, and accounting classes. “My first couple of years at MSU, I took various classes; I did well, but none of it really excited me," he said. “When I took my first economics class my sophomore year, it all clicked.”

Dr. Rucker says his early mentors at MSU cultivated his interest in research and encouraged him to continue his education.

“During my undergraduate days, I was first attracted to economics in a course taught by Mike Copeland," he said. "Then, P.J. Hill, Terry Anderson and Rick Stroup were very supportive in encouraging me to go on to graduate school."

Countless other economists influenced him during his early research years, he added.

While finishing his dissertation, Dr. Rucker worked for the U.S. Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C., and later moved to Raleigh to teach and begin his research career at North Carolina State University for seven years. His diverse portfolio of research projects includes federal peanut and tobacco programs, timber, natural gas, cattle markets and contracting, wild horse programs, and pollination markets.

Over the past 43 years, Dr. Rucker has taught undergraduate and graduate students in a range of courses, including microeconomics, economics of natural resources, and agricultural policy and marketing, among others.

“I always worked hard in the classroom and encouraged my students to work hard and to learn to think like economists about the world," he said.
That commitment to students has garnered Dr. Rucker recognition for teaching and mentoring over the years. In 2017, the North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture awarded him the Teaching Award of Merit in recognition of meritorious efforts in college teaching.

In February, MSU Award for Excellence honoree Troy Andersen chose Dr. Rucker to be recognized alongside him as a mentor who greatly influenced him during his time at MSU. "I chose him because of everything he has done for me as a student and as a person," Andersen said in a video accepting the award. "He has really gone above and beyond."

In addition to his work in the classroom, Dr. Rucker chaired the DAEE Graduate Affairs Committee for two decades, and has chaired or been a member of over 40 thesis committees for students in the Master’s in Applied Economics program.

Outside the university, Dr. Rucker has also done consulting work in his “spare” time over the years. That work has involved well-known cases like the Exxon Valdez oil spill in the 1990s, as well as labor cases involving Walmart, Nordstrom, and Starbucks. Most recently, he has worked on litigation cases involving honey bees, and is currently working on a case related to charges of price-fixing by broiler producers.

Dr. Rucker’s love of academia has followed him to retirement. Though retired from teaching, he is still working on several unfinished research projects related to timber sales, lotteries for access to outdoor recreation sites, produce pricing, Major League Baseball, breeding bulls, and others.
Along with his lifelong love for economics and research, Dr. Rucker has enjoyed taekwondo and basketball. He taught children's taekwondo for about 25 years, and coached over 700 youth basketball games.

“It was fun and rewarding to be able to coach basketball while my kids were young," he said. "Coaching your own kid doesn’t always work, but I was able to, and I am very close with all three of my children. Now, I am looking forward to spending more time with my eight grandkids, and also to spending more time fly fishing with my lovely wife and my kids and their spouses."

Kate Fuller wins WAEA award for agricultural leasing program, elected to board

The Western Agricultural Economics Association awarded MSU Extension Specialist Kate Fuller the Outstanding Extension Program Award for her Montana Agricultural Land Leasing project.

To be eligible for the award, members must be actively involved in programs of informal education for audiences external to the university and meet the following criteria: importance of the problem or subject, overall effectiveness of the program, appropriateness of economic analysis, effectiveness of communication methods, evidence of accomplishment of objectives and positive impact on target audience(s).

Separately, Dr. Fuller, who is an associate professor in the DAEE specializing in the economics of farm management decisions, was elected to the WAEA Executive Council, where she will serve a two-year term as a director supporting the WAEA goal of fostering the study and understanding of agricultural economics and its application to problems in the western United States and Canada.

Dr. Fuller created the Montana Agricultural Land Leasing project to serve as a resource clearinghouse for those who are looking to start a new lease or renegotiate an expired one. The easy-tonavigate website provides statewide and county per-acre lease rates, average grazing rates and a pasture lease rate calculator.

Other resources on the website include general lease information and guidelines, government reports on agricultural land and real estate values, a hay hotline, a "good landowner" tool kit and land listings in Montana. Video presentations on agricultural leasing in Montana by attorney Terry Schaplow, who teaches Agricultural Law in the DAEE, can also be found on the website, as well as Extension MontGuides that include: Animal Unit Month Lease Rates, The Contributions Approach to Pasture Leasing and Beef Cattle Share Leases, and Grazing Leases.

For more information about the Montana Agricultural Land Leasing Program, go to: https://aglease.msuextension.org.

Marsha Goetting recognized as AARP Outstanding Individual Community Partner

Marsha Goetting recently received the 2021 Outstanding Individual Community Partner award from AARP Montana, recognizing her commitment to accessible information on legacy and estate planning.

Dr. Goetting collaborated with AARP Montana to offer a fourpart webinar series that was free and open to the public across the state. Wisdom Wednesdays, as the series was called, reached more than 1,400 people from April to July, according to AARP Montana.

Topics she covered include written wills; how beneficiary designations allow Montanans to pass property without probate; whether individuals should give their property away while living or bequeath it after death; and more. “I am very honored to receive the award from AARP Montana,” Dr. Goetting said, who is a family economics specialist for MSU Extension.

Along with Wisdom Wednesdays, Dr. Goetting has put on a similar webinar series this year, as well as a learn-at-home course intended for people who might not have internet access or a computer. Afterward, Dr. Goetting and AARP Montana hosted a four-part telephone town hall to reach out to residents in rural areas and those without internet access.

“Marsha has done an outstanding job of creating presentations that distill these often-complicated issues into useful information for the average person,” said Tim Summers, AARP Montana state director.

During the past seven years, Dr. Goetting has presented more than 500 educational sessions reaching more than 15,000 Montanans with financial and estate planning information.

She has received state, regional and national awards for her programs. She is also well known for authoring 48 MontGuide fact sheets in the estate planning area.

Carly Urban accepts invitation to TIAA Institute Fellows Program

Carly Urban has accepted an invitation to the TIAA Institute Fellows Program. TIAA Institute Fellows are prominent thought leaders—both active researchers and senior leaders from higher education—with expertise in areas of mutual interest with the Institute.

Dr. Urban is an associate professor of economics in the DAEE, and faculty affiliate of the Center for Financial Security at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on policies affecting consumer credit broadly defined. Many of her studies consider the effectiveness of financial education graduation requirements on the credit behavior of young adults. She has been published in top academic journals and featured in popular media, such as Time, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News.

In the DAEE, Dr. Urban teaches undergraduate and graduate economics courses and has advised two master's candidates, as well as served on two thesis committees.

George Haynes recognized for Impactful Outreach and Community Engagement

George Haynes was selected as the recipient of the College of Agriculture Award of Excellence – Impactful Outreach and Community Engagement Award, which recognizes faculty and staff who have demonstrated especially significant outreach/engagement achievements and/or an established and sustained body of outreach/engagement related to scholarly work.

Dr. Haynes was selected in recognition of his delivery of high quality programs on agricultural policy across the Northern Great Plain and Rocky mountains, tireless support of Montana’s tribal colleges in ensuring access for American Indian farmers and ranchers, and development of information on child care accessibility for legislators and the Department of Health and Human Services to help frame policies.

Dr. Haynes accepted his award on Dec. 14, at an awards ceremony held during the College of Agriculture's annual open house.

Eric Belasco collaborating on multidisciplinary grant

Eric Belasco is joining a team of MSU and Salish and Kootenai College researchers to develop new value-added bison products throughout Montana.

Wan-Yuan Kuo, assistant professor of food science, is leading the project, “Integrating Indigenous knowledge with food science research education to support value-added Native foods,” which was funded by the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program.

This program will work directly with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes to establish a culturally-sensitive, value-added Native food initiative by integrating Indigenous wisdom with current practices in food science research, instruction, and outreach.

ESP honors Marsha Goetting for Visionary Leadership

Marsha Goetting has received the Epsilon Sigma Phi Western Region Award for Visionary Leadership.

Dr. Goetting, who is a member of the ESP Montana Alpha chapter, was recognized for her estate planning and family financial education workshops that have reached more than 45,000 Montanans in every county and reservation in the state.

Dr. Goetting has authored MontGuides on the subject of estate planning and has developed other educational opportunities throughout her career with the mission to educate people in Montana, the West and across the United States. In 2020 and 2021, she created several estate planning webinars that reached 3,900 Montanans.

“I am honored and humbled to receive the Visionary Leadership award,” Dr. Goetting said. “Estate and financial planning can be daunting topics to understand. I am dedicated to making sure every Montanan has the information needed and the confidence to plan for the inevitable.”

Established in 1927, Epsilon Sigma Phi seeks to improve standards of excellence in the Extension system and provides professional development. ESP is one of the oldest and is the largest organization of Extension professionals.