Rutgers-Camden Economics Major Learning on the Job

CAMDEN — For Joseph Harris, the key to gathering data is simple: you can never have too much.

Harris is a junior economics major at Rutgers–Camden who interns at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, where he collects statistical information useful for banks and small businesses.

“I’ve always been interested in economics and the idea of supply and demand,” says Harris, a Williamstown resident and Paul VI High School graduate. “I like collecting and analyzing data to examine the financial health of our society.”

When he’s not studying the intricacies of economics in the classroom, Harris is getting first-hand experience putting his knowledge to practice in the Federal Reserve Bank’s Supervision, Regulation, and Credit Department.

Harris collects quarterly and yearly data from minority-owned depositary institutions and compares factors that contribute to their overall performance in the economy. He is also involved in Partnership for Progress, a Federal Reserve Bank program intended to improve and preserve minority owned banks in the United States.

“I can apply what I’ve learned in class to my internship and many times, we’ll talk about something in class that I just learned at the Federal Reserve Bank,” Harris says. “It allows me to contribute to the class more because I can relate it to what I do at my internship and I can relay that experience to my classmates. I feel like I’ve really gotten the best out of this internship.”

Harris, who is also a track athlete at Rutgers–Camden, says he enjoys looking into recent financial trends and notes that his curiosity of the recent global recession sparked his interest in economics. He plans to pursue his master’s degree and doctorate in economics at Rutgers–Camden after completing his bachelor’s degree in 2013.

“Joseph’s experiences at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia as an intern are very important his career development,” says Tetsuji Yamada, a professor of economics at Rutgers–Camden. “Because his academic training at Rutgers–Camden has given him tremendous breadth and depth in the economic field, including the healthcare system and policy, I believe he will successfully complete the demands of the FED program.”

Harris has helped Yamada with his research on the “health literacy” of Rutgers–Camden students and on raising the retention rates of college students. Both projects require analytical and theoretical knowledge.

“It’s been a great experience and my internship and the research I’ve done with Dr. Yamada has only reinforced my interest in economics,” Harris says.

Harris says his decision to choose Rutgers–Camden to pursue his undergraduate degree in economics was shaped by his growing interest and concern of the global recession.

“During my senior year in high school, the economy was still going through this recession, which affected me and my college choices,” Harris says. “I chose to take a high school advanced placement economics course to understand how I could help resolve it, and it persuaded me to choose a career in economics. That led me to Rutgers–Camden.”