Liberal Arts’ Catherine Eckel Named Distinguished Professor

Catherine Eckel, the Sara and John Lindsey Professor of Economics for the College of Liberal Arts, has been named a Distinguished Professor, one of the most prestigious awards bestowed upon Texas A&M University faculty members.

Of the 89 current Distinguished Professors, only ten, including Eckel, are from the College of Liberal Arts.

“I am truly honored to be named a University Distinguished Professor,” Eckel said. “I’m grateful to my colleagues for their support, and especially to my department head Tim Gronberg, who nominated me for this position. I’m delighted to join such an august group of academicians at such a prominent university. I look forward to being involved in the life of the university for many years to come.”

The title is bestowed in perpetuity upon faculty members who are considered pre-eminent in their field, have made at least one seminal contribution to the discipline, and whose work is widely recognized to have altered the direction of scholarship in the field.

“Only a select group of faculty are named as University Distinguished Professor,” said Pamela Matthews, interim dean for the College of Liberal Arts. “The College of Liberal Arts is extremely fortunate that Dr. Catherine Eckel has been chosen for this achievement. Dr. Eckel’s pioneering research in experimental and behavioral economics helped to define a relatively new field and to change the way economists understand how individuals make economic decisions. We join the campus community in recognizing Dr. Eckel’s outstanding accomplishment.”

Eckel has authored more than 50 journal publications and received many other awards for her outstanding teaching and research. She said that her favorite part of teaching is in her research lab, where students of all levels collaborate on projects.

“I teach using active learning. Students in my classes participate in exercises that simulate markets, negotiations, and other types of decisions. They not only learn economic principles and theories, but also experience them, and therefore better understand how well the theories capture the way people behave in economic decisions and transactions,” Eckel said.

Timothy Gronberg, head of the Department of Economics, said, “When the Department of Economics lured Catherine Eckel to Texas A&M in 2012, we considered the hiring to be a major coup. The prestigious University Distinguished Professor award appropriately recognizes Catherine’s stature and influence in the economics profession and signals the national presence of our strong departmental program in behavioral and experimental economics.”

The 2015 Distinguished Professor honorees will be recognized by Texas A&M Interim President Mark Hussey at a reception on April 29.

More information, including a complete list of University Distinguished Professors, is available online.

A complete list of the 2015 honorees is available online.