Spotlighted Student: Jenna Kowalski '17

The August before her senior year of high school, on her advisor’s recommendation, Jennifer Kowalski ’17 visited Haverford College.  After the visit, Jenna knew this was the college she wanted to attend and she applied early decision with plans of majoring in mathematics. However, once she took Microfinance with Professor Shannon Mudd her plans changed, as she loved the impact and broad applications that were so prevalent in economics. Political Economy and Mathematical Economics, both with Professor Giri Parameswaran, are classes that have left lasting impressions on her as they helped solidify the connection between mathematics and economics, a concentration she is also earning.

Using her mathematics skills, Jenna has served as a peer tutor for the campus calculus resource center, is currently a teaching assistant for econometrics, and has tutored local high school students in mathematics throughout her time at Haverford. In addition, she has gained valuable experiences with the Microfinance and Consulting Club on campus, where she has been a part of coordinating funding campaigns, consulting with local business owners, and learning about the loan and small business industries.

During the summer months, Jenna has gained valuable workplace skills. The summer after her freshman year at Haverford, rather than go home to Lyme, CT, she elected to stay on campus and work for a digital scholarship project in the library. She contributed to a technologically driven microfinance mapping project where she created a website using a Drupal content management system, collected data, and explored the microfinance climate within Nigeria.

The summer following her sophomore year, she was awarded a Whitehead Internship and worked for Econsult Solutions, a public policy and economic consulting firm in Philadelphia. She collaborated with the Economic Development Coordinator on an economic development plan for the City of St. Louis, as well as many economic impact assessments for local cultural, art, and non-profit events and organizations.

This past summer, Jenna lived in New York City and interned with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, conducting research in their Financial Intermediation division. Her project was regarding the political economy of financial regulation, with payday lending as a case study. She collected data, replicated the economist’s recently published paper, and ultimately expanded the data and analysis to present day.

Jenna spent a semester of her junior year abroad at DIS Study Abroad in Scandinavia. She took a variety of Cities courses that used Copenhagen, as well as other European cities, as a classroom. By delving into urban transportation, livability, and economics, it was ultimately abroad where she found her passion for urban economics.

To this end, for her thesis Jenna is constructing a revealed preference model to evaluate individuals’ preferences for the principles of New Urbanism design. Specifically, she will be using a hedonic price model to estimate the individual effects of these principles (such as proximity to public transportation, proximity to public space, sidewalk/bike lane/street ratio, presence of mixed-use properties, diversity, etc.) on property value. The ultimate goal is to evaluate the public policy implications of these price premiums. 

After graduation, Jenna will be completing a Pre-Doctoral program at Princeton University where she will be a research assistant for Professors Anne Case and Angus Deaton. There, she will be working on their research related to the rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans. After this, she has plans to pursue a Ph.D. in economics, with the hopes of one day pursuing academic research in the field of urban economics.