Ann Hapanowicz '05 (Rome, NY) already has some professional experience in the bank, literally.
As a participant in the Hamilton College New York City program in the spring of 2004, Hapanowicz interned at Chase Manhattan bank in New York, N.Y. As an Emerson scholar during the summer of 2004, Hapanowicz will continue to explore her interest in banking. She will be working with Hamilton College Professor Derek Jones on a project that will collect and analyze case study data to investigate the links between "human resource management practices" and business performance. Hapanowicz hopes to work with new data from firms in Central New York, more specifically local banks, to study productivity in the work place.
| Summer Research 2004 |
Hapanowicz is a double economics and government major, but her real interest is in banking, finance, and business management. By taking econometrics classes, Hapanowicz has already studied factors leading U.S. firms to adopt HR practices such as profit sharing, as well as business performance factors like employee ownership and employee involvement in Japanese firms. In the past, however, while examining these subjects, the findings have been suspect due to "failure to include controls for all important factors that determine productivity." By working with Prof. Jones, Hapanowicz hopes to account for these discrepancies by collecting detailed data on single firms.
Created in 1997, the Emerson Foundation Grant program was designed to provide students with significant opportunities to work collaboratively with faculty members, researching an area of interest. The recipients, covering a range of topics, will explore fieldwork, laboratory and library research, and the development of teaching materials. The projects will be initiated this summer, and the students will make public presentations of their research throughout the 2004-2005 academic year.
-- by Emily Lemanczyk '05
