Recently, The School of Economics celebrated the hard work and achievements of the 2017 Honours Class at the Global Change Institute (GCI) building.
Students commenced the year by choosing their research topic and suitable academic within that field, to be their supervisor. Throughout the year students wrote and rewrote their thesis, with submission and presentations occurring in October.
This function provided an opportunity for the Honours Class students, parents, friends, supervisors, School of Economics staff, industry guest and sponsors to celebrate the achievements of the Honours Class upon completion of their year.
Head of School, Professor Rodney Strachan opened the evening by congratulating the Honours Class on their achievement and thanking our ongoing sponsors from Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), Synergies Economic Consulting and Tactical Global Management Group (TGM).
Guest speaker, Alex McNab, Chief Investment Officer of Blue Sky Alternative Investments, graduated UQ in 2001 with a Bachelor of Economics (first Class Honours and University Medal) and a Bachelors of Laws.
Alex provided the students with lessons learnt from the workforce, and insightful advice to “learn from the difficult experience and not always the good times”.
The students were advised that “the best way to prepare for your next job is to excel in your current job.”
Nine of the ten Honours Students were in attendance for the evening, and all received a class gift presented by Professor Strachan.
Three industry sponsored awards were presented to the following students for outstanding achievements in the respective areas.
- ACCC Economics Honours Prize for best overall performance in ECON6010 Microeconomics A and the Honours Thesis (Microeconomics): Junqian Li
- The Tactical Global Management Honours Prize for best overall performance in ECON6020 Macroeconomics A and Honours Thesis (macroeconomics): Lei Seng Cheong
- The Synergies Economic Consulting Honours Prize for best overall thesis: Nicholas Monroe
Zi Yin spoke on behalf of the 2017 Class to close the evening. Zi reflected that doing his honours was the best decision he has made.
“I want to say to my cohort, because of you, doing the honours program at UQ might be the best decision I have made in my life and when junior students ask me the advice of honours, I always say 100% YES, just do it and you won’t regret it!”
Zi spoke very highly of the School of Economics Academics and Supervisors. It is the knowledge of the supervisors that inspires Zi to pursue further study in economics.
“It is the School of Economics supervisors that drives me to go deeper into the world of economics, to pursue my PhD study and hopefully one day I can be like someone like them, someone like a UQ School of Economics Academic.”
To find out more information about the The UQ School of Economics Honours program and scholarships available, visit the Schools’ website.