Editor's Note: This is the fourth installment in a four-part series profiling professors who were recently awarded endowed chairs.
Even while working in Washington, D.C., as chief economist on the Council of Economic Advisors, economics professor Andrew Samwick's love for his post at Dartmouth never waned even next to the prospect of more time in the capitol.
"Washington for a second year or [coming] back to Hanover?" he said. "There's really no contest. I have two or three times as many good colleagues in the economics department here as I would have anywhere else."
After 16 years at the College, Samwick was named to the Sandra and Arthur Irving A'72, P'10 Professorship of Economics, one of the College's new endowed chairs.
"It was only a matter of time," economics professor Bruce Sacerdote, Samwick's colleague, said.
The endowed chairs allow professors to strike a balance between focusing on teaching and on research, Samwick said.
"[The endowed chair] expands the set of resources available to the Dean of the Faculty area of the College," Samwick said. "The best thing that Dartmouth does is hire enough faculty to carry the teaching load without making teaching the sole occupation of the faculty. It's not competing ideas of what a scholar should be doing, but competing demands on the scholar-teacher's time."
Samwick said he felt an affinity for economics from the first time he was exposed to the field during his freshman year at Harvard.
"I felt like the very straightforward language of economics that focused on optimization and equilibrium made a lot of sense to me," he said. "It could be a good way to view problems that I was interested in."
After earning a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Samwick joined the staff at the College in 1994 as an assistant professor. Samwick enjoyed the latitude given to him from the start of his career, he said.
"When I got to Dartmouth, I really enjoyed the freedom that I had to pursue any question that interested me, as opposed to being very narrowly cast as a professor of, say, public economics, which was my main field in graduate school," he said.
The College's economics department was particularly alluring to Samwick and has become more so over his tenure, he said.
"The economics department has a couple of specialties where we've gone for extreme depth," Samwick said. "We've taken those spots and allocated them in ways that certainly don't harm the undergraduate teaching but allow for a lot more research synergies across people, and a much more interesting and inclusive environment for faculty."
The George W. Bush administration invited Samwick to serve on the Council of Economic Advisors in 2003, and when Samwick served for a year as chief economist of the Council, he said it gave him insight into the average citizen's unhappiness with the government.
"There seems to be such perennial and widespread dissatisfaction with what happens in Washington, but this is not so much because of a lack of knowledge or understanding but a lack of leadership," he said.
After his stint in Washington, Samwick found a new way to directly address the issue of leadership by becoming director of the Rockefeller Center.
"I thought the center was an interesting place where you can continue to have an impact on how well people understand the issues that are the basis of a lot of government policy," he said. "You can also do quite a lot to make Dartmouth students more capable leaders, as they inevitably find themselves in positions where displaying leadership would matter quite a lot."
Professor Jonathan Skinner, Samwick's colleague in the economics department, highlighted Samwick's ability to synthesize distinction in research and teaching with practical skill.
"What is his niche?" Skinner said. "It's somebody who can bring to the policy world the highest quality research insight. I think that's really important to have that ability to translate from academics to real life."
However, Samwick is most distinguished by the rigor and depth of his teaching style, Sacerdote said.
"He takes everything very, very seriously, he really knows the material, and he expects that from his students," Sacerdote said. "He's kind of the poster child for being really tough on the students and expecting a lot of them. Not only do you get a lot [of effort from the students], but you also get a lot of respect from them."
Tomas Jagelka '11, one of Samwick's students, said Samwick's dedication to students also makes him a good professor.
"All Dartmouth professors are happy to meet you during office hours, but he's really willing to go out of his way to help you with academic stuff, future plans or whatever else," Jagelka said. "He's director of the Rockefeller Center, so he doesn't have a lot of time, but he's willing to help you."
Samwick's comprehensive approach to economic problems is what differentiates him from other scholars, Sacerdote said.
"I've got a deep appreciation for the way he looks at empirical work are we running the right regression, is this telling us anything that we didn't know before, is this test you're running really the right one?" he said. "He looks at these things with a very keen eye."
In a particularly divisive political and economic environment, Samwick is an exception to the mood of radicalism, choosing to come up with thoughtful, sensible solutions to problems, Skinner said.
Sacerdote highlighted Samwick's willingness to accept valid ideas other than his own.
"If you can make a strong case for another solution, then he's willing to switch sides," Sacerdote said. "He's very confident in these kinds of things."
