Student Jobs at Middlebury
Grader/TA Positions
The Economics Department provides graders/TAs for the following ECON course offerings as needed: 0150, 0155, 0207, 0210, 0211, 0212, 0229, 0250, 0255, 0260, 0265, and 0280.
The economics grader/TA responsibilities may vary from one course to another. In general, graders could be tasked with any of the following responsibilities: grading problem sets, quizzes, review questions, and bonus material; reviewing grades for consistency; calculating scores; recording grades in Excel; alphabetizing papers.
Applicants must be organized, responsible, and dependable individuals, who are able to work with others as well as independently. A willingness to learn is essential, with an enthusiasm for the subject. Confidentiality is required and students will be required to sign a confidentiality statement.
Applicants must have completed the course they are applying to grade for with a grade of B+ or higher and have taken the course on Middlebury’s Vermont campus.
Applicants should apply prior to the beginning of each semester.
All students must reapply each fall (even if they worked the spring semester immediately prior) as the Student Employment Office purges applications from Workable each summer.
Students hired to grade in the fall wishing to continue from fall to spring need not reapply in the spring, however, they must email Amy Holbrook to notify her of their wish to be considered for the spring whether for the same same course and/or instructor. Rehires are not guaranteed.
The Economics Department strives to place all qualified applicants; however, it is not always possible.
We are currently accepting ECON grader/TA applications for the spring semester. Please click on this link to access the College’s internal job board Workable Referrals. You can type econ in the search bar on the top left to search for any econ position or enter the grading position number, 900463. Once you find the posting, hover your cursor over the title, then click “apply” and complete your application. A cover letter and CV are not required for your application. However, Students must also complete our Grading Application Supplemental information Google form, linked here.
The Student Employment Office requires all student positions and hiring to be processed through Workable (new as of Fall 2022). Students may not begin working until the hiring process is completed by Human Resources. With the new processing schedule all students start dates will be on a Monday.
Please visit the Student Employment Office site for information regarding required employment documents and training.
Please direct any questions you have regarding current openings or the position to Amy Holbrook at holbrook@middlebury.edu or 802-443-5327.
Questions relating to using Workable can be directed to Christina Lynch, HR Business Partner. Questions related to completing employment forms, and time entry can be directed to HR@middlebury.edu.
Research Opportunities
Here you will find a periodically updated listing of openings for paid research assistantships with faculty. If you are interested in applying for a research assistantship for a particular semester, please use the Google Form Survey posted below to answer a few related questions and upload your résumé and unofficial transcript. Supervising professors will contact only selected applicants for further information after reviewing qualifications for fit (e.g., econ fields of interest, meeting programming or coursework prerequisites, having desired language fluency), but students may reach out directly to faculty regarding positions of particular interest.
If you are interested in a research opportunity but no research assistantships are currently available, please check back on this page periodically for new postings. Most research assistantships are full-time positions in the summer. Summer positions are typically posted during the month of March.
Summer 2023 Research Opportunities
The positions listed below are the available “Jones Enrichment Summer Fellowships” for summer 2023. These fellowships provide opportunities for students to work with a faculty mentor in the department on research projects directed by the faculty member, for a period of 4 to 10 weeks (sometime between June 5 and August 18, 2023). Unless specified otherwise, these are full-time (40-hour/week) positions for in-person work on campus paying a stipend of $570/week. It is expected that fellows will not hold another position during this period. The start and end dates will be determined together with the supervising professor. Continuing students in all classes are eligible, but preference will be given to students with a strong background in Economics.
To apply for the positions listed below please fill out the Google Form Survey at this link by Monday, March 27. Please indicate which positions you are most interested in on the form and in your letter of interest. Review of applications will begin on Tuesday, March 28. Positions listed below are still open and will be removed from this site when filled.
Project Title: Health and Wealth Effects of Mining on Communities in South Africa
Supervising Professors: Julia Berazneva and Tanya Byker
Project Description: The project examines environmental, health, and economic impacts of the mining industry in South Africa.
RA Tasks: The tasks will include literature review, mapping with GIS, data analysis, and brief writing assignments.
Prerequisites: ECON 211 and experience with Stata. QGIS or ArcGIS proficiency. Experience with R is a plus but not required.
Duration: 4 weeks in June (some flexibility)
Project Title: Behavioral Science Research on Climate and the Environment (1 or 2 positions)
Supervising Professors: Julia Berazneva and Peter H. Matthews
Project Description: The Vermont Center for Behavioral Science Research on Climate and the Environment is looking to hire 1-2 summer RAs to work on the on-going Center projects that investigate correlates of environmental behaviors and support for climate policy.
RA Tasks: The tasks will include literature review, planning and execution of behavioral experiments, data analysis, and brief writing assignments.
Prerequisites: ECON 211 and experience with Stata. Environmental courses at Middlebury are a plus but not required. Experience with programming in Qualtrics is helpful.
Duration: 4 weeks in June (some flexibility)
Project Title: Political Uncertainty and Interest Rates in International Financial Markets
Supervising Professor: Raphaelle Gauvin-Coulombe
Project Description:
- Assess the role of political uncertainty and elections for the behavior of interest rates in international financial markets.
- Construct a novel measure of political uncertainty using text analysis (no prior knowledge needed).
- Collect interest rate and financial data using Bloomberg Terminal (no prior knowledge needed).
RA Tasks: We are looking for a student who is passionate about the topic and who wants to further develop coding skills. The student can expect to work on the following tasks: collecting and assembling data, performing text analysis, running regressions, and conducting literature review.
Prerequisites: ECON 211 and preferably ECON 250 or IPEC 240
Duration: 8-10 weeks
Project Title: Quantifying Martin Luther King, Jr.’s impact on the Civil Rights Movement
Supervising Professor: Erick Gong
Project Description: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s soaring oratory made an indelible impact on the consciousness of US Americans. What were the effects that Dr. King’s speech and sermons had on the US civil rights movement? This project will link Dr. King’s speaking events to various outcomes including protest activity, voter registration, and county-level measures of segregation.
RA Tasks: The major tasks will involve reviewing and digitizing Dr. King’s travel itineraries. RA will be expected to work on campus and meet at least weekly with Professor Gong.
Prerequisites: ECON 0210 or ECON 0111 (or equivalent). An attention to detail, experience with managing multiple data sources and working with new apps/tools will be considered. Additional experience or course work in statistics or data science is helpful but not required.
Duration: Ideally 8 weeks (June 12 – August 4) but with some flexibility.
Project Title: Agricultural Trade and Adaptation to Climate Change in Sub-Saharan Africa
Supervising Professor: Obie Porteous
Project Description: This project investigates the extent to which increased agricultural trade – between regions of sub-Saharan Africa affected differently by climate change and between African countries and the rest of the world – can help offset the anticipated negative effects of climate change on local agricultural yields across the continent. This is a multi-year project entering its final year.
RA Tasks: The RA will work on various tasks, potentially including: adjusting and running the computer model of agricultural trade, tabulating and analyzing results from different model simulations, figuring out ways to visualize and present both the results and the data (including generating maps using ArcGIS), and documenting and sharing the model for potential use by other researchers.
Prerequisites: ECON 155 (or equivalent). ECON 234, IPEC 240 or ECON 344, and ECON 255 are helpful but not required. Experience with computer programming and/or ArcGIS is helpful and can offset limited coursework in economics. Proficiency in French is potentially a plus.
Duration: Ideally 7 weeks (June 12 – July 28) but with some flexibility.
Project Title: The Response of Russian Households to Economic Dislocation
Supervising Professor: Will Pyle
Project Description: My research, of late, has focused on the effects of economic dislocation in Russia, with particular emphasis on the 1990s. I plan to continue this general line of research in the summer, drawing on survey data, including the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, to begin one major new article. At this point, I have several ideas for topics, spanning from attitudes toward wealth accumulation and inequality to work on individual land plots.
RA Tasks: Cleaning data, producing figures and tables, conducting literature reviews
Prerequisites: Solid grades in ECON 111 (210) and 211. Ability to read Russian a plus, but not a requirement.
Duration: 8 weeks
Project Title: Research in Orbit-Use Economics
Supervising Professor: Akhil Rao
Project Description: This project is oriented around building a novel dataset and empirical analysis of orbit-use data. The main goal is to download a large quantity of data from a public API and integrate that data with another large dataset. Depending on RA interest and background, the project may involve some economic/econometric theory, for which the RA will conduct literature review.
RA Tasks: RA will:
- Review existing datasets and perform code audits
- Write code to pull data from public APIs
- Write code to merge datasets and check for merge errors
- Write code documentation
- Compile and summarize relevant literature, with an eye to usable data sources
- Attend meetings and present results
Prerequisites: Proficiency with R and statistics at the level of Econ 111. I especially encourage students of color to apply. Ideal candidates will be (1) interested in economics, empirical analysis, working with large datasets; (2) curious about research and able to independently learn and troubleshoot issues; (3) proficient in R.
Duration: 8 weeks
Project Title: Experiments in Behavioral Economics and Political Science
Supervising Professor: Andrea Robbett
Project Description: MiddExLab is looking for an RA to help with conducting and analyzing behavioral economics experiments related to bargaining, social norms, altruism, and political polarization. The RA would also help develop classroom games and provide feedback on behavioral economics textbook chapters. This position could also serve as a good jumping-off point for any students who plan to write a behavioral/experimental thesis this coming year and would like to start developing their research question over the summer.
RA Tasks: Cleaning and analyzing data from existing projects, literature reviews, conducting online experiments, reviewing behavioral economics materials, and, if Python ability allows, programming experiments in oTree. The RA would ideally be on campus for the duration of the fellowship.
Prerequisites: None, but familiarity with Stata, Python, Git, behavioral economics, political polarization, game theory, and/or experiments are all valuable.
Duration: 8 weeks