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UH-Manoa Economics: A Brief Modern History, 1962-2007
VI : Rejuvenation, Revival, and Reflection: 1999-2007
The next eight years would provide an unforeseen turn for the better. It began in the summer of 1998 when Professor Andy Mason moved from the EWC (where he still has a 50 percent appointment) to UH-Manoa and was instantly "rewarded" for the switch by being named Department Chair. Mason took several critical steps to stabilize the Department. First, he doubled the number of introductory courses offered each semester to increase the number of entry points to our program. As introductory enrollment increased, a surge in the number of economics majors followed a couple of years later. Second, Andy and Graduate Chair Jerry Russo worked to diversify and solidify funding for first-year doctoral students. Finally and most importantly, Andy worked with the administration to find ways to offer competitive market salaries to newly hired assistant professors. The pay-off was evident in the Department's hiring of four outstanding assistant professors: Sang-Hyop Lee (Ph.D., Michigan State U. by way of East-West Center) in 1999, Theresa Greaney (Ph.D., U. of Michigan by way of Syracuse University) and Katya Sherstyuk (Ph.D., California Institute of Technology by way of Melbourne U.) in 2000, and Xiaojun Wang (Ph.D., Ohio State U.) in 2001.
Sumner La Croix followed Mason as Department Chair (2001-2004) and but for a few hiccups in real income growth following the 9/11 disaster and accompanying the Iraq War, he also had the good fortune of being Chair when the Department's budget was fortuitously increasing. La Croix emphasized programmatic changes in both the graduate and undergraduate programs to enhance their quality and attract better applicants. Graduate reforms included the rescheduling of graduate core courses and qualifying exams within the first year of study; engagement of doctoral students in research projects earlier in their graduate careers; and additional resources devoted to the Department's seminar series. Undergraduate reforms included a restructuring of graduation requirements; introduction of new 300-level courses designed to attract new majors in economics; a new mentoring program for majors; and the addition of more sections of introductory and intermediate micro and macroeconomics to each semester's course offerings.
 The retirement dinner and academic conference held 21-22 May 2004 in honor of Professor Emeritus Seiji Naya was a notable milestone for the Department. Over 250 guests from Asia, the U.S. mainland, Europe, and Hawaii attended a gala dinner at the Hawaii Prince Hotel. The dinner raised sufficient funds from attendees for the Department to endow two new awards for its doctoral students ("Best First-Year Student" and "Best Third-Year Research Paper") and a speaker series on the Asia-Pacific economies. The dinner also provided a rare opportunity for alumni, students, faculty, and the Department's friends to come together and celebrate the Department's past, meet today's students and faculty, and envision the future (or when the retirement dinner would end).
 In Fall 2002 and Fall 2003, Dean Richard Dubanoski approved the Department's requests to initiate searches for three new assistant professors, and the Department made three excellent hires: Ilan Noy (Ph.D., U. California, Santa Cruz) in 2003, and Arnaud Dellis (Ph.D., Cornell U.) and Timothy Halliday (Ph.D., Princeton U.) in 2004. With seven young assistant professors joining the faculty in just six years, the median age of a faculty member dropped to 38 in 2004. The median age would receive another big jolt when the College approved Department requests (initiated by its new Chair, Professor Jim Mak, who was embarking on a second tour of duty in the position (the first tour spanned 1990-1992)) to hire three more tenure-track assistant professors. Nori Tarui (Ph.D., U. Minnesota by way of the Earth Institute at Columbia U.) and Sally Kwak (Ph.D., U. California, Berkeley)--a joint appointee with the UH-Manoa Department of Urban and Regional Planning--joined the Department starting in the Fall 2006 semester, and Hui He (U. of Minnesota) accepted an offer to join the Department's faculty starting in the Fall 2007 semester.
In July 2004, Professor Denise Konan resigned as Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and returned to the Department to begin a three-year term as Department Chair. Denise would serve just one year (2004-2005) in the job. After UH President David McLain fired UH-Manoa Chancellor Peter Englert after three discordant years, Denise would accept an offer from the UH Board of Regents to become Interim Chancellor of the Manoa campus. Her three-year stint as Assistant Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs (2001-2004), her commitment in that job to improving the University's academic programs and standards, her analytical approach to policy problems, and her total integrity were highly valued by the Board. Her meteoric administrative rise ought not to obscure her solid career as a scholar in the field of international economics and her rapid promotion to full professor. Denise was the first full-time female economics faculty member to be promoted to full professor; the first female Chair of the Department; and the first female Chancellor of the University of Hawaii-Manoa.
Conclusion
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