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As she embarked on her first semester of student-faculty research this past May, Trustee Scholarship recipient Emily Fogelberg ’05 (Hopkins, Minn.) knew very little about Jamaica’s post-colonial history, its struggling economy, or its government.
“I knew nothing about Jamaica,” confesses Fogelberg, a double major in history and economics & business. “I had not a clue.”
Now, as she begins a second semester of EXCEL Scholars research, Fogelberg can speak knowledgeably about much of what the nation has experienced since achieving independence from Great Britain in 1962.
Lafayette is a national leader in undergraduate research. In Lafayette’s distinctive EXCEL Scholars program, students are paid a stipend to assist a faculty member with research. Many of the 180 students who participate each year go on to publish papers in scholarly journals and/or present their research at conferences.
Guiding her work are Gladstone Hutchinson, dean of studies, and Ute Schumacher, visiting assistant professor of economics and business. Hutchinson, former associate professor of economics and business and a native of Jamaica, served as a financial adviser to the Jamaican government from 1996 to 1998. Schumacher served as an adviser to the Jamaican prime minister during the same time period. The couple, who share a marriage as well as a research partnership, plan to write a book on the impact of government paternalism on liberty and economic life in Jamaica.
Fogelberg spent the summer reading stacks of books and scholarly articles, mostly about Jamaica’s early postcolonial years. She also took extensive notes and wrote a paper describing her findings.
“My primary role was to read as much literature as I could and try to fit the material I was reading into the overall project,” Fogelberg says. “I discovered that the conditions in the Jamaican economy are often a result of the colonial legacy, which prevented institutions that are conducive to economic growth from forming.”
This semester, Fogelberg is examining how social conditions have affected Jamaica’s economy. She is trying to determine whether post-independence factors have created dependency and inertia in the country’s social, political, and economic development that have inhibited subsequent economic growth.
She says her experience over the summer helped her learn to filter information more effectively — and to look at everything in her life a bit differently.
“It broadened my worldview,” she says. “I’m more aware of things, and I have a greater desire to know more about whatever I’m studying. I can’t read just one book about anything anymore.”
Schumacher, who taught Fogelberg in a microeconomics course before selecting her as an EXCEL Scholar, calls her “a very motivated and bright student.”
“We felt she was uniquely qualified for this project because of her double major,” Schumacher says. “Having the history background helps her a lot.”
Schumacher adds that Fogelberg has displayed a great deal of initiative in her work.
“We’ve really given her a free hand in terms of what she chooses to do and when,” Schumacher says, adding that Fogelberg and Katie Brown ’04, who conducted similar EXCEL research during the spring semester, have both made valuable contributions to the long-term book project and to a scholarly paper she and Hutchinson hope to publish next spring.
Fogelberg feels privileged to work with Schumacher and Hutchinson.
“They have a lot of enthusiasm and passion for the material,” she says. “They have such a wealth of information, and they’re great resources. When you get the opportunity to work with people like them, it brings out the same emotions in you.”
Fogelberg will shift her focus this spring, as she heads to Freiburg, Germany, to study Germany’s colonial history and other subjects in a program sponsored by the Institute for International Education of Students. She hopes to spend next summer in Tanzania, a former German colony, looking at that country’s early post-colonial life. In her senior year, she plans to conduct a yearlong honors research project that compares Tanzania’s experience with that of Jamaica, in the hope of identifying ways in which systemic underdevelopment can best be addressed.
A member of the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority and the new Federal Funds Challenge Club, Fogelberg plays cello in the orchestra and several string quartets, and serves as a peer tutor in economics. She’s also a Landis Community Outreach Center volunteer with Equi-librium, a Sciota, Pa.-based therapeutic horseback riding program for mentally and physically challenged children, and competed as a horseback rider in the 2002 Junior Olympics.
She is a graduate of Hopkins High School, Minnesota’s first National School of Excellence.
As a national leader in undergraduate research, Lafayette sends one of the largest contingents to the annual National Conference on Undergraduate Research each year. Over the past five years, more than 130 Lafayette students have presented results from their research with faculty mentors at the conference.