Dr. Ashley Tharayil ’10, Austin College associate professor of economics and department chair for Economics & Business Administration, has been awarded the 2023 Rising Researcher Award from the National Association of Economic Educators (NAEE). The award was presented at the 2023 NAEE Spring Professional Development Conference hosted at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis on March 3.
The Rising Researcher Award was established by the NAEE to encourage and recognize outstanding contributions in economic education research at the advanced assistant professor or associate professor levels. Tharayil, who has been an Austin College faculty member since 2015 and was tenured in 2021, has focused her research and published works on financial literacy, financial risk tolerance, and financial education for high school students. She was also honored by the NAEE in 2019 with the Phil Saunders Best Economic Education Paper Award.
Criteria for the Rising Researcher Award include relevance in economic education with either a broad or specific intent; timeliness that varies on whether research involves current issues, historical relevance or a cluster of studies; research design judged on soundness and measured against accepted research designs in economics and education; findings and conclusions judged on the treatment of the data, analysis, and presentation of the reports.
Tharayil has taught courses at Austin College in principles of microeconomics, development economics, health economics, business analytics, econometrics, and women in poverty. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Austin College in 2010 and completed her master’s degree and Ph.D. at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She was recognized by faculty colleagues in Social Sciences for excellence in areas of scholarship, teaching, and service in 2016 and 2020.