This weekend will bring graduate students from the Department of Economics at University of Utah and University of Missouri-Kansas City, together with graduate students here at Colorado State University for the Western States Graduate Student Workshop.

The Department of Economics at CSU has been organizing the Western Graduate Students workshop in partnership with the Economics department at University of Utah for eight years now. These workshops showcase the research of graduate students from these universities in the friendly and collegial setting of their peers. It is a wonderful platform for getting feedback on research and to get a sense of what research is being undertaken by students in peer institutions.

The workshop series are intended to be more than just an avenue for presenting research and honing presentation skills, and actually play the role of an incubator for an intellectual community of young economists. Visiting students are hosted by students here at CSU. Long hours are spent outside the workshop discussing everything from the state of the discipline, the travails of the dissertation and the job-market and life in general. Alex Duvall-Pelham a graduate student at the Economics department at CSU said of the last workshop held at the University of Utah, “It was nice to see the similar experiences of like-minded people in a situation so akin to our own”.

Check out the full schedule of events here.