Growing up, Amanda Spielman ’24 would leave her hometown of New Hartford, Connecticut, during Labor Day Weekend and travel to her great aunt and uncle’s dairy farm in the northeastern part of the state. Helping out on the farm each September exposed Spielman to a different side of life, and she eventually channeled her passion for agriculture into an honors research project exploring how the government can assist farmers through subsidies and grants.
Her paper, titled “The Economic Impacts of State-Run Agricultural Energy Efficiency and Sustainability Grants,” recently received the Omicron Delta Epsilon (ODE) Undergraduate Research Award. Additionally, as the winner of this award, Spielman’s paper is being considered for publication in The American Economist. ODE is an international economics society, and the highly competitive award is given to an undergraduate or recent graduate in economics who has submitted the best research article.
“I was very shocked when I found out but am proud of the recognition,” says Spielman, who submitted her paper to the competition after completing her thesis presentation.
Searching for a literature gap
Spielman — an Applied Economics and Finance double major — began thinking about her thesis in Bryant’s “Research Methods and Thesis Proposal” course, a 15-week class where undergrads brainstorm ideas and pinpoint a topic with a literature gap.
“As I started the literature review, I found that there was not a lot of research on grants, but specifically sustainability grants,” Spielman says.
Sifting through which states did and did not have energy efficiency and sustainability grants, Spielman chose to interview several state program managers as well as Rhode Island and Connecticut farmers. From farmers, she gained intel on how energy efficiency grants affect farms, how farmers use the grants, what the grant process entails, and farmers’ opinions of the grants. Leveraging her finance background for the project, Spielman also studied profit and labor market impacts for farms.
Working her way through the research, Spielman was surprised to find that, while these grants sounded great on paper, farmers often had to take out loans to cover the entire cost of the grant projects and would receive their subsidy or grant money after the project's completion. Her qualitative research also revealed that it was harder for young farmers to get a bank loan. She explained that since farming is not the most profitable industry and there’s less interest in farming today, government support is necessary for small- to medium-sized family farms.
“While the government has some really great programs, farmers can only prioritize so many things,” says Spielman. “Some of these farmers said they wish they had a grant writer whose sole job was focused on grants.”
Prepared for her future
While at Bryant, Spielman was vice president of the Economics Student Association and managed additional co-curriculars including playing the flute in the Bryant Athletic Bands, Best Buddies, and IDEA as well as serving as a resident assistant. She also worked as an economics research assistant for Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Economics Ferdous Zaman Sardar, Ph.D., who also served as Spielman’s thesis faculty advisor.
“I worked with him firsthand on creating a behavioral economics study related to screen time and helped him build the experiment, go through some of the data analysis, and write the paper,” says Spielman, who presented the research at a Boston-based economics conference. “It was a really great experience. We're still editing that paper and hoping to get it published down the line.”
Today, Spielman is applying her interest in the stories behind numbers by working full-time as a pricing analyst within Travelers Insurance’s Product Management Development Program. Having completed two internships with Travelers following her sophomore and junior years, the company offered her a position just before the start of her senior year.
Through the program, Spielman has received three months of training that has focused on learning more about the insurance industry, looking at risk, tapping into what an actuary does, considering how to price risk, and analyzing the competitive market within the insurance industry and beyond. Program participants then complete three rotations in different business units and have their interests matched with a team at the end of 12 months.
“Once you find something you're passionate about, continue doing that,” Spielman says. “I really loved that I was able to combine finance with economics because I feel like I'm really set up for success in the job market and beyond.”
