The $17,000 Koch Foundation grant will fund a variety of actitivies that Alexandre Padilla has planned for next fall and spring semesters. Photo by Dave Neligh

Assistant Professor Economics Alexandre Padilla has received a $17,000 grant from the Charles G. Koch Foundation. The grant will fund a variety of activities in the 2008-09 academic year related to economic freedom, including a student reading club, paid student fellowship, a visiting lecturer series and student participation at the annual conference of the Association for Private Enterprise Education.

“The Koch Foundation promotes education on economics and how it relates to liberty and freedom,” said Padilla. “I think there is great potential here at Metro State for our students who are interested to increase their knowledge on these topics.”

Padilla said he was familiar with the foundation and some of its members from postdoctoral work he completed at George Mason University, so when they mentioned the availability of grants, he was quick to submit a full proposal.

His first activity under the grant will be to establish a Students of Liberty Reading Group, to meet every other week. “The club will study readings—articles and books—related to the costs and benefits of freedom and, more particularly economic freedom,” Padilla said. The grant will cover costs of reading materials and other club expenses.

“Students are very busy with required classroom readings and such,” Padilla said, “This club will give them an additional opportunity to pursue further what might get merely touched on in the classroom.”

Grant funding will also cover a Koch Fellowship, to be awarded to a student to work with Padilla on organizing and running the reading group. The first Koch Fellowship winner is junior Susanne Lederer-Graham, an economics major.

The Koch grant will cover a visiting lecture series, with two guest speakers each semester coming to campus to discuss “issues related economic freedom and sometimes political freedom as well,” Padilla said. Potential speakers include Chris Coyne, author of the book, After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy, on foreign policy and nation-building, and Robert Lawson, a noted economist who created the Index of Economic Freedom.

Finally, the grant will cover the expenses of one to three students to attend the annual Association for Private Enterprise Education conference. Those students will have worked with a faculty member to co-author a paper on economics, then present the research at the conference. “The APPE work is very applied. It’s good for students interested in pursuing graduate work in economics, to understand what it takes to become an economist,” said Padilla. “It’s also good exposure for our students, to see what economists and graduate students from across the country are discussing.”

Padilla says that the grant is renewable, pending successful completion.