CREDO has grown from its early days, and is in need of more structure. The Board and I agreed that we should add some committees. Committees would take charge of different aspects of CREDO’s mission.
The six proposed committees are therefore:
Academic activities – this committee is charged with organizing conference sessions, joint Lumen Christi/CREDO conferences and virtual panels, etc.
Church engagement – this committee is charged with fostering CREDO’s relationship with the hierarchy, related societies and organizations, and the broader Church. Economics is powerful, and CREDO can be a big benefit to the Church as a wellspring of non-ideological economic expertise on economic and social matters. Over the years, however, we have engaged the Vatican, the USCCB, Catholic Charities, and, most recently, the Economy of Francesco movement.
Formation – this committee is charged with organizing activities to increase the knowledge of Catholic social doctrine and teachings among our membership. Most concretely, current activities under this committee include the summer seminar that we had organized annual for the four years prior to the pandemic. There are many ways we could expand this.
Mentoring – this committee is charged with helping young members succeed in their careers through professional mentoring. One of the benefits of CREDO is the community itself, and this is part of supporting that community within an otherwise large and secular discipline.
Outreach and inclusion – this committee is charged with helping build our membership and broaden our membership, reaching out to the international community and underserved populations. While we have roughly 600 members, but we have only reached a small fraction of the 60,000+ economists on REPEC, for example. Certainly more than 1% must be Catholic. We are internationally diverse in terms of home country, but most people are located in the U.S., and we are very poor in terms of non-whites. We’d like our membership to look more like the Catholic Church.
Service – this committee is charged with organizing CREDO activities to implement the Church’s call to serve others. Several members have mentioned that economists could do pro bono work for the Church or that simply having information about opportunities available would be helpful, for example. I could imagine people putting together short lecture units on important topics for high school students that would be a resource for Catholic schools, for example.
After a period of internal consultation, all committees have been filled. Co-chairs are:
- Academic activities: Galina Hale (UC-Santa Cruz), Jeanne Lafortune (PUC-Chile).
- Church engagement: Pedro Carneiro (UCL), Carlos Esparza, S.J. (St. Louis)
- Formation: Mary Hirschfeld (Villanova), Andy Yuengert (Pepperdine)
- Mentoring: Peter Arcidicano (Duke), Borja Larrain (PUC-Chile)
- Outreach and inclusion: Illenin Kondo (FRB Minneapolis), Jue Jessie Wang (RAND Corporation)
- Service: Clara Jace (Stamford), Quentin Wodon (World Bank)
More details about each co-chair is here.
Finally, I want to thank Tim Huegerich who has finished up five years of dedicated service as webmaster and running our social media accounts. We are appreciative of the many hours he has put into the society. At the same time, we are delighted to have Luis Valenzuela (Universidad Austral de Chile) and Bill Hauk (South Carolina) volunteering to be Webmaster and Communications Manager (which will involve both the newsletter and social media accounts, respectively). Both were participants in the summer seminar on Catholic social thought: Luis last year in Jerusalem, and Bill several years ago in Rome. They have ideas for a new format for the web and newsletter. We also have some volunteers for Board positions, but those will happen via election and then appointment in October.
Joe Kaboski
President of CREDO
