Sarah Baird '01 To Discuss
Her Fieldwork in
Sub-Saharan Africa

Assistant Professor of Global Health at George Washington University Sarah Baird '01, who was an Environment, Economics, and Politics (EEP) major during her undergraduate years at Claremont McKenna, will visit the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum on Tuesday, Oct. 13 for her lecture, "Development Economics in Practice: The Joys and Challenges of Doing Field Work in Sub-Saharan Africa." The public portion of the program begins at 6:45 p.m., with free seating on a first-come basis.
"Increasingly," says Baird, "fieldwork has become an essential component of development economics research. My talk will discuss how development economics works in practice focusing on the implementation and evaluation of three different programs in Sub-Saharan Africa." The first program, she says, provided de-worming medication to primary school students in Kenya. The second provided monthly cash transfers to girls, conditional on school attendance in Malawi. And the third, Baird adds, gave grants to vulnerable groups (such as HIV infected households) in Tanzania.
"I will talk about how and why these programs were designed, implementation of the fieldwork including some of the challenges faced, as well as some of the most interesting findings and policy recommendations stemming from the evaluations of these programs," Baird explains.
Prior to attending the University of California, Berkeley, to complete her master's degree and Ph.D. in agricultural and resource economics, Baird was a research analyst at the Roberts Environmental Center and an EEP major at Claremont McKenna College. No stranger to the Athenaeum, Sarah also distinguished herself as an Athenaeum Fellow during her senior year at CMC.
Her visit is sponsored by the Roberts Environmental Center at Claremont McKenna College.