Connie Falk

Professor
Dept. Agricultural Economics and Agricultural Business
New Mexico State University

Biographical sketch: Connie Falk is a recent member of USSEE, having joined promptly after reading Farley and Daly's textbook cover to cover, while camping in a tent in the Sierra Tarahumara region of Chihuahua, Mexico, in support of a master's student's research project. The view from the tent was stark and beautiful: degraded soils, eroded stream banks, indigenous smiles uncontaminated by refined sugars, skinny unconfined livestock, thickets of madrone trees, no utilities or plumbing in the community, a newly planted apple orchard, and Rararumuris joyfully playing volleyball. Trained in three fields (English, business administration, and agricultural economics), she has devoted her nearly 20 years as an academic to research and teaching in agricultural diversification, organic and sustainable agriculture, and niche marketing. Her greatest professional pride was co-development and teaching of an organic production class using the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model of food distribution. She recently designed a new major for her department, in Natural Resource Economics and Policy, that will require a class in ecological economics, which she plans to begin teaching in fall 2008. Connie is a returned Peace Corps volunteer from Honduras, 1982-85. As a PCV, Connie worked in small business consulting, helping entrepreneurs improve their businesses. She continues to take students to Latin American periodically, on spring break study tours, most recently to Nicaragua, where the students saw both incipient projects in fair trade coffee and reforestation, as well as the effects of decades of unsustainable exploitation of the forests near the Honduras border: "Tenemos puentes pero no tenemos rios." We have bridges but no rivers.

Candidate Statement: As a new member of USSEE, I would, as a new board member, need to spend time learning about the organization and its history. I have experience in helping another professional organization, the Food Distribution Research Society, grow and improve through my service to that organization as secretary, treasurer, newsletter editor, president, board member, and on special assignments. I can bring to the USSEE experience with collaborative leadership, dedication to the job, and a profound conviction that the field ecological economics makes an important and timely contribution to economic theory and practice. My goals for my involvement with USSEE would be to increase the society's impact in other professional circles, across relevant disciplines, involve more students and young faculty, and improve the financial viability of the organization.