Barbara Fecso, a past student and instructor at Eastern, won the 2010 Class of Outstanding Graduate Alumni Award and is now working for the United States Department of Agriculture after a series of accomplishments as an economist.

Ali Moshtagh, associate professor and department chair of economics, said Fecso has a very important role in the USDA determining the prices of agricultural commodities.

“(Fecso) is the person that has the most influence on the price of sugar in the United States,” he said. “(With the United States) being a major sugar user, (she) perhaps has some implication on the world’s price of sugar.”

Fecso does analytical work for the USDA and has proven to be an integral part of its operation, he said.

Fecso won the USDA’s Economist Group’s Economist of the Year Award in January 2017 for being “instrumental in the evaluation of, and potential modification to, the existing United States-Mexico suspension agreement governing sugar trade,” according to Eastern’s economics newsletter.

Since graduating from Eastern, Fecso has also won the 2018 Farm Service Agency Administrator’s Award, the agency’s highest honor, for being on the Farm Bill Analytical Team and “providing both the House and Senate Agricultural Committees with timely, accurate, to-the-point analysis,” according to Eastern’s economics newsletter.

Now, Fecso stays in contact with Eastern and has communicated with the office of university development about funding scholarships for students, Moshtagh said.

He said Eastern is always happy to see when alumni have achieved much in their careers, and Fecso is no exception.

“We’re very proud of her,” he said.

For students majoring in economics, an important thing to learn from Fecso is the path she took to get where she is today, Moshtagh said.

“(Fecso) was very dedicated to economics,” he said. “She strengthened her knowledge by doing a lot of quantitative analysis, and (she) is getting the rewards now.” 

He said through hard work and determination, any Eastern student can achieve great things, and the university is proud when they do.

“We hope that other (alumni) who are successful in life let us know, too. We keep in touch with (them) all the time,” he said. “We want other people to know these are the things you can do with a degree in economics.”

Fecso received her Bachelor’s and Master’s in economics and taught at Eastern before she became a data analysis for the USDA, he said.

Moshtagh said Fecso taught principles of economics, macroeconomics and microeconomics when she taught at Eastern.

“Students loved to take her classes,” he said.

When Moshtagh first began working at Eastern, Fecso was already teaching, and he enjoyed being one of her colleagues.

“She was a very friendly, collegial person,” he said. “I remember all the friendly discussions and conversations we had … She was very appreciative of what Eastern had done for her.”

Getting award after award and growing so much as an economist is not easy—it takes a lot of hard work and dedication, but Fecso is proof that students at Eastern can do it, Moshtagh said.

Logan Raschke can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].