Two in Harris School receive second award

For the second year in a row, Robert Michael and Raaj Sah each have been named Professor of the Year by the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies Student Association. The award, which recognizes outstanding classroom instruction and a personal commitment to student issues, is presented each year to a professor teaching a required course and a professor teaching an elective course in the Harris School.

Michael, the Eliakim Hastings Moore Distinguished Service Professor and Dean of the Harris School, was recognized for his teaching of the required course Principles of Microeconomics & Public Policy II.

An economic demographer, Michael has conducted groundbreaking research in the areas of poverty, wage inequality and family economics. He was also a principal investigator for the landmark 1992 National Health and Social Life Survey, one of the first large-scale surveys of adult sexual behavior in the United States.

Sah, Professor in the Harris School, was honored for his teaching of a course on taxation and public finance. Sah is an expert in public finance issues and has written extensively about the effects of income redistribution through conventional taxes and subsidies.

He has also studied the designs and effects of various public finance policies in less-developed countries and is the author of a book on the subject, Peasants Versus City-Dwellers: Taxation and the Burden of Economic Development.

The Student Association also recognized Harris School student Surya Sen with the Teaching Assistant of the Year award. Sen, a second-year student, was cited for his teaching assistance in Statistical Methods for Policy Research II and Principles of Microeconomics & Public Policy II.