Sharon G. Levin, emeritus professor of economics at UMSL, had a remarkable career. Sharon earned her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1973 and joined the Department of Economics at the University of Missouri-St. Louis in 1974. Her fields of interest were applied microeconomics and applied econometrics. From 1987-1998 she served as Department Chair. She was the Director of Graduate Studies from 1998 to 2002, and a Research Professor and Professor Emeritus starting in 2003. Sharon was still working on an NIH grant for the department a month before she passed away in August 2017, following a long battle with breast cancer.
She was the recipient of multiple grants from funders including NSF, Sloan, Mellon, and the Kauffman Foundation. In 1992, she co-authored the Oxford University Press book titled Striking the Motherlode in Science. Over her career, she co-authored over 35 articles, including papers published in the American Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Management Science, and Science. She had over 1400 citations, including 378 alone (as of 2011) for her article in the AER. In 1993 Sharon was the first female to receive the Chancellor’s Award for Research Creativity, which is the highest honor bestowed by UMSL on those engaged in scholarly activity. During her career at UMSL, she mentored an innumerable number of students and served as an invaluable role model for her female colleagues.
The Sharon G. Levin Economics Scholarship is awarded to a full-time (12 or more hours per semester) undergraduate major in economics who has demonstrated academic merit and financial need. The student must have successfully completed at least 15 hours towards the major and have completed the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).
