Dominic Marchese ’26

Dominic Marchese credits his interest in economics to discussions around the kitchen table with his family: just talking about topics in the news and how they tie into topics in business, government and society.

After receiving instruction as a homeschooled student until the tenth grade, Marchese then spent his eleventh and twelfth grade years as a student at Laurel Ridge Community College, earning an associate’s degree in business administration. “I got a little bit of exposure to the fundamentals of accounting and finance, as well as an introduction to microeconomics and macroeconomics,” he says.

After enrolling at LeBow as a dual major in economics and mathematics, the course Survey of Economic Policy, (ECON 203), taught by Professor of Economics Christopher Laincz, PhD, and Associate Clinical Professor of Economics Patricia Awerbuch, spurred Marchese to engage even more deeply with those topics.

“Every week, we would go over some subfield of economics, and that was really where I thought, this is my field,” he says. “Everything about it was interesting to me.”

From there, he progressed into taking intermediate and upper-level economics courses, and he supplemented this this immersion in economic concepts as a member of Drexel’s team in the College Fed Challenge, an annual competition for undergraduate students analyzing economic and financial conditions and formulating monetary policy.

Marchese calls the College Fed Challenge “an exceptional experience — the most beneficial I’ve had outside of my coursework.”

“That competition was very hands-on, and we worked with data from various sectors, things like GDP and other indicators about the economy as a whole,” he says.

In his final year at Drexel, as Marchese identified eventual graduate studies in economics as a personal goal, he took a doctoral-level econometrics course.

“My professors all recommended that if I’m going towards graduate school, maybe I should get a taste before jumping in headfirst,” he says.

That course provided him with a solid foundation in multiple programming languages, including Python, Stata and R — all commonly used in research, industry and academic settings. His co-op position as a research assistant in statistical mechanics with Drexel’s C. & J. Nyheim Plasma Lab gave him exposure to additional, math-focused programming using the language Julia, developed at M.I.T. for use in scientific research, data analysis and modeling complex systems.

These experiences — with economic theory and application, programming languages and the complexities of academic research — prepared Marchese for his post-graduation role as a research analyst with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

“A lot of the research at the Fed is going to be focused on monetary and fiscal policy,” he says, but he hopes to explore additional areas of economic research as he considers pre-doctoral and PhD programs to continue his studies.

For high-school students interested in economics, Marchese recommends taking upper-level math courses — even if they end up pursuing a different plan of study from the dual-major economics and mathematics program he chose.

“If you’re interested in economics, you can never have enough math,” he says. “You’ll look at these concepts in your economics courses, and the connections will pop right out.”