TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Dr. Gary A. Hoover, associate professor of economics and Harrison Teaching Excellence Faculty Fellow, has been named assistant dean for faculty and graduate student development at The University of Alabama’s Culverhouse College of Commerce. Hoover will assume his new role beginning this summer.

“Dr. Hoover will have a pivotal role in strengthening the quality and diversity of our faculty and graduate student population, among other responsibilities in his new position,” said Dr. J. Barry Mason, dean of the UA business school.

Hoover earned his bachelor’s in economics in 1993 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and his master’s in economics in 1995 at Washington University in St. Louis, where he also earned his doctorate in 1998. “I’m honored to have this opportunity to help the business school reach its goal of becoming one of the elite business schools in the country,” said Hoover.

He joined the UA faculty in 1998, and in 2002 he was named the James I. Harrison Family Endowed Teaching Excellence Faculty Fellow. His specialty areas are public policy analysis, income distribution and public finance. Hoover attributes much of his professional success to the leadership and direction of Mason.

He said, “The leadership has provided the resources and environment where young scholars, such as myself, can flourish. It basically sells itself. I see my role as getting the word out about what’s going on here.”

Hoover has been a visiting scholar at the Institute for Research on Poverty in Madison, Wis. Last spring he was awarded the 2004 Young Investigators Development Award, sponsored by the University of Kentucky Center for Poverty, for his research project titled “Examining the Relationship between the Poverty Rate and Economic Conditions in the South.”

He has been a faculty mentor in the Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program and the Culverhouse College of Commerce Faculty Scholars Program. His articles have been published in outlets such as the Journal of Economic Literature, Public Choice, Economics and Politics, Review of Income and Wealth, American Economic Review P&P, Journal of Labor Research and Applied Economics.