Introductory Remarks (Trudy Ann Cameron, AERE President, 2007-2008)
The AERE Fellows program was instituted to recognize outstanding contributions to the field by members of the Association.
Any member of AERE can nominate a candidate for Fellow. The one necessary condition is that an AERE Fellow must
have been a member of AERE for at least ten years (although this membership need not be current and the ten years
need not have been consecutive). A nomination packet should include a vita of the nominee, three letters of support,
and a two-page nomination letter outlining what contributions the individual has made that warrant the award.
The deadline to submit nominations is June 1. Any nomination from a prior year can be re-activated by contacting the
AERE President before the nomination deadline (to ensure that a complete file is still available).
The Fellows Program is still very new. In the first two years, up to six fellows could be selected.
In the third and subsequent years, the number will be "up to three."
Last year's 2005 (inaugural) Fellows—Maureen Cropper, Michael Hanemann, Karl-Goran Maler,
Wally Oates, Kerry Smith, and Tom Tietenberg—were inducted at the January 2006 AERE Luncheon in Boston.
I would like to preface the announcement of this year's inductees with an
acknowledgement that the selection process has proven extremely difficult.
It is an exercise in the properties of small-sample estimators.
While rigorous and careful, it cannot perfectly reflect the preferences of every AERE member.
The weights assigned to the many (very different) types of contributions are necessarily subjective.
Many nominees who were not selected as Fellows this year will certainly be recognized in future years,
and I heartily encourage nominators to renew their petitions for subsequent years.
It will take a while for the AERE Fellows program to reach a steady state.
