Photo Courtesy of Kathleen Brennan The Mount Saint Mary Academy Fed Challenge team includes, front row, from left, Olivia Quiroga, Sabrina DiIorio and Andrea Ruiz; and back row, from left, Martha Byrne, Avery Longstreet and Katherine Kenny.
WATCHUNG, NJ — Kathleen Brennan, chairperson of the Department of Mathematics at Mount Saint Mary Academy in Watchung, announced that the academy’s Fed Challenge team had a paper, “Leading Factors of Gender Inequality,” accepted into the Journal of Future Economists.
“As a girls school, it made perfect sense for us to investigate the role that gender plays in income disparities,” Brennan said. “I am thrilled and extremely proud that the NY Federal Reserve will publish their analysis in the 2021 Journal of Future Economists. This is quite an accomplishment for our Mounties!”
The school’s Fed Challenge team includes: Martha Byrne, a senior from Westfield; Sabrina DiIorio, a senior from Scotch Plains; Katherine Kenny, a junior from Maplewood; Avery Longstreet, a junior from Westfield; Olivia Quiroga, a senior from Berkeley Heights; and Andrea Ruiz, a senior from Edison.
In a letter to the Mount team, the New York Fed Economic Education team wrote, “This year’s theme is a reflection of the mission and vision of the New York Fed to better understand the barriers of inequality in order to promote a healthy macroeconomy for all. After a holistic evaluation of each submission, we are pleased to inform you that your paper has been selected for publication in the 2021 Journal of Future Economists. Congratulations! You will receive a copy of the journal and a certificate of achievement for each member of your team.”
The students are extremely proud of their accomplishment, and said that they learned a lot during the research and writing process.
“In the midst of this unprecedented time, having achieved this accomplishment with the New York Fed is such an honor,” Ruiz said. “After having our competition shut down last year and having to compete in a new format this year, I was really proud of the team and how hard and efficiently we worked on this paper. I definitely increased my understanding of gender economic inequality in the U.S. while working on this paper and I am grateful that our work can help shed some light on the gravity of this issue by being published in the Journal of Future Economists.”
“I feel so grateful that I was able to be a part of this amazing team and research more about such an important topic,” Kenny said.
“I am extremely honored to be part of such a great team! I am so proud of our accomplishment on such an important topic,” Longstreet said.
“I have done Fed Challenge for the last two years, and even though I want to go into medicine, Ms. Brennan has done an excellent job of introducing me to the world of economics,” Quiroga said. “Every single person on the team is such a hard worker, and I’m so proud of our team for making an impact in researching economic inequality between males and females.”
“It’s so exciting to be published! I loved participating, and I am so proud of the team and grateful to Ms. Brennan for her guidance,” Byrne said. “I really appreciated having the opportunity to do economic research, and my experiences at the Mount have helped me realize that I want to pursue economics in college next year.”
“Fed Challenge has been one of my favorite activities I have participated in during my years at the Mount. Although this year’s competition was a little different, the girls and I still were able to collaborate, and the teamwork we established was one of the most rewarding parts of the experience,” DiIorio said. “As a team of all girls, writing about the issue of gender inequality was extremely important to us, and I am so proud of what we have accomplished.”
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