Joseph Harris, an economics major, is getting valuable experience through his internship at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

CAMDEN — For Joseph Harris, the key to gathering data is simple:
you can never have too much.

Harris is a junior economics major at Rutgers–Camden who
interns at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, where he collects
statistical information useful for banks and small businesses.

“I’ve always been interested in economics and the idea of supply
and demand,” says Harris, a Williamstown resident and Paul VI High School
graduate. “I like collecting and analyzing data to examine the financial health
of our society.”

When he’s not studying the intricacies of economics in
the classroom, Harris is getting first-hand experience putting his knowledge to
practice in the Federal Reserve Bank’s Supervision, Regulation, and Credit
Department.

Harris collects quarterly and yearly data from minority-owned
depositary institutions and compares factors that contribute to their overall
performance in the economy. He is also involved in Partnership for Progress, a
Federal Reserve Bank program intended to improve and preserve minority owned
banks in the United States.

“I can apply what I’ve learned in class to my internship
and many times, we’ll talk about something in class that I just learned at the
Federal Reserve Bank,” Harris says. “It allows me to contribute to the class
more because I can relate it to what I do at my internship and I can relay that
experience to my classmates. I feel like I’ve really gotten the best out of
this internship.”

Harris, who is also a track athlete at Rutgers–Camden, says
he enjoys looking into recent financial trends and notes that his curiosity of
the recent global recession sparked his interest in economics. He plans to
pursue his master’s degree and doctorate in economics at Rutgers–Camden after
completing his bachelor’s degree in 2013.

“Joseph’s experiences at
the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia as an intern are very important his
career development,” says Tetsuji Yamada, a professor of economics at
Rutgers–Camden. “Because his academic training at Rutgers–Camden has given him
tremendous breadth and depth in the economic field, including the healthcare
system and policy, I believe he will successfully complete the demands of the
FED program.”

Harris has helped Yamada with his research on the “health
literacy” of Rutgers–Camden students and on raising the retention rates of
college students. Both projects require analytical and theoretical knowledge.

“It’s been a great experience and my internship and the research
I’ve done with Dr. Yamada has only reinforced my interest in economics,” Harris
says.

Harris says his decision to choose Rutgers–Camden to pursue his
undergraduate degree in economics was shaped by his growing interest and
concern of the global recession.

“During my senior year in high school, the economy was still going
through this recession, which affected me and my college choices,” Harris says.
“I chose to take a high school advanced placement economics course to
understand how I could help resolve it, and it persuaded me to choose a career
in economics. That led me to Rutgers–Camden.”