Michele T. Villinski

Michele T. Villinski is James W. Emison Director of The Robert C. McDermond Center for Management & Entrepreneurship, director of the Management Fellows Program, and associate professor of economics and management at DePauw.  She teaches courses on environmental and resource economics, applied game theory, international economics, and microeconomics.  Her primary research area is environmental and natural resource economics, focusing on water resources and geographic information systems.  She has been a consultant for the Indonesian Ministry of Finance and the Ford Foundation and conducted research on family planning services and HIV/AIDS education.

After graduating from high school in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Villinski attended Carleton College and completed a B.A. degree in political science.  Her senior thesis was a case study of agrarian reform in the Philippines based on interviews and in-country research.  While earning a master's degree in public policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, she examined public financing of water supply in a rural area of Indonesia.   She later received a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota where her dissertation research included theoretical and empirical analysis of option contracts for water.  Before coming to DePauw, she taught at the University of Minnesota and St. Thomas University. 

Villinski has written articles published in Environmental and Resource Economics, Review of Agricultural Economics, International Family Planning Perspectives, Health Policy and Planning, and Studies in Family Planning.  She has presented her research findings and pedagogical techniques at the American Economics Association, American Agricultural Economics Association, Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University, Midwest Economic Association, Southern Economic Association, University of Arkansas, University of Tennessee, Educause Midwest, Texas A&M University, University of Minnesota and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service.

Villinski will spend her 2008-09 sabbatical year on a Fulbright fellowship in Indonesia with her husband and two children.