Daniel Hanson, '11

B.A. in Economics, Political Science, & Philosphy, Minor in Communication Studies & Mathematics

Can you tell us something about how Grove City College’s emphasis on Christian faith impacted you while you were at school?
Grove City College’s emphasis on the intersection between culture and its downstream institutions – our political and economic order – instilled in me the importance of placing character development ahead of institutional development.

Can you tell us about how your academic work and relationships with faculty challenged you while you were at Grove City College?
While at the College, I worked with Dr. Sam Stanton on a variety of projects related to global conflict management, and he fomented in me a careful diligence in the rigorous analysis of quantitative data. I developed other deep relationships with other faculty members, including Dr. Coulter, through other activities, and the mentorship of faculty taught me more than I learned in my classroom hours.

Can you tell us how your time at Grove City College prepared you for your vocation?
Grove City College taught me to study incentives; to understand what may happen next in financial markets, one must understand what people want and why, given their incentives. When trying to price risk in the context of uncertainty, a careful analysis of the key players can often generate insights into the correct pricing regime. The College’s emphasis on big picture issues helped me to formulate a worldview that looks first at incentives to explain the outside world.

Why did you study political science?
The world is increasingly dominated by political events, and a pure understanding of politics helps to define systems “by their working and their power.” I sit, and have wanted to sit, at the intersection of government and finance, where understanding power differentials can help to explain how systems evolve over time and studying how those differentials have shaped systems in the past yields insight into how they might evolve in the future. 

 

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