For release: March 16, 2001
Contact: Joe Elstner, (314) 444-8902; Charles B. Henderson, (314) 444-8311

Marquette High Students Win First Place in St. Louis Fed Challenge

ST. LOUIS -- A team of five students from Marquette High School has won the St. Louis area "2001 Fed Challenge," an economics competition sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

The Marquette team beat teams from Beaumont High, Clayton High (which won second place), Crossroads, Hazelwood Central, and West Jr. High from Columbia, Mo. The five Marquette students are Mandy Giovanoni, Allison Hartman, Niel Holbrook, Thomson Kao and Silpa Kaza. Their teacher is Eva Johnston. Paul Christopher, a senior economist for A.G. Edwards, served as coach.

The Marquette team will go on to participate in the Eighth Federal Reserve District competition for the Fed Challenge on April 4 against teams from the St. Louis Fed's branch cities of Louisville, Little Rock and Memphis. The winner of that round will then represent the District at the Federal Reserve's national finals on April 28-30 in Washington, D.C.

Each team in the Fed Challenge makes a 15-minute presentation, based on their research, before a panel of judges at a mock meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Federal Reserve's policymaking body. Team members also have to answer the judges' questions about their research and the Federal Reserve. Although five students made up each team, the Fed Challenge in many cases involves other students who serve as researchers, advisors, technical and graphic support, and practice-session judges.

The St. Louis Fed encourages all the student teams to consult a variety of sources to prepare their presentations, including the business sections of local and national newspapers, financial journals and the Internet.

The judges for the St. Louis competition were Gaetano Antinolfi, an assistant professor of economics at Washington University in St. Louis; Rachel Balbach, an economist; Steve Fazarri, professor and chair of the Department of Economics at Washington University in St. Louis; Sarapage McCorkle, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Economic Education at the University of Missouri-St. Louis; and Mary Anne Pettit, associate director of the Office of Economic Education and Business Research at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.

With branches in Little Rock, Louisville and Memphis, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis serves the Eighth Federal Reserve District, which includes all of Arkansas, eastern Missouri, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, western Kentucky, western Tennessee and northern Mississippi. In addition to serving as a bank for depository institutions and the U.S. government, each Reserve Bank monitors economic conditions in its District, participates in formulating monetary policy, and supervises state-chartered member banks and bank holding companies to foster safety and soundness of its District's banking and financial institutions and to protect the credit rights of consumers.

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