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Economics Student Association
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Challenges arise in promoting and recruiting for the club.
by Gustavo Buenrostro
Since the beginning of the pandemic many things had to change, and for the Economics Student Association, those changes provided some benefits and new challenges.
“We are better off now than we were before and that’s weird to say,” club president Timothy Nguyen said. “Back in the spring semester [of 2020], we maxed at about 10 club members. That included those who had to show up, like the board members.”
He went on to say that they have almost double the number of attendees now. Nguyen wasn’t sure why the attendance increased since the ESA’s content hasn’t really changed.
The club president believes it may be that the meetings are more accessible now, since moving online due to the pandemic.
Another possibility could be that people just didn’t have time in their schedules before.
While the club has grown in that aspect, it has had to change a bit because of the pandemic. For instance, each officer has evolved to more of an advertising role to get students to join the club.
“No one will know who you are unless you advertise,” Nguyen said. “Anyone can join, but we are not going to bombard every class with an advertisement,” he said.
Although ESA’s focus for recruitment and advertisement is on economics students, all majors are welcome to join.
Nguyen said that it’s more difficult to get people to join because they don’t have the same access as they did in-person.
Before the pandemic, they could easily meet someone and talk to them and see if they were interested.
Now, it’s harder because people don’t want to join a club with people they haven’t met.
He said ESA was fortunate to have the economics department help them out with recruitment. Professors helped promote ESA by sharing the Zoom meet-
ing links to their classes.
ESA member Jocelyn Sanchez joined during the pandemic and is now part of the board as the head of market research.
She joined the club to get out of her comfort zone. Sanchez was not active in school activities until her third year, when she studied abroad, joined a lot of clubs and had fun.
When she returned, she decided she wanted to be involved on campus and found ESA through Beachboard, and their Instagram and Discord.
“It was about networking although not really. It was literally to talk to people and no longer be sitting at my desk isolated and alone every single day,” Sanchez said. “I can’t go out. I go out once a week for groceries and that’s it.”
Sanchez said joining clubs, especially during the pandemic, has been great for meeting different kinds of people.
Nguyen said that Sanchez is a product of what ESA tries to accomplish with everyone who joins the club.
“Our mission statement is that we want to create a sense of community for students interested in economics. [We have] events to talk about what [students] can do with their major and to network,” Nguyen said.
“[ESA is] a club where [students] don’t feel like they are alone. Knowing other people like you can make you feel like a better student overall,” he said.
Economics Student Associaion pose for a group Zoom selfie at a meeting.
Photo courtesy of Timothy Nguyen.
The Economics Student Association will have their final meeting of the semester on April 29.
Interested students can get in contact and keep up with ESA for future events by following them on Instagram @csulb_economics.
