The National Federation of Municipal Analysts announced this week that Melissa Horn, a student in the master of public administration program at San Jose State University, is the group's 2018 Fugiel Scholarship winner.
The scholarship was created in 2014 in memory of Dr. Peter Fugiel, a past chair of the NFMA who passed away that year. Fugiel developed the education event called the Introduction to Municipal Bond Credit Analysis. The scholarship was designed to award one student with a stipend to cover registration fees and travel to the event held in the fall in Philadelphia.
Horn expects to graduate in May 2019. Her undergraduate degree is in business administration from the University of the Pacific.
Horn’s proposed thesis included financial analysis of a government funded program, and she is partnering with faculty to write a separate research paper analyzing the effects of intergovernmental influences on municipal funding.
“The NFMA is honored to be able to award this scholarship annually to a student in recognition of Dr. Fugiel’s work, both as a practitioner of municipal credit analysis, and as a professor/educator,” the organization wrote in its press release.
Over the years, the NFMA encouraged students in public administration and public policy graduate programs to pursue interests in municipal research.
The organization awarded an honorable mention to Robert Chislett, a master’s student in public administration from the NYU Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and law student at Fordham University School of Law. He also works for former Federal Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker’s nonprofit, the Volcker Alliance.
A second honorable mention was awarded to Graham Rogers, also a master’s student in public administration at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.
The NFMA was established in 1983 and now has about 1,400 members composed of research analysts, who evaluate credit and other risks in the municipal market.
