Scholarships, Awards, and Funding

The Blanche McKenzie Scholarship in Economics was established in 2000 by UC Santa Cruz alumna Randi Novak. Ms. Novak graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 1976 with a degree in mathematics and economics with honors and went on to receive her Ph.D. from the University of Rochester. After spending her early career years as a Russian translator for the University of Chicago and as an engineer at Lockheed, she went on to become well known among Silicon Valley professionals as a ‘start-up cowgirl’ for being instrumental in the start-ups of companies such as Data Encore (a subsidiary of Verbatim), Segue Setups, Silicon Valley Systems, Rapid City Communications, and Trapeze Networks. Novak named the scholarship fund she founded at UC Santa Cruz in honor of Blanche McKenzie, a successful economist who was one of the first woman economists of her time, as well as a humanitarian. McKenzie passed away in 1999. She was survived by a son, a daughter, and her husband, Lionel McKenzie, professor of economics at the University of Rochester, who is recognized worldwide as a ‘guru of mathematical economics’ and, more specifically, as the architect of general equilibrium theory. Blanche and Lionel McKenzie worked together as a team in the Economics Department at the University of Rochester to develop the Ph.D. program into a world-renowned program. She inspired many students. She encouraged the pursuit of education in general, but she especially focused on helping young women pursue higher education. Having earned her master’s degree in economics during the Depression era, when money was scarce and women were rarely encouraged to pursue advanced education, she was acutely aware of the challenges that faced, and continue to face, young women in the world of higher education. 

Eligibility to apply for this scholarship is open to all UCSC students, consistent with state and federal law, the UC Nondiscrimination Statement, and the Nondiscrimination Policy Statement for University of California Publications Regarding Student-Related Matters. Preference is given to economics majors to honor the memory of Blanche McKenzie’s lifelong work of helping women achieve their goals in higher education.

Eileen L. Brooks, assistant professor of economics, joined the UCSC faculty in 2001 after earning a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. During her time at UC Santa Cruz, she taught courses in international trade, international economics, and advanced quantitative methods. She was an affiliate of College Nine and a member of the Santa Cruz Institute for International Economics. Brooks passed away after a lengthy illness on February 1, 2006, at the age of 33. Brooks was a 1994 graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and earned an M. Litt. from Oxford University in international relations in 1996. Among her numerous honors, she was a Rhodes Scholar in 1994–96 and held a Sumner Lichter Fellowship in 1997–98. She received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship in 1996–99 and was an EIIT Conference Graduate Student Competition Winner in 2000. In 2000–01, she received a Chiles Fellowship. As an undergraduate at MIT, she received the Robert Muh Award for outstanding undergraduate research and a Kawamura Visiting Fellowship in 1994. In addition to her academic work, she was a short-term policy consultant for the World Bank in 1997 and a neural networks intern for State Street Bank in 1998.