Human Progress and Flourishing Workshop

Be part of an interdisciplinary conversation addressing the world's biggest challenges.

About the Workshop

Our workshop on Human Progress and Flourishing invites internationally-renowned scholars and speakers from across the country to present research and engage in discussion with the Fargo-Moorhead community. The series focuses on solutions and policies that contribute to opportunity, innovation, and individual and societal flourishing. 

All are invited to attend these free presentations and participate in a lively discussion. Seminars will be held every other Friday from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. Central. Attendees are encouraged to join us in-person in the Beckwith Recital Hall or virtually on Zoom. Light food and refreshments will be provided after each seminar in the Challey School of Music Atrium. 

Students of any major, undergraduate or graduate, can register for the 1-credit course BUSN 491/690. To join the class, email Tayt Rinehardt at tayt.rinehardt@ndsu.edu 

*You do not need to enroll in the course or be a member of the NDSU community to attend the speaker presentations. Everyone is welcome. 

Guests to campus are encouraged to park in the T2 lot, and can receive a parking validation code at our event check-in table. Please let us know if you need one.

Spring 2025 Speakers

The Regional Labor Force
February 7 | Erick Garcia Luna
Title: “Immigrants and the Midwest Labor Force”

Erick Garcia Luna is a regional outreach director at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. His responsibilities include tracking, analyzing, and reporting on several aspects of the economy of the Fed's Ninth District. Erick is a co-author of the Beige Book and has published articles on inflation, business conditions, and labor. His work has been featured in local and national media, including Marketplace and Bloomberg TV.

Prior to joining the Minneapolis Fed, Erick held a variety of roles in the U.S. Senate, the City of Minneapolis, and the University of Minnesota. His academic credentials include coursework in economics and political science from the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City, and a degree in economics from the University of Minnesota.

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February 21 | John Winters
Title: “Regional Human Capital and Higher Education”

John Winters is Professor of Economics at Iowa State University. John earned a Ph.D. in Economics from Georgia State University and a B.A. in Economics from Mississippi State University. John is a native of Memphis, TN and grew up in Northwest Mississippi. John’s research focuses mainly on regional economics and labor economics with specific topics including the migration of college students and graduates, human capital effects on regional economies, individual education outcomes, STEM labor market issues, self-employment outcomes, and impacts of economics shocks such as the fracking boom. His research has been published in numerous top field journals. John is a founding editor of Reaching Regions, an outreach journal for regional science. He also serves on several journal editorial boards.

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Land Use/Housing Policy
March 7 | Oudom Hean
Title: “Regulation and Housing Affordability”

Oudom Hean is an assistant professor of finance at North Dakota State University and a scholar at the Challey Institute for Global Innovation and Growth. As an applied economist, his research interests intersect regional economics, financial economics, and public economics. His current work delves into the differing economic growth trajectories of U.S. urban and rural areas, focusing on factors such as innovation, the minimum wage, and offshoring. He was honored with the NDSU Waldron Excellence Award for 2023-2024.

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May 2 | Emily Hamilton
Title: “Land Use Policy”

Emily Hamilton is a Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Urbanity Project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Her research focuses on urban economics and land-use policy. She publishes both academic research and policy work. Her writing has appeared in outlets including the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, and she writes an occasional column at Governing. Hamilton has testified before several state legislatures as well as the U.S. House of Representatives. Hamilton serves on the Advisory Boards of Up for Growth and Cityscape, a journal published by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. She received her PhD in economics from George Mason University.

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Healthcare Issues
March 28 | Michael Cannon
Title: “Reforming U.S. Healthcare”

Michael F. Cannon is the Cato Institute’s director of health policy studies. His scholarship spans public health; regulation of clinicians, medical facilities, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices; employer-sponsored and other private health insurance; Medicare; Medicaid; CHIP; the Veterans Health Administration; medical malpractice litigation; administrative law; international health systems; political philosophy; and more. Cannon is “an influential health‐​care wonk” (Washington Post) and “the most famous libertarian health care scholar” (Washington Examiner). Washingtonian magazine named Cannon one of Washington, DC’s Most Influential People in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024.

Cannon has appeared on ABC, Al Jazeera, BBC, CBS, CNN, CNBC, C‑SPAN, Fox News, NPR, and other broadcast media. His articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal; the New York TimesUSA Today; the Washington Post; the Los Angeles TimesSCOTUSBlogForum for Health Economics and PolicyJAMA Internal MedicineHealth Matrix: Journal of Law‐​MedicineHarvard Health Policy Review; the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics; the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law; and Quinnipiac Health Law Journal. His latest book is Recovery: A Guide to Reforming the US Health Sector.

Cannon was previously a domestic policy analyst for the US Senate Republican Policy Committee, where he advised the Senate leadership on health, education, labor, welfare, and the Second Amendment. He is a member of the Board of Advisers of Harvard Health Policy Review and the Federalist Society Regulatory Transparency Project’s FDA and Health Working Group.

Cannon holds an MA in economics and a JM in law and economics from George Mason University and a BA in American government from the University of Virginia.

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April 11 | Phillip Phan
Title: “An Honest Debate During Public Health Crises"

Phillip H. Phan, Ph.D., is Alonzo and Virginia Decker Professor at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School with joint appointment as Professor in the Department of Medicine. He is Robert Bosch Policy Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.

His academic and professional work focuses on innovations in health care that impacts patient safety and quality. He has published more than 200 peer reviewed research papers and is author/editor of 13 scholarly books. He is Deputy Editor of the International Journal for Quality in Health Care, Academic Editor of Medicine®, and Associate Editor of the Journal of Technology Transfer. He reviews for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation.

He is director of the Networking and Mentoring Core for the Johns Hopkins Artificial Intelligence Collaboratory for Aging Research, and PI of the Johns Hopkins Innovation for Substance Use Disorder (I4SUD) program, a NIDA-funded national technology commercialization training program for researchers in substance use disorders.

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