Rod F. Ziemer Lecture

Rod Ziemer lived life to the fullest. He was a man of compassion, energy and enthusiasm.  He was loved by all those who came in contact with him. At the University of Georgia, he was best remembered as an outstanding graduate student. He wrote more articles as a graduate student than any other student in agricultural economics. But, he also influenced the lives of other graduate students, faculty and staff. When faculty members in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences selected him as the College's outstanding graduate student, they remarked that his record was sufficient to be promoted to associate professor.  He received the profession's highest award for a graduate student - the American Agricultural Economics Association Outstanding Dissertation Award.

The true mark of an outstanding scholarly program is the enduring quality of the program. Rod Ziemer’s short career, ending over twenty years ago, still has an impact on the advancement of knowledge today. Consider just one of his articles entitled “Recreation Demand Equations: Functional Form and Consumer Surplus.” In this article, Rod was the first to suggest that different functional forms can produce dramatically different consumer surplus estimates. Prior to Rod, researchers were primarily concerned with choice of regressors with little, if any, consideration given to functional form. This discovery launched a new area of research in considering model forms. As stated by Hoch (AJAE, 1984), an implication of Rod’s article for applied agricultural economists is the recommendation of “…presenting additional information on the range of all the results in a particular application to reveal how robust they are.”

Dr. Ziemer is an icon of a truly outstanding scholarly program and for the commitment and effort towards a scholarly program and enjoying every minute of it. To honor his memory, the Rod F. Ziemer lecture was established in 1986. Many of the distinguished lecturers knew Rod personally. The Lecture is designed to kindle a kindred spirit of excellence in future generations of graduate students in the Agricultural and Applied Economics Department at the University of Georgia.