AMES. Iowa -- Liesl Eathington has been appointed as the new director of the Office of Social and Economic Trend Analysis (SETA) at Iowa State University. Eathington replaces Peter Orazem who had been the director of the joint project between ISU Extension, and the Departments of Economics and Sociology. Eathington has been associated with SETA for the past 4-1/2 years, most recently as the project’s industry and labor force specialist, and she was "the natural person to assume leadership of the project," according to Arne Hallam, chair of economics.
Eathington has her bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a masters in business administration from Iowa State University. "We are excited in having Liesl in the leadership role in SETA, and look forward to how SETA can be a valuable resource to the citizens of Iowa" said Hallam.
SETA has been existence for many years, although its name has changed as the former Census Services and PROfiles projects were merged to take advantage of the collaboration between economics and sociology. The SETA office draws upon the expertise in both sociology and economics along with other departments and agencies that can provide useful secondary data on conditions in the state.
Paul Lasley, chair of the sociology, commented, "Increasingly, Iowa communities are trying to understand the large scale trends affecting their futures, and SETA is one source that can help them track changes and understand the impact of these changes for community well-being." Lasley further noted that SETA provides retail trade and manufacturing data as well as the more common data on population and employment.
Most of the data is available online at the SETA web site at www.seta.iastate.edu. Eathington’s responsibilities will include supervision of the data provided by SETA as well as interpretation and analysis for groups that use the data, such as economic development and government organizations.
The mission of SETA is to provide timely data and analysis that informs the economic development, community betterment, and public policy needs of the State of Iowa, and extends the information in an accessible manner to citizens of the state. Liesl Eathington will be able to provide seamless leadership to SETA in this transition, Hallam noted.
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