Student Learning Goals
Goals for the Economics Major:
- Understand how economic theories and models are formulated and appreciate their explanatory
power.
Be able to use economic models to evaluate current economic issues and public policy. - Understand the role of historical and institutional context as conditioning policy-making.
- Support students’ growth in critical thinking and problem solving including choosing
appropriate models and understanding their limitations.
Understand the differing perspectives of economics and other social science fields. - Analyze economic systems in a cultural, global, and/or social justice context.
- Appreciate the impact of economic activity on environmental and ecological systems.
- Appreciate the impact of economic activity on human well-being and welfare.
- Learn how economists use quantitative approaches to measure economic outcomes and test competing theories.
Information literacy
- Use appropriate search methods to find existing economic literature; find and access current and historical economic data.
Visual literacy
- Use a variety of visual modes to display and communicate information about economic phenomena and relationships, including charts and graphs. Create presentations that effectively summarize research.
Technological literacy
- Be proficient in the use of STATA (or R) econometric software to describe and summarize data and to investigate hypotheses using a variety of methods.
- Use appropriate data and empirical methods to evaluate economic research.
Effective oral communication
- Explain, debate and/or discuss models and economic phenomena.
- Work in groups
- Both descriptive and persuasive writing regarding economic phenomena, conditions and policies.
- Create new knowledge by identifying and formulating a question or series of questions about some economic issue that will facilitate its investigation.