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 effectively in groups.
• Write descriptively and persuasively 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.