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The
Department of Economics will provide excellence
in economic literacy, excellent
support of General Education in
its principles level courses, excellent
major programs,
an excellent
Master of Arts program,
and an environment
for substantial and meaningful research.
Excellence in Economic Literacy
By
excellence in economic literacy we mean that we will
pursue a particular set of skills and concepts
that are central to a person being literate in economic
principles. These economic concepts and skills include
- opportunity cost,
- mutual
gains from voluntary trade,
- marginal
analysis,
- equilibrium,
- market
efficiency, and
- market
failure.
A
student who is economically literate has the ability
to:
- identify
trade-offs in the context of constraints;
- use chains
of deductive reasoning in conjunction with simple
models to help understand phenomena; and
- use
creative skills to determine how to frame questions
and how to choose the tools and principles to apply
to particular problems.
We
will assess these skills by examination in the principles
and intermediate theory courses.
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Excellence in General
Education
Excellence
in General Education includes
- writing,
- problem
solving,
- moral reasoning,
and
- critical
thinking.
The
general education skills will be addressed by individual
faculty in the context of economic concepts. Not every
professor will advance every skill. Assessment
of these skills will be undertaken by the Department.
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Excellence in Major Programs
For
excellence in our majors, we are looking for mastery
of core economic concepts and the ability to
apply and use these concepts. The core concepts are
developed in the principles and intermediate theory
courses and provide the bedrock upon which the
discipline rests. We will assess the progress of our
majors in their knowledge of economics by examining
their performance in the intermediate theory courses.
Performance in these courses is an important measurement
of the student's understanding of economics. Excellence
in our major programs will also be indicated by the
jobs and graduate schools our students pass into.
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Excellence in Master of
Arts
The
Master of Arts will provide excellent education in
both advanced micro and macro theory and the quantitative
and qualitative evaluation of public policy.
Excellence in the Master of Arts will be measured by
the quality of performance on the comprehensives
and in the oral examinations. In addition, the quality
of the MA will be evaluated by the quality of the Ph.D.
programs that our students are admitted to and
by the kinds of jobs they are offered.
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Substantial and Meaningful Research
Environment
Progress
toward this goal will be measured by the quality and
quantity of research output published by the
Department. While variations year by year will be
a fact, our goal is to achieve graduate faculty status
for all faculty and a generally high level of
output by a significant portion of the faculty over their
careers.
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