Economist Writing Every Day

As of July 1^st of this year, I am the Chairman of the Department of Economics at my university. It’s one of those positions that includes more work and not much compensation. Depending on who I tell, I’m given both congratulations and condolences. Generally, at my university there is an expectation that department faculty ‘take turns’ being chair. So, we’re expected to serve whether the pay is good or not. There’s a lot of informal practice around this process.

In addition, Economics Majors have been less popular at liberal arts institutions over the past several years. No one knows why and there are probably multiple reasons. At my institution, our department has healthy enrollment among the peripheral majors. So, the Economics BA and BS have lower enrollment, but the Business Economics and the Global Affairs majors are more popular than ever.

All the same, I’d like to increase the number of students who have declared majors in our department and the number of Economics graduates. How do I do that?

I have a three-pronged strategy: Salience, Engagement, & Teaching Excellence.

Salience: I want every student to to have frequent reminders that the Economics Department exists. This takes many forms.

• We’ll host invited speaker events and research lectures by our faculty.
• We’ll host less intensive student events such as “How to think about Student Loans” and “The Economics of Trump”.
• I created a flyer with our International Student Coordinator. STEM majors, of which Quantitative Economics is one, qualify for more time in the US after graduation. I made sure that the flyer exists and that our major is there along with the required credit hours and expected salary.
• I also hope that there is word-of-mouth about the below.

Engagement: Students need to have good relationships with both faculty and one another.

• Of course, this includes the events mentioned above.
• We’ll also have a standing room reservation for Economics majors to use as a study space. Hopefully, they will be able to improve their academic performance and build relationships with Economics as a focal point.
• We will also fund and attend Economics Major social events. These can build community and, implicitly, tell our students that we value them. Reducing the number of students who leave the major can’t hurt.
• Personally, I send emails of gratitude to individual students during the semester. I’ll encourage my department members to do the same. These help to encourage students and gives me an opportunity to be somewhat vulnerable with them. If we can’t be humans, then why would they want to spend 3-4 years with us?
• Similarly, I’ll recommend that my fellow faculty email personalized solicitations to individual students who would be good fits for the major.
• I would also like to offer more electives that are cross-listed with high enrollment departments, such as Psychology, Theology, and Communications. I can teach an Experimental Economics course. Economic Communication is a taller order.
• We need an student Economics Club. This is a more detailed topic than current space permits.

Teaching Excellence: While some students might conduct publishable research with us, most students will be the subject of teaching. We’d like them to take a second class with us, if not more. I’ve mentioned some of these in the past.

• We must receive feedback and make improvements. There is already a good culture within our department of mid-semester course evaluations.
• We should also exhibit enthusiasm for the beauty of economics. How do you get your fellow faculty to do that? I’m not sure. Certainly, we’d all express it differently.
• I also plan to compare course evaluation scores openly within our department. That way, we know what to learn from each other. There is a lot of talk out there among faculty, and it’s often hard to know who’s worth listening to about a topic. Obviously, this has to be done in a way that has more finesse than I can describe here. No faculty member should feel lousy after such a discussion.
• We already offer Directed Independent Studies for some students. These can be extended to the summers and maybe even used for low enrollment courses.

These are my ideas and plans for the coming academic years. I have different spans of authority among them. Some are entirely at my discretion and others require cooperation and buy-in from my colleagues. Hopefully, however, all of these steps can increase our enrollment while maintaining the quality of our majors.

Please do comment below or email me if you have additional ideas or advice.

…And say a prayer for me and our department!