As of July 1st 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?
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