Mission
The mission of the department is to teach economics, provide knowledge through research, and serve the local community and society at large. The economics program seeks to make available to students, the public, and governments the factual, theoretical and critical tools in the discipline of economics. The program strives to be “critical” in the best sense of the word, providing insights and alternative ways of thinking about public policy problems.
Teaching economics includes conveying specific conceptual (theoretical) approaches, factual material and quantitative (statistical and mathematical) tools. However, teaching economics goes beyond conveying the current conventional economics canon. From its’ beginnings, economics has been closely intertwined with competing political and social philosophies. It is important for economics students to understand the philosophic and institutional assumptions embedded in different approaches to economics analysis. Without that critical understanding, the tools of economics can be inappropriately applied. Economic analysis also has an important problem solving element to it. Students need to learn how to define a problem so that it is open to solution. They need to learn to identify the relevant theoretical/conceptual tools to use, identify the relevant data to be gathered, now how to process and interpret the data, how to draw policy implications from their results, and how to present results in a useful and convincing manner.