At Kenyon, economics is taught as the scientific study of those aspects of social behavior concerned with choosing how best to use technology and limited resources so as to maximize individual or social welfare. Economic analysis involves working simultaneously with analytical models, data, quantitative research methods, and social norms such as allocative efficiency and macroeconomic stability. The Department of Economics serves two distinct groups of students: majors and non-majors who take economics courses. Most of the non-majors take our economics principles sequence as part of their general education courses. In addition, some non-majors take economics courses as part of their International Studies major or in the Public Policy or Environmental Studies programs.

Learning Goals

The Department of Economics faculty strives to help our majors acquire the ability to:

  1. understand and use economic models;
  2. appreciate the power and limitations of theoretical economic models;
  3. apply economic analysis, particularly to public policy issues;
  4. understand the principal features and institutions of a market economy;
  5. understand and interpret economic data;
  6. communicate economic reasoning in clear written and oral form;
  7. effectively carry out a research project; and
  8. work collaboratively with others.

The Department of Economics faculty also strives to help non-majors acquire the ability to:

  1. understand and use economic models;
  2. apply economic analysis, particularly to public policy issues;
  3. understand the principal features and institutions of a market economy;
  4. understand and interpret economic data; and
  5. communicate economic reasoning in clear written and oral form.

Measures

We plan to assess how well we have achieved the goals outlined in our mission statement using a variety of tools.

I. Senior Integrating Exercise

The senior exercise in economics consists of two sit-down examinations, a microeconomics exam and a macroeconomics exam.  Both examinations consist of a multiple-choice component and an essay component.  The multiple-choice questions  are drawn from test banks and cover material presented in our principles and intermediate theory courses.  The essay questions ask students to apply their knowledge of economic models and concepts studied in our core courses – principles, intermediate theories, and econometrics – to real life phenomena.  As a result, the Senior Integrating Exercise offers us an opportunity to evaluate the ability of our majors to communicate economic reasoning, demonstrate that they understand and can apply both microeconomic and macroeconomic models, and explain and interpret economic data. We believe that the Senior Integrating Exercise is useful in assessing goals (1)-(6) that we have set for our majors.

Each essay exam for the Senior Integrating Exercise is blind-graded. When grading an essay exam, each faculty grader will pay attention to specific grading categories that focus on the department's mission and goals. These grading categories include:

  1. selection of models appropriate to the topic;
  2. basic understanding of the model(s) presented and absence of major errors in use of the model(s);
  3. effective use of information provided in the question, or of relevant economic data, or specific examples of generalizations (as required by the question);
  4. logical reasoning, plausible conclusions, and coherent organization of the essay; and
  5. writing that clearly conveys the author's ideas, without distracting grammatical or vocabulary errors.

II. Seminar Performance Evaluation

The Senior Integrating Exercise addresses the first six of the eight abilities we seek for our majors, but not the last two. The aptitude to effectively carry out a research project (goal 7) is addressed in our seminars, one of which is required for completion of the major. Each seminar requires the student to undertake and complete a major research project. The project involves submitting a draft of the paper for faculty evaluation, revising the paper based on faculty advice, circulating the paper to all other students in the seminar, receiving questions/comments from them, and leading a discussion of the paper and of the other students' questions/comments. Thus the seminar requirements cultivate the aptitude in our students to effectively carry out a research project in addition to nurturing the skills that we seek in goals (1)-(6). The seminar discussions throughout the semester and, in particular, the seminar paper author's handling of his or her peers' questions and comments address our goal that each major be able to communicate economic reasoning in oral form.

When grading seminar papers, each instructor is encouraged to assign a grade in each of several categories, or rubrics. This practice can improve the grading process and enable the instructor to give better feedback to students concerning their performance. An example of plausible rubrics follows:

  1. independence in the selection of topic and economic models appropriate to the topic;
  2. basic understanding of the model(s) presented and absence of major errors in use of the model(s);
  3. demonstration of good research skills and initiative in identifying and making use of relevant sources from the economics literature and relevant economic data;
  4. responsiveness in the revision of the first draft to comments and suggestions made by the instructor;
  5. logical reasoning, plausible conclusions, and coherent organization of the paper;
  6. writing that clearly conveys the author's ideas, without distracting grammatical or vocabulary errors; and,
  7. effective handling of the seminar discussion of the author's paper.

 In addition, each instructor in encouraged to assign each student a grade for overall participation in seminar discussions.

III. Group projects in Upper Level Courses

We address our goal of teaching our students to work collaboratively with others (goal 8) through group projects that most of the department members use in their upper level elective courses. Some projects aim to allocate the work on various parts of large assignments between team members, practicing cooperation and coordination, others encourage students to check their work carefully in a group setting and hand in a polished final product, still others seek to generate ideas and helping attitude in students working on difficult questions in groups.

IV. Enrollment Statistics

Tracking course enrollments is useful in evaluating our major program as well as our service to non-majors. For graduating majors we will keep track of the total number of economics courses that have been taken by majors. We will also keep track of the mathematics courses taken. In order to gauge our service to non-majors, we will track our enrollments in Economics 101 and 102 as well as the percentage of non-majors enrolled in our upper-division courses. In order to evaluate the department's contribution to interdisciplinary studies, we will track how many economics courses are offered that can be used to fulfill requirements in the International Studies major, and in the Environmental Studies and Public Policy concentrations.

Feedback

We seek information on student perceptions of our major program through surveys of current majors and alumni during our external reviews. We gain insights as to how well we are accomplishing the goals that we have set out above by offering our majors and alumni an opportunity to evaluate the program and offer suggestions and constructive criticisms.

Updated fall 2019