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Project Background and Overview

Clarisse Messemer

 In introductory microeconomics and macroeconomics courses, we teach students how individuals or firms make choices and give a broad overview of how the economy works.  The beauty of teaching these courses, for many instructors, is that the subject seems to apply to everyone.  Everyone makes purchasing decisions on a daily basis and, with the help of media, everyone knows about general movements in the economy such as booms in the stock market or recessions.  But teaching these topics without regard for culture, race, or gender actually de-personalizes the core courses so that they become the study of a representative, faceless human being.  For instructors in the Economics Department, it is easy to buy into the philosophy that issues of diversity and cultural experiences are reserved for other social sciences and do not belong in the core curriculum of economics.

 For example, we teach beginning economics students the simplifying assumption that tastes and preferences, whatever they are, remain constant over the period of analysis.  This is a very convenient assumption that allows instructors to abstract away from personal issues and/or personal associations and analyze the problem in terms of changes in constraints.  We then challenge students to use this simplifying assumption to analyze culturally charged issues such as racism and abortion but ask students not to consider any personal feelings about the issue. 

The motivation for introducing these topics in class is to help students retain the information by applying the core concepts to issues and events that happen in every day life.  Unfortunately, the motivation conflicts with the required application.  We want students to apply their knowledge of microeconomics to situations that happen in their every day lives but want them to think about these situations in such a way that does not incorporate how they perceive or deal with these problems.  For many students in introductory microeconomics, economics becomes the study of unrealistic assumptions in an idealized world.

By improving how students identify with the topics we teach, the Economics Department can attract a better and more diverse student body to our major. One observation is that the proportion of economics majors who are women has declined over the last ten years in the Economics Department while it has gone up for the Business School.  It is not clear whether this trend is specific to the University of Washington or to the discipline as a whole.  For example, at the University of Washington, we know that women have, on average, higher G.P.As than men.  Are these women more successful than men at entering the Business School, which has a higher G.P.A. requirement than the economics major, or is the Business School attracting women away from the economics major because of different pedagogical styles? 

Through working at the Center for Instructional Development and Research (CIDR), Clarisse has learned about programs across the country that incorporate issues of diversity into the core courses in a wide range of disciplines.  One example of such a program is the Transforming the Curriculum project here at the University of Washington.  From the “Transforming a Course” bulletin prepared by Betty Schmitz and James Anderson’s talk on “Assessing the Role of Diversity”, Clarisse began thinking about how to enrich student’s understanding of economics through incorporating their experiences with diversity as they pertain to relevant topics in the course discussions.  For example, at James Anderson’s talk in February of this year, Clarisse learned that the top universities in the U.S. are revising their math and science curriculums to answer questions such as “How does your discipline help prepare students to live and work in our diverse United States?”  “How does your discipline, specifically, create space for varying and/or conflicting experiences and world views?”  Clarisse began to wonder if the top math and science departments are transforming the curriculum, are economics departments outside of UW doing the same? 

Shortly after James Anderson’s talk Clarisse learned about Oregon State University’s Difference, Power, and Discrimination (DPD) program which “aid[s] faculty in developing classes that address issues of diversity and discrimination not only in society in general but also within their specific disciplines.”  Their presentation at the Washington Center Conference demonstrated that several math and science courses including bioengineering were certified “DPD” courses.  Clarisse wondered: if it was possible for OSU to incorporate issues of diversity into bioengineering, what did the introductory economics courses at Oregon State University look like?  Can we learn something from their example?  Clarisse approached Neil Bruce, Chair of the Department of Economics, with these very questions and he expressed a great deal of interest in exploring some ideas.  Neil offered to be the mentor of Clarisse’s proposed project which looked into the above models in order to investigate ways in which to transform our introductory economics courses. 

Clarisse and Neil envision four tasks to complete as part of the fellowship.  The first task will be to research and investigate ways of transforming the curriculum of introductory economics classes using the models presented by other departments around the country and the resources we have on campus through the Curriculum Transformation project. 

The second task will involve data collection to investigate why the proportion of economics majors who are women has declined over the last ten years in the Economics Department while it has gone up for the Business School.  This part of the fellowship will involve student written surveys as well as faculty and TA interviews in both the Business School and the Department of Economics. 

Using the information from the first two tasks, the third task will be to create a handbook for teaching assistants, TA instructors (lecturers of small, stand-alone courses), and lecturers of large classes, on how to incorporate a variety of cultural experiences into the core curriculum.  This handbook will include a set of learning goals and intended outcomes of introducing new material into the core classes and well as a methods for TAs and instructors to talk about pedagogical styles and differences.  Included would be several in-class examples and/or problem sets designed to allow introductory students of economics recognize and analyze their experiences with diversity within the context of the course.  The intended outcome would be for students to perceive the tools of economic reasoning as practical and useful in a wide range of situations and life experiences.  Each example will include an assessment tool to help instructors see if the intended learning goals were accomplished.   

The fourth task of the fellowship will be to identify 2 or 3 instructors and TAs who would incorporate the contribution to their course in exchange for some feedback and student written surveys on how the experiments impact student understanding of the course material.  Based on student and instructor feedback, Clarisse will revise the supplemental materials and request additional pilot tests. 

Receiving the Huckabay fellowship would give Clarisse Messemer the unique opportunity to apply the resources and experiences she has at CIDR to her own discipline for the purposes of improving her own teaching.  In addition, the fellowship will allow us to contribute to the teaching effectiveness of the UW Department of Economics by incorporating diversity into the curriculum.

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