Economics Senior Seminar

The Economics Senior Seminar is the capstone course in economics and is taught every fall. Students are given various assignments throughout the semester (topic proposal, outline, annotated bibliography, presentations) as steps toward their final assignment, an original research paper.

As liaison to the Economics Department, I work closely with the class (taught by Mike Seeborg). At the beginning of the semester I meet with the class and talk about what resources they are likely to find the most helpful and some of the challenges and issues they may face in conducting their research. The final paper requires a significant literature search and the use of datasets, which can be difficult to locate, access, and download. I encourage students to meet with me individually to talk about their projects and I work with them to locate needed resources and to troubleshoot problems in locating and accessing data. Often there is overlap among different students regarding resources they might find useful and/or problems they encounter and ways to solve these problems (especially with accessing datasets).

This fall there are two sessions of the senior seminar class. I’ve decided that using a blog might prove helpful as a way to communicate resources and to share problem-solving strategies. My hope is that students will not only post questions and concerns, but also share what they learn – such as good search techniques, resources, or ways to solve the challenges inherent in finding usable and relevant datasets. Thus, they will learn from each other in addition to any insight I can provide. This blog will also serve as an archive and this information will be beneficial to have for other economics classes (such as econometrics) and for future senior seminars.