If the Economics Department chooses to require an integrating senior project for all graduates from our program, we may have a more complete portfolio of student work to document students discipline-specific knowledge. Graduate exit surveys are uniformly positive about the breadth of theoretical and practical information majors received in the economics program. We have just begun the transcript analysis and do not yet have results to report. The university writing competency test has just begun to be implemented. We do not have any significant results from it yet.
Student s writing projects demonstrate a wide range of written communications skills.
Performance on essay exams indicates reasonable competency in short essay skills. Term papers in upper division courses that are designated writing courses show a need for more experience with technical report writing. The development of a required senior project should provide this experience. Our majors get limited experience in formal oral presentations. Our upper division courses are relatively small and students get plenty of opportunity to participate in discussions of the assigned material.