Proficiencies Required for Undergraduates

All UA majors are required to show in their portfolios evidence of meeting the six undergraduate criteria that measure and allow assessment of the proficiency of each student.  This page is required by the Department of Economics to be part of the student's portfolio and is reviewed with the student on an every semester basis by the undergraduate advisor.

Within each category the most current entry represents the students best work for that proficiency. 

Proficiency of Student Name

1. Access existing knowledge

This involves finding credible sources of information on an economic topic or topics. This information could be a written article or book or could be economic data. Credible sources can be found in the library, on the Web and in professional and governmental publications. You would need to know and explain why your sources are credible.

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example:  List title and short description here.
 12/1/2004
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 12/1/2004

2. Display command of existing knowledge

This proficiency involves explaining key economic concepts and showing how they can be used. It is something you do in many essay exams, short papers, analyses, and homework problems. It may also be part of a project or team project or one aspect of a longer paper. Note that it is not just a matter of knowing the concept and how to apply it, but also of being able to explain it clearly in written or verbal form. You also should be able to use a graph effectively as part of the explanations.

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3. Interpret existing knowledge

For this proficiency, you need to be able to explain the economic concepts and models underlying articles in the economic and business press. You should be able to use the articles as a starting place to determine other results or ask other questions. Also, you should be able to identify the assumptions used and evaluate the accuracy of the analysis presented. This type of analysis is often done in short papers or homework assignments or in short group projects.

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4. Interpret and manipulate economic data

Understanding numerical data is in part showing you know what these data measure (like GDP and CPI) and the problems that may exist with the data. You should also be able to graph and to interpret the graphs of data as well as developing charts of data. Since many potential employers are interested in an employee’s ability to use data effectively, the artifact demonstrating this proficiency may be of particular importance. Hansen’s last item representing this proficiency is carrying out and interpreting regression. Regression is the topic of the required course 3250: 426 Applied Econometrics and any of the assignments or papers for this course could be used. Note that interpretation is a very important part of this proficiency.

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5.  The ability to apply existing knowledge

We have been outlining a set of skills, with each level being more advanced and complex that the set before. Proficiency 5 gets to the heart of what you should be able to do by the time you graduate: think like an economist and apply that thinking to all sorts of problems you will find in the real world. Many of your field course assignments, exams and papers would meet this proficiency. Your reflection (see below for more general comments) would be on what is important and distinctive about your economic analysis of the problem.

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6. Develop new knowledge

Normally only the senior project goes here, but students may add entries here as they believe that they have in some measure added new knowledge.

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