The USC Undergraduate Economics Association Draws 100+

At 8pm on a weekday, I'm usually home with my family but last night I participated in our "opening day" of the USC Undergraduate Economics Association.    In my role as Department Chairman, I welcomed the students and encouraged them to use their economics training outside of the classroom and to apply their logic and quant skills to questions that they are passionate about.  I told them that the Nobel Laureate Roger Myerson will be giving an undergraduate lecture on September 14th and I told them that I"m in talks with Amazon's Chief Economist to give a lecture in the next couple of months.  The large audience who attended were quite interested.  I'm grateful that my colleagues Roger Moon and Mark Moore joined me to represent our faculty.

Economics is the largest major in USC Dornsife's college. I expect that our # of majors will grow by 10 to 20% by the time my Chairmanship ends.  Unbounded growth.   When I taught at Columbia 25 years ago, we did the same thing.





Everyone knows that I never give long talks.  I speak for 3 to 5 minutes and then I stop.  The real meat of the group meeting was as student panel discussion where 3 seniors who have been stars in our program explained their life goals and how economics at USC has helped them achieve their goals. They talked about internships, opportunities and life.  As an old guy, I found the event to be inspiring.  There was an optimistic feel to our meeting. Our students are proud to be econ majors. I encouraged the room to send me emails about we can improve the major and what outside of the classroom activities we should be offering.

This is USC.  We are more than football!!