The financial crisis has been puzzling to many attempting to understand it-and students in Duke's economics classes are no exception.
Professor of Economics Lori Leachman, who teaches Principles of Economics, has been integrating the current financial crisis into class discussion to give students better insight into recent events.
"I took one whole day of lecture on this crisis. We did a discussion and put it in historical context with the elimination of the Glass-Steagall Act and all the deregulation that's essentially led up to this," she said. "I'm not testing them on it-I just took a day and gave a lecture on it because I felt like this is something they need to know because it's real."
Part of professors' motives for taking time during class to discuss the crisis is student interest. Gale Boyd, a research scholar in the department of economics who will be teaching an economic research class in the Spring, plans to integrate the financial crisis because he feels students will want to learn about it.
"I'm planning to talk mostly about work I've done in the energy and environmental areas, but I expect that discussion will center around this crisis, particularly since the interests of the students are centered around the finance sector," he said.
Freshman Jenna Gates, a student in Leachman's class, said she appreciates that professors have adapted their classes because it helps her understand current events.
"I was talking to an adult the other day... [who] was really interested in the economic crisis, and honestly, if I wasn't taking this class, I would have no idea what was going on," she said. "So it's really educational and I'm really glad I'm able to understand what's going on in the markets."
Major news and current events are often incorporated into academic discussion. In October, President Richard Brodhead hosted the first-ever President's Forum on Critical Issues, gathering five professors for a conversation on the financial downturn.
For Leachman, the change has been rewarding, because including the context of the crisis has generated lively discussion.
"It's just made it a lot more fun to teach. Usually for this class, I don't get any questions in the first few weeks.... [But] from the very beginning, these students were very engaged and they were asking questions," she said.
But because economics is a field rich with developing examples, professors said they do not expect to feature tools for analysis of the financial crisis in their future classes.
"I've thought about changing my syllabus in Intermediate Macro to talk about models of crises and bank runs... but the models are challenging and it would take several classes to talk about them," Professor of Economics Craig Burnside said. "The question then becomes whether that material would have more value than the normal material we do in macro. I am still not sure about that."
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