Hua Chen,an attorney in intellectual property law, participated in the Arizona state Economics Challenge competition in 2004 while attending University High in Tucson.
Hua remembered her experience around the Arizona Economics Challenge fondly. She said “Our team at University High won the state championship and a mix of the top performers from the boys' team and girls' team went on to the national competition. We celebrated the winning with a trip to In-N-Out. The franchise played a bit of an important role in our economics class with Ms. Gray regarding efficiency and marginal costs. So we did our best to observe the efficiency of the business.”
When asked about how economic education has made a difference in her life, Hua said “I think economics made me more rational and reminded me to think from different perspectives and at difference levels. Economiceducation with Ms. Gray has taught me to be more methodical about my decision making process. In a way, Economics helped create a personal decision tree for life.” Hua’s education and professional decisions have certainly been very methodical. She had to sort throughthe financial and academic choices when faced college decisions. She finally chose Wellesley College and graduated in the middle of the 2008-2009 great recession with a major in Biological Sciences. Considering the economic landscape and future job prospects along with her education, she enrolled in the Physiological Science graduate program at University of Arizona and later on completed her J.D. law degree at ArizonaState University.
Hua said her economics and personal finance education certainly helped her to understand the causes, depth and breadth of the last great recession and guided her to make the best decision in that situation. This is not a surprise to us as our students from elementary school to high school learn the PACED decisionmodel to guide them through the decisions and choices in life.
Hua advises that every student must take an economics and personal finance class because it is a subject that is closest to real life and will help them make informed decisions as students, employees, entrepreneurs, parents and citizens in the future. No matter what they end up doing later on in life, economics and personal finance knowledge will be an important foundation to their success.
Today economics is a required course with academic standards applicable from Kindergarten level to 12th grade. Every student has an opportunity like Hua to sharpen their mind, look at the world differently and solve problems.