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Economics and Business Department

Six Year Assessment Plan

1.Executive Summary...... 3

2.Mission and Role of Economics & Business with the College ...... 8

3.Basic Statistical Information, Discussion and Analysis ...... 10

4.Programs...... 18

A. Student Life Outcomes ...... 18

B. Assessment of Outcomes ...... 27

C. Conclusions...... 35

5. General Education and Services Courses ...... 36

6. Resources...... 41

A. Financial ...... 41

B. Program ...... 42

7. Conclusion and Long-Term Vision ...... 44

8. Appendix...... 52

A. Chart 1: Profile of Full-Time Faculty and Instructional Load ...... 52

B. Chart 2: Profile of Part-Time Faculty and Instructional Load ...... 54

C. Chart 3: Graduating Seniors ...... 56

D. Faculty Curricula Vitae, Reports on Sabbatical and Professional

Development Grants (plus Individual Development Plans)...... 57

1. Executive Summary

  1. Mission Statement and Outcomes

The Economics and Business (EB) department remains committed to developing students who can think critically, problem-solve, and engage in original research, all from a decidedly Christian perspective. While the existing curriculum provides an excellent balance of quantitative rigor with qualitative inference, interpretation and application to real world scenarios, the department has embarked on an ambitious journey to take the curriculum to a heightened level by better integrating both faith and formal coursework with praxis at the intersection of theory, research and application. The vision of this “next step” is to further develop an innovative curriculum built on academic-praxis process flow that will carry over directly into students’ post-collegiate professional development, graduate school and continued lifelong learning. We envision creating five informal tracks of work for undergraduate studies of economics and business within a traditional liberal arts/integrative endeavor.

We identify three specific student-learning outcomes:

  1. Students will demonstrate active intellectual engagement in and application of particular educational activities in the Economics and Business curriculum.

2.Students will demonstrate understanding of the research process and appropriate application of various technologies and research methods in particular educational activities in the Economics and Business curriculum.

3.Students will demonstrate strong writing and oral communication skills in particular educational activities in the Economics and Business curriculum.

B. Alignment Matrix (Chart 4)

Goal #1 / Students will be actively engaged intellectually through an understanding of the significance and complexity of particular economic and business processes and policies.
Specific Learning Outcomes / Students will demonstrate active intellectual engagement in and application of particular educational activities in the Economics and Business curriculum:
  1. Become competent in applying key economic principles (identified in Appendix E) to various economic policy debates.

  1. Write research/opinion/review papers or do an oral report or debate on controversial business decisions or economic policy issues.

  1. Write papers commenting on the interaction between a Christian mindset and corporate social responsibility.

  1. Do briefing reports discussing presentations by guest speakers.

  1. Participate in launching companies in Haiti or in a field trip and briefing at the corporate headquarters of World Vision International, the world's largest relief and development organization, and a model of effective Christian ministry.

Where are these learning outcomes achieved? / I: EB 11, 12
D: EB 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 120, 135, 137, 138, 180, 184, 191
M: EB 195
Assessment Procedures / Classroom tests, application of evaluation rubric to classroom papers and presentations, departmental economics field exam administered in the Senior Seminar, alumni surveys.
Benchmark / Class average of 70% on field exam; number of students accepted into a nationally recognized graduate institution, number of business planning teams competing at a high level among regional schools
College-Wide Learning Standards / Active Societal and Intellectual Engagement; Critical Inter-Disciplinary Thinking
Goal #2 / Students will demonstrate understanding of the research process and be able to apply what is learned to real life situations
Specific Learning Outcomes / Students will demonstrate understanding of the research process and appropriate application of various technologies and research methods in the following activities in the Economics and Business curriculum:
  1. Use the RAD (introduction, methods, results, abstract, discussion) format for literature correctly in their presentations and papers.

  1. Develop the question posed in their presentation through a survey of the relevant background literature.

  1. Provide a more formal “Research Rationale” for projects, writing assignments, and oral presentations that include outside research sources and methodologies.

  1. Produce papers/presentations demonstrating the role of quantitative or qualitative student research, including the “Conclusion”, “Inferences”, and “Ideas for Further Research” sections of student work.

  1. Able to appropriately cite sources and provide complete bibliographic information.

  1. Able to use technology effectively in oral presentations.

Where are these learning outcomes achieved? / I: EB 017
D: EB 18
M: EB 103, 131, 132, 135, 138, 184, 192
Assessment Procedures / Application of evaluation rubric to student research projects, alumni surveys.
Benchmark / 100% of average students’ work meets all criteria.
College-Wide Learning Standards / Critical-Interdisciplinary Thinking, Research and Technology
Goal #3 / Students will demonstrate strong writing and oral communication skills in economics and business.
Specific Learning Outcomes / Students will demonstrate strong writing and oral communication skills in the following activities in the Economics and Business curriculum:
  1. Students will demonstrate a well-defined process in presenting written and oral arguments on a wide range of issues within the various fields of economics and business, and to be able to draw upon a decidedly interdisciplinary perspective

  1. Students will produce excellent research papers, business plan presentations, oral debates, role-play, book reviews, news summaries, and executive summaries of longer reports.

Where are these learning outcomes achieved? / I: EB 11, 12, 17, 18
D: EB 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 120, 131, 132, 135, 137, 138, 140, 160, 180, 184, 191, 192
M: EB 195
Assessment Procedures / Application of evaluation rubric to student papers and presentations as measured by evaluation rubric, student performance in Senior Seminar.
Benchmark / 100% of average students’ work meets all criteria.
College-Wide Learning Standards / Written and Oral Communication
  1. Notable Findings

1. Our students learn in the classroom and apply that learning throughout the world. The Economics and Business(EB) department provides a strong foundation of economic analysis combined with novel application to business practice and entrepreneurial innovation. Assessment of senior students indicates understanding of economic theoretical constructs and stellar performance as indicated by:(i) the on-going creation of six to eight new businesses each year in Port de Paix, Haiti that were created by our students in the classroom and implemented on the ground in Haiti to better the lives of the recipients; (ii) the creation and dissemination annually of six business plans focused specifically on addressing many of the world’s greatest needs, then the plans are given away to our ministry partners and are partially or wholly implemented; and (iii) an alumni survey that indicates more than 25% of our students have pursued graduate programs, many of them at the very finest business and law schools in the world, including Harvard, Oxford, USC, UCLA and Cal-Berkeley, among others. Please see for more information.

We would like to increasethe percentage of students pursuing graduate degrees across the fields of economics, law, international development, business, entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship and other business related fields. Specifically, we would like to see more graduates pursuing explicitly serving professions such as economic development, international law and justice, and entrepreneurship within the context of serving the poor.

2. We are under-staffed to appropriately serve our students though have been aggressively pursuing a remedy. Direct evidence provided by current faculty student-teaching ratios and advising loads, and indirect evidence provided through an alumni survey and comparative data from peer institutions, demonstrates that the EB department is understaffed by relying on three full-time faculty and several part-time faculty. The department will be optimized when we do the following: (i) secure a fourth full-time faculty member to replace the vacated position; (ii) hire a fifth full-time faculty member; and (iii) significantly increase the number of Adjunct Professors to ten. This 5 full-time, 10 part-time approach is necessary for the department to move forward in providing a full complement of courses in its curriculum and to create systematic opportunities for EB students to apply their learning, research and analysis to engage the world via direct application. Further, we desire to engage more fully in faculty-student research in the coming years so it is incumbent up on us to be fully staffed.

  1. Next Steps

While the existing lower division and upper division curriculum afford numerous opportunities to further develop those quantitative and qualitative competencies, the EB department wants to transform the 4-year baccalaureate with more integrative experiences, particularly for the upper classmen and women so that their transition from collegiate life directly into the marketplace or to graduate school is optimized. Over the past two years, the EB department has implemented several material events, including but not limited to the following:

  1. Created the Eaton Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation;
  2. Hired Rick Ifland ’83 (M.St. International Law, Oxford) to direct the Eaton Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation;
  3. Hired Enrico Manlapig (Ph.D., Columbia) to provide leadership on the quantitative/analysis side of Business and to enhance the work on the Economics side led by Drs. Edd Noell and Paul Morgan;
  4. Created or re-purposed four new classes to enhance the learning opportunities for our students (EB-107 Business at the Bottom of the Pyramid (includes launching companies in Haiti over Spring Break), EB 130 Financial Statement Analysis (showing students how CFO’s of publicly-traded company’s can manipulate numbers and thereby manipulate stock prices), EB 140 Executive Leadership (co-taught with President Beebe and making this course a regular mainstay of our curriculum), and re-purposing EB 191 Entrepreneurship and New Venture Development (to write business plans that meet the deepest needs of the world);
  5. Offered a choice for students to select between Business Research and Forecasting or Corporate Financial Management as precursors to the intermediate economics classes;
  6. Engaged Adjunct Professor Coby Harmon (CPA, UCSB) to deepen his teaching commitment at Westmont (formerly at 2/2 or 2/1 and currently at 3/3) and to create a more robust pathway to the CPA exam via our Accounting classes;
  7. Engaged Adjunct Professor Jim Morouse (USC, Wharton) to deepen his teaching commitment to at least one course per semester (formerly sporadic at 0/0, 0/1 or 1/0 and currently at 1/1);
  8. Continued to engage in the International Business Institute via Edd Noell’s participation in China and India;
  9. Continued to hire two female Adjunct Professors, Heather Rupp (Investments) and Megan Stichter (Accounting) to provide some diversity for our female students; and
  10. Created 5 informal “Tracks of Work” that each student can pursue, including 1) Economics; 2) Entrepreneurship and Innovation; 3) Management and Marketing; 4) Law; and 5) Accounting and Finance. While this is not a requirement, it does offer students the ability during the selection process of their upper division electives to weight one discipline over the others as they prepare for graduate school or the marketplace.

Over the next three years, we plan to continue this positive momentum by:

  1. Actively participating in Westmont Downtown and the Center for Social Entrepreeurship, its core course and some EB electives, all of which would be taught or co-taught by our EB professors at a Westmont location downtown. This new program will to provide a more solid bridge to the marketplace, deepen our relationships with local alums and business people, and better equip students for life beyond graduation, whether in the marketplace or in graduate school.
  2. Increasing the new classes being offered, including but not limited to Game Theory, an additional Management course, an additional Marketing courses, and two new Entrepreneurship and Innovation courses.
  3. Introducing a Mentoring program whereby each declared EB major is paired with an EB alum or local businessperson for regular and frequent informal and formal one-on-one engagement.
  4. Formal programmatic research projects based at the new Westmont Downtown center will further develop student competencies and provide more standardized research-based student learning outcomes for assessment.
  5. Continuing the positive momentum at the Eaton Center by offering additional classes, guest speakers and access to the marketplace.

As a starting point, the current program goals parallel the college-wide learning standards of: (i) active societal and intellectual engagement, (ii) written and oral communication, and (iii) demonstrated proficiency with original research and the technologies that facilitate such inquiry. These will be further enhanced with a robust downtown program, and an increasingly active Eaton Center, allowing studentsto more effectively connect their courses with the tangible outcomes of applying their knowledge to issue-based research.

It is crucial that the EB department first replace its existing 4th full-time faculty position (currently underway) and then move to adding a long overdue 5th full-time faculty position in order to establish the requisite minimum full-time faculty line-up to effectively support a high quality academic program for on average 175-200 students in the major. When EB minors are factored in, and when upper division electives are offered to other majors, the EB department touches approximately 20% of the entire student body. Those full-time hires should be supplemented by additional Adjuncts.

Parallel to this two-part faculty hiring process, the new Eaton Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation will be formally funded and launched to include applied coursework, formal joint research with student peers and faculty, internship/practicum work experience in a related field (located downtown beginning Fall 2015), a re-engineered integrative senior seminar, and additional course offerings to apply the theoretical learning in the classroom. EB-107, Business at the Bottom of the Pyramid, and a re-purposed EB-191, Entrepreneurship and New Venture Development, are examples of this applied learning.

This innovative approach will more clearly and specifically define how the liberal arts translate into original problem-solving and managerial decision making in economics and business settings. This has the potential to significantly enhance the undergrad learning process by directly/programmatically linking the first two years of courses with an experiential final two years exploring all kinds of connections between collegiate studies and working in the marketplace and/or pursuing graduate studies after Westmont.

2. Mission and Role of Economics & Business with the College

A. Departmental Mission and Contribution to the College Mission

The Economics and Business Department’s mission statement reads as follows: The Economics and Business department equips students to serve and lead in dynamic settings, with a major that is distinctively broad – integrating the essential components of economics and business, and challenging students to address contemporary economics and business issues with critical thinking, personal conviction, and a Christian perspective.

How does our departmental program’s mission and activities relate to the mission of Westmont College? Consider the Westmont College Mission Statement: “Westmont College is an undergraduate residential Christian liberal arts community serving God’s kingdom by cultivating thoughtful scholars, grateful servants, and faithful leaders for global engagement with the academy, church, and world.”As applied to our department, we interpret this statement to mean that we have a vision for our students’ development that grows in knowledge, competencies, Christian character, engagement with their world and service to it, and faithfulness to God. The Economics and Business Department is responsible for working toward these ends as we engage students in the study of social life. Our program challenges them to be careful and reflective as they make use of the great power of the economic way of thinking in application to a wide spectrum of social issues while at the same time recognizing its limitations.

Economics particularly draws on the methods of a range of disciplines, including other social sciences and the natural sciences. Students are challenged to think carefully about their role as stewards of God’s resources and their responsibility towards God’s creation. We call on students to be faithful stewards of the gifts they’ve received from God and to think carefully about the ways God might be leading them to minister to others, whether in the business world or non-profit sector. Most all of our courses place them in a position of leading a class discussion, group project, or community service effort off campus in Santa Barbara and around the world.

In general, as students study economics and business at Westmont, they have opportunities to grow in all of the areas defined by the College’s six student-learning standards. They begin developing the competencies of social science scholars in research through papers on economics and business policy issues and develop skills in the use of technology in speaking and writing (Writing and Oral Communication and Research and Technology). Students engage questions that are both complex and controversial, and work through debates in economics regarding the role of race and gender in society (Critical-Interdisciplinary Thinking and Diversity). They are challenged to address a number of current ethical issues and social problems that arise from or are impacted by investigation into the realms of economics and business and by reflection on their responsibility to act in their private capacity to contribute to society’s betterment (Active Societal and Intellectual Engagement). We challenge our students through reflections on readings, written assignments and class discussion to think through the implications of Christian values and their meaning for a Christian businessperson in specific areas of economics and business. These include but are not limited to the following: a) the dignity of labor and the proper treatment of employees; b) the use and possible abuse of wealth; c) the responsibility to minster to the poor and marginalized; d) the handling of debt and the burdens of indebtedness; e), the role of God stewards as caretakers of the environment; and g) the Christian’s imperative to reach out to others different from ourselves in race, ethnicity, and other ways by engaging the diversity of the business world.