One of the goals of a college or university is to create a "culture of learning." While that phrase can be intrepreted to mean a number of different things, for me it has always meant fostering and nurturing the love of learning -- transferring the excitement that goes along with understanding and appreciating the subtleties, elegance, and power of difficult and complex concepts and theories. Seeing the "lightbulb" go on in students is the most satisfying aspect of teaching. The ultimate challenge for students is whether they can apply their newly found knowledge to new and different situations and come up with useful and appropriate answers and insights. While knowledge for knowledge's sake is sometimes sufficient, how much better it is to obtain knowledge that can be applied to situations and problems that are relevant to our lives.

My teaching goals are:

• to create a sense of excitement about economics
• to motivate students towards life-long learning as a way of life
• to show the interrelationships that exist among economics and other disciplines
• to develop within students an ability to learn and do research on an independent basis
• to have students gain an appreciation of the "Economic Way of Thinking"
• to show students how relevant economics is to their lives
• to provide students with a set of analytical tools that can be used to address a variety of different problems/situations
• to integrate computers and the internet into the content and methods of my classes
• to explore the ethical aspects of economic issues