Undergraduate Ancillaries in the Economics Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Student Commitment: An Hour or Two—Here and There

The Carolina Economics Club (CEC) is the oldest student organization in the Economics Department with a membership of about 300 students in Fall 2023. The club provides opportunities to network with peers through enrichment activities such as lectures and panel discussions, resume and interview workshops, alumni career panels, and game nights. The time commitment is one hour per week two to three times a month on a specific day of the week. Membership is open to both economics and non-economics majors. The Club has a faculty advisor, which is required by the University of all registered student organizations. While the Economics Department provides most of the funding for the Club’s activities, registration of the organization allows access to some funding from student activities fees.

The Women in Economics (WIE) group was founded in 2016 to promote diversity within the economics major and to provide a supportive platform for skill development. Open to all students, the group has almost 500 members in the WIE GroupMe, of which 75 were active in the group’s monthly meetings and social outings this past year. Membership requires attendance at two, one-hour academic events and one social event, participation in one mentor/mentee meeting (that pairs first year students with older students), and $5/semester dues. The group is officially registered with the university, there is a faculty advisor, and the Economics Department provides additional funding. WIE hosts networking events with faculty and staff, lectures, panel discussions, course information sessions, and social events such as dinners, game nights, and end-of-year celebrations.

The department hosts a DATA Science Seminar Series as part of our DATA (Data-Acumen-Theory-Application) Science Credential that was established two years ago to provide our economics majors with in-demand data skills with an emphasis on economic applications and the importance of theoretical guidance. In addition to three required courses in coding, econometrics, and machine learning, the seminar series (that is open to all students) brings in two to three speakers each semester to share their experiences in combining data skills with foundational knowledge of economics to frame and solve economic questions using data. Students have interacted with economists and data scientists from Zillow, Airbnb, Indeed.com, WestJet, Volatility Protocol, Voltron Data, Cambly, Teladoc Health, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cox Communications, Booz Allen Hamilton, J.P. Morgan, AlixPartners, Academy Sports, and WebMD.

Student Commitment: Days, Weeks, or Months

Throughout the academic year, the department finances student-initiated Adventures in Economics for our majors. A generous alumni of our program established an “Economics Adventures Fund” five years ago to encourage students to explore their interests in economics beyond the classroom. The only requirement is that the student be able to explain the link between their proposed adventure and an economics subject. Funded adventures have included an interview with the chief operating officer of the Security and Exchange Commission, a visit to the headquarters of Uber, and attendance at conferences ranging from sports analytics to games, decisions, and risk. The funding cannot be used to buy textbooks, pay school fees, fund internships, or finance study abroad.

For four consecutive years, the Economics Department has funded the participation of two students per year at the Sadie T.M. Alexander Conference for Economics and Related Fields (SACE) using our Belonging and Engagement Fund. As their website states, our students meet Black women economists, learn about different career paths for economists, and are exposed to research done by and about Black women and the Black experience. This fund allows us to support a wide range of experiences for students who may be underrepresented in the major and the profession.

Our economics majors are encouraged to participate in the increasingly popular Data Science Competitions. Our department sent a team of eight students and one faculty member to The Econ Games (https://www.theecongames.com) in 2022. Chicago’s Econometric Games is another example. These competitions typically occur over one weekend and require varying degrees of pre-competition preparation.

Since 2014, the Carolina Economics Club and the department jointly host annual Case Competitions to help students prepare for job interviews with consulting firms. In recent years, these competitions, and the cases themselves, have been developed with companies that are prospective employers of UNC graduates. The case competition requires a time commitment of two to three weeks from the kick-off date to the final round. Last year, eight teams of four or five students participated. The teams are required to give an oral presentation in front of a panel of judges and to respond to panelists’ questions. In addition to cash prizes, in some years, the winning team has also qualified for the first round of interviews with the sponsoring company. Participation in this ancillary activity develops teamwork, problem-solving, and presentation skills. Students also have an opportunity to put into practice the analytical skills they have learned in their economics courses.

Student Commitment: Summer

Summer research awards facilitate research experience for our majors. While the department’s Senior Honors Thesis program offers outstanding economics students the opportunity to work closely with an individual faculty member on a specialized research topic of the student’s choice during the senior year, admission to the program is selective and only 15–20 students are invited to participate each year. These traditional research opportunities, including those with a broader reach via capstone courses, are highlighted in a recent Journal of Economics Education symposium (Hoyt & McGoldrick, 2017). To expand research experiences at UNC, we offer funded, faculty-led research opportunities to an additional 10–15 students over the summer months. An economics major may apply, in a competitive process, as an individual or with a partner (as a pair) to develop and implement a research plan on an economic issue of their choosing. The students work with a faculty advisor (who receives $1000 per pair supervised) over the summer and submit a brief research paper suitable for circulation among faculty in September. Last year, each student researcher received $4000 upon completion of the final project. Our program is donor funded. We provide an archive of these research papers on our departmental website.

Student Commitment: Semester or Academic Calendar Year

The Economics Department was instrumental in the creation of the now College-wide Undergraduate Learning Assistant (ULA) program. Started in 2014, this highly successful program has provided classroom support to instructors and peer tutoring to students. Additionally, those serving as ULAs have reported the experience as one of the most useful and enjoyable extra-curricular activities during their time on campus. The benefits to student ULAs include development of collaborative problem-solving skills and effective communication of ideas among members in the peer group (Otero et al., 2010). Over the last five years, an average of 43 students per semester have served as ULAs in Introductory Economics, Intermediate Microeconomics, Intermediate Macroeconomics, Econometrics, and some elective courses. Students receive academic credit for participation and are required to enroll in a ULA preparatory course taught by a faculty member. In addition to strong grades, effective ULAs demonstrate skills in problem-solving, organization, and presentation. ULAs are present in a course throughout the semester and work closely with the instructor to facilitate active learning strategies in the classroom.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) began hosting an annual FDIC Academic Challenge in 2020–21. ² Each year, the FDIC releases a broad research question and supplies data for the competition. For example, the research prompt for 2022–23 was “The Impacts of Higher Interest Rates on the Banking Sector. Students are provided data on bank variables such as deposits, assets, and different types of loans, as well as macroeconomic data such as unemployment rate, inflation rate, interest rate, and personal income, and other types of data that vary by year. This “big data” exercise requires a range of skills from simple data analysis and visualization to more advanced techniques such as panel data regressions. The teams are fielded early in the academic year and meet regularly (once or twice a week) with a faculty advisor over two to three months in the fall semester. If a team qualifies for the final round, these regular meetings extend for two months into the spring semester. In 2022–23, faculty from our department mentored a total of six teams consisting of five members and one or two alternates. The Economics Department supported the teams and their advisor(s) by providing food during training, research, and practice sessions. The FDIC paid all travel and accommodation expenses for the teams advancing to the final round. UNC has been a finalist (top five in the country) for the past three years of the competition. The specific skills used in this competition are data analysis, research, teamwork, and presentation (Stone, 2023). As discussed by Stone, the competition also provides scope for addressing equity as well as efficiency by, for example, exploring experiences in unbanked and underbanked areas.

UNC’s participation in the Federal Reserve Challenge (Fed Challenge) began 15 years ago and was amplified by our Quantitative Financial Economics (QFE) credential, which launched in 2016. Students pursuing the credential—a three-course sequence providing the theoretical knowledge of financial markets and the practical experience of financial-market transactions—embraced this national competition (organized and led by the Federal Reserve Board) as their own challenge. The UNC teams—consisting of both QFE students and non-QFE-affiliated economics majors—have consistently performed well in competitions. We structure this ancillary activity in a way that accommodates all students who want to participate. While the presentation team consists of five students and two alternates, a research team with unlimited student participation supports the presentation team in data collection, presentation development, and research. Preparation for and participation in this very popular activity promotes cooperative learning (Bansak & Smith, 2015). They find that students who participate in the Fed Challenge “learn more economics, enjoy learning more, and develop skills transferable to the workplace”. At UNC, the Fed Challenge participants are advised by a faculty member and meet weekly throughout the academic year. In the fall semester, the team prepares for the annual competition run, which includes local and regional events to qualify for the national competition; in the spring semester, the club holds in-house competitions to prepare for the next year. Economics and non-economics majors may participate in the Fed Challenge. While many universities offer their Fed Challenge experience as ancillaries, a few have also structured it as an academic course (Gulley & Jackson, 2015).

Table 1 summarizes important details of the different ancillaries in the Economics Department at UNC. As the table indicates, we offer opportunities for students with varied interests and with different levels of time commitment.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Ancillary Participation, Skills, and Time Commitment, 2022–2023.

Ancillary	Student participation per event	Benefits	Time commitment of students	Faculty/Staff roles (and time commitment)
Carolina Economics Club	30 to 50	Belonging, networking	1 or 2 hours/event; 3–6 events/sem	Faculty oversight (5 hours/month)
Women In Economics	30 to 75	Belonging, networking	1 or 2 hours/event; 3–6 events/sem	Faculty oversight (2–3 hours/month)
DATA Science Seminar series	40 to 50	Application, exposure	1 hour/event; 3 events/sem	Faculty inviting/hosting speaker (2 hours/event)
Data science competition	4 to 8	Data analysis, research, teamwork, presentation	2 full days	Faculty advising (2 days/event)
Conference attendance	2	Belonging, networking, exposure	2 to 3 full days	Staff accounting support (1 hour/event)
Adventures in Economics	5	Exposure	2 to 5 full days	Staff accounting support (1 hour/event)
Case competition	34	Analysis, problem-solving, teamwork, presentation	2–3 weeks; 2 hours/day	Faculty organizing; staff support (8–10 hours)
Summer research	10	Research, analysis, writing	3 months	Faculty advising; staff accounting support (4–5 hours/month)
Undergraduate Learning Assistance	40 to 80	Teaching, problem-solving, teamwork	1 semester	Faculty instruction and mentoring (1–2 hours/week)
FDIC Academic Challenge	45	Data analysis, research, teamwork, presentation	1 to 2 semesters	Faculty advising (5–6 hours/month)
Federal Reserve Challenge	30	Research, analysis, teamwork, presentation	2 semesters	Faculty advising (5–6 hours/month)