Department Facts

Key Allegheny Benefits

  • Excellent foundation for graduate study in a wide variety of fields: law, business, economics, government.
  • A solid grounding in a lifetime’s knowledge of America’s place in the world economy, its policy issues, and complex social and economic problems.
  • Analytical and reasoning skills developed through such quantitative methods as statistics and models and their applications.
  • Effective oral and written communication skills, developed in seminar-style classes and independent research.

Allegheny Distinctions

  • One of the few undergraduate liberal arts programs to offer a special emphasis in Business Economics: finance, accounting, and much more.
  • Close interaction with faculty: in seminars, during Senior Project research, and through research assistantships.
  • Balance of theory and application in curriculum: opportunity to study business economics (finance and accounting) in a liberal arts framework.
  • Practical ‘hands-on’ experience through internships and study tours (see Experiential Learning).
  • Both mainstream and alternative approaches to economics presented in courses representing a broad range of economic areas.
  • Small classes, especially in quantitative areas.
  • Independent research skills, developed through Junior Seminar and Senior Projects, demonstrating to employers and graduate schools the ability to complete a major original assignment.
  • Since 1920, the Department has ranked in the top 12% among private, undergraduate institutions in production of eventual Ph.D.s in economics.
  • Cutting edge, technology-based learning in the new Robert Maytum Computer Lab.

Endorsements

  • “Senior level courses I took at Allegheny have prepared me very well for my first year in graduate school.” – graduate student, University of Illinois
  • “When it came time to interview [for graduate school] in my senior year, I was confident. The academic environment was intense, with many students on the graduate school track, and I enjoyed that.”- Kevin Baird ’84, vice president, Federal-Mogul Corp.

Facilities Strengths

  • Computers: a departmental lab operates on a “student clock” and is open evenings and weekends. It provides various statistical, business, and word processing software on powerful machines, printers and plotters.
  • “Smart classroom”: a new networked classroom enables instructors to integrate traditional teaching methods with new technological advances in the economics field.

Student Research and Special Projects

Every Alleghenian completes a Senior Project in his or her major field-a significant piece of original work, designed by each student and a faculty advisor, which proves to employers and graduate schools the ability to complete a major assignment, to work independently, to analyze and synthesize information and to write and speak persuasively.

Recent Senior Projects

  • “The Carbonated Soft Drink Industry – A Case Study”
  • “Decision-making Under Risk and Uncertainty and a Defense of Graham and Dodd”
  • “A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of U.S. Life Insurance Companies, 1960 to 1990”
  • “Incentives to Interest Rate Capitalization in International Debt Rescheduling”
  • “An Exploration of Portfolio Insurance”