Prof Profile: Stéphanie Lluis

Contact info: 

Office: Hagey Hall 239 

Phone: 519-888-4567, ext. 32960 

Email: slluis@uwaterloo.ca

The following is a paraphrased account of the interview with Professor Stéphanie Lluis.

What courses do you teach?

Currently 321 introduction to econometrics and 487 topics in labour economics

What do you enjoy most about teaching?

I like to keep learning things and for me having to prepare my classes by trying to update things - it's closer to being a student.  I would like to be a student for longer and it's one way.

What do you think students struggle the most with?

For 321 econometrics at least, it requires regular studying and from the very beginning and potentially being different from other courses especially because prerequisites might have been taken a while ago so I've noticed students struggle to catch up.  I try to give students exercises.  They have to realize the gaps in their knowledge and try to fill them quickly.

For the topics course 487, I've put in prereqs such as the basics of econometrics.  Students have to be ready to view things in a formal way, meaning that there is math involved instead of just graphs such as maximizing profits.  Anybody can take this course, I only require 301 and 321 that teach the technical tools required, it could be their first exposure to a labour experience.

What topics are the hardest to understand for students? why do you think that is?

Whenever you become more abstract. Students get the idea if its current events or in the news they can relate.  As we move away from current events which is very contextual to a more abstract concept to analyze a problem at a higher level such as mechanisms behind ideas or the assumptions, students have a harder time understanding why we do this and what it is.  Also, reasoning in terms of functions and in statistics its distributions - it is harder.  You have to step back and understand the bigger picture, there has to be some motivation for the whole thing and sometimes you have to wait.

What do you think most students don’t know but should?

Coming from France it was different, it was courses everyday all day long so when I came here, only 3 hours a week per class, it was like a holiday!  When I came to North America, it took me a while to realize that for one course it's 3 hours a week in class but 9 hours in your week to study on your own.  For example, 4 courses is 12 hours a week plus the 36 hours outside of class fills your week, clearly.  You have to do it on your own, I have the impression that students sometimes overlook that part.  What we do in class gives you the basics and explains the more tricky parts but there are so many other things you can get from the textbook or from the notes or exercises that we don’t have time to do in class.  You can't do everything in class.  If students need more they have to ask me for more.  Of course its a question of interest, as well.  In the topics course I would expect students to be more interested. Some students have 90s.  I am confident that students that are getting good grades are interested.

It comes back regularly that students don’t know how much math there’s going to be.  There's going to be a lot of math involved in 3rd and 4th year.  I would recommend taking courses in sequence, try to put courses together otherwise if there is a semester or two in between clearly we forget things.  If they are too far away from each other it might affect your grade in the later courses.  I know students pick harder courses so it won’t hurt their GPA, it's strategic and I understand but the counterpart to that is you may be taking courses too far apart.

What is a book that you recommend all aspiring labour economists read?

I would definitely say if you have extra time which you should (*chuckles*) blogs are interesting to follow like Marginal Revolution or Freakonomics; Mankiw has a good one.  Borjas talks about immigration issues that are interesting. For books, I actually was given for my birthday Le Capital by Marx which every economics student should eventually read.  But I reread it in a different way which might be more appealing to students, the manga.

http://borjas.typepad.com/the_borjas_blog/

http://marginalrevolution.com/

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.ca/

http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/

Le Capital Manga

What are some interesting research questions in your area of expertise that undergraduates can investigate as a senior essay research topic?

Many things have been done, a lot of it has been done in the US but not with Canadian Data.  Such as what the minimum wage's on effect on different labour market outcomes such as employment duration and employment rate but there are other interesting questions.  The minimum wage even though only effects a smaller population, it's interesting to students because its them but also has an effect on the rest of the economy.

How individuals use their time would be of interest to students (in terms of leisure labour choices).  Sometimes its old data, that's the problem.  Like for trends its the best is the Labour Force Survey (LFS), which is done every year.  I have had some students download it every year and do trends in labour such as discrimination with regards to immigrants, gender wage gap, choices of occupation, and why they make different choices. And we have access to that through the library.

Prof Profile: Corey Van de Waal

Contact Info:
Office: Hagey Hall 213

Phone: 519-888-4567, ext. 32463
Email: chvandew@uwaterloo.ca

What courses do you teach?

I teach all of the micro courses so 101, 201 and 301.

What do you think is the most difficult for students and why?

Probably, 301 because of the mathematical component to it.

What do you think would be a good topic for an honours essay thesis?

Many of the topics I’ve seen have to do with labour economics when I supervise 472 papers. A lot of them have to do with income distribution, some have to do with educational attainment, a lot of minimum wage theory that kind of stuff. Any topic really, that interests you or gets you excited is appropriate. Usually something in line with your supervisors interests in terms of they are doing research in what you are interested in so they have some insight and unique advice that they could give you.

What book do you think all economics students should read?

It’s not even an economics book really, Moneyball is actually quite a good book. I find it interesting in that what it does is it finds a situation where there is an outlier and how you can exploit that to your benefit in certain markets. Another really good book and in particular this author is really good is Malcolm Gladwell. He’s written Outliers, What the Dog Saw and Tipping Point.

What do you think most students don’t know but they should?

Wow, where do I begin? I guess, understanding rational behavior, something so fundamental as rational behavior for the consumer. I think there is some confusion, even into third year, with the idea what a real consumer equilibrium represents. Yeah, I think that’s the most fundamental thing.

Have you had any memorable stories in your teaching career?

Oh God yeah. So many that it is very difficult to pick one out. If I were to pick one out, the first time I taught intro micro I told a story in class about when I was a grad student in the context of an inferior good I give an example that when I was a student you know you don’t have a lot of money so you eat things like Kraft Dinner or in my case dusty noodles, these noodles cups with a pack of dust you pour on it and boil some water, that sort of thing and at the end of that term I had numerous students come to me with packages of dusty noodles. That one was kind of funny but there have been may over the years. In the 6 years I’ve been teaching there’s probably 20 good, funny stories.

What do you enjoy most about teaching?

Just the reaction from the students. I tend to get a fairly positive reaction from the students. It’s interesting to see how they respond to my style of teaching; I’m a little bit laid back and I try to make as many jokes as possible. I try and keep things light and keep that atmosphere in the classroom. So the part I enjoy most is the interaction and feedback I get from students. 

Prof Profile: Dinghai Xu

Contact info:
Office: Hagey Hall 201
Phone: 519-888-4567 ext. 32047
E-mail:  dhxu@uwaterloo.ca

What follows is a paraphrased interview with Professor Xu

What courses do you teach?

ECON 421 Econometrics currently and ECON 405 Quantitative Finance, 422 Topics in Econometrics in the past.

What do you enjoy most about teaching?

Connecting with students.  Small class sizes allow for better student engagement.  It’s easier for students to ask questions in a smaller class.  Jokes also relax the atmosphere and create a more casual and relaxed learning environment.  It also helps with retaining student attention because in larger classes some students can become disinterested and get away with surfing the internet or playing games.

What topics are the hardest to understand for students? why do you think that is?

The foundations required in advanced econometric theory: matrix algebra, calculus (derivatives and integrals) and probability theory.  Students should have a concrete understanding of these topics before taking a course like 421 or 422.  The topics students struggle with most are Maximum Likelihood Estimation because of uncertainties with the foundations.

Students also have difficulty with grasping the theory without examples.  Students always ask for examples but the theory is general enough that it can easily fit many situations.  It can be applied to all areas such as health, labour, financial econometrics and more.  Understanding the theory and what’s inside the black box of regressions is very important for an undergraduate student interested in graduate studies in economics.

What is a book that you recommend all aspiring econometricians read?

For students seriously considering graduate studies and taking advanced econometrics courses there are a few introductory textbooks available in many editions at the library

Econometrics Analysis by W. H. Greene.

Time Series Analysis by J. D. Hamilton.

What are some interesting research questions in your area of expertise that undergraduates can investigate as a senior essay research topic?

Some topics are distributional considerations for time series data (such as stock returns, foreign exchange rates, indices...); Monte Carlo methods in time series analysis; comparisons across estimation methods for time series just to list a few.

Prof Profile: Larry Smith

Contact info: 

Office: Hagey Hall 146
Phone: 519-888-4567 ext. 32647
E-mail:  lwsmith@uwaterloo.ca

What courses do you teach?

Presently just the macro and micro courses so the 101 and 102 in the past I have also taught the principles of entrepreneurship but I don’t do that anymore the time demands are just too great. I do have teaching responsibilities with other faculties. I am a guest prof in the school of architecture currently I have also been a graduate prof in the faculty of environment. I also serve as a project supervisor both here in the department and elsewhere in the university.

What do you think students struggle most with?

They struggle with a number of things. Most of them are just adjustment issues and those are to be expected. I think, just based on the conversations I have had with many many students, I have after all taught 10% of the alumni of this institution, That is a lot of people and a lot of conversations. I think the thing they have the most trouble with is finding their passion. The number of students who don’t know what they want to do when they grow up is really quite startling. Not a big problem when you are 11, a huge problem when you are 21 and so that’s a huge problem and then many simply give up, knuckle down and base their whole education on something that will get them a job. To be here and not look for, aggressively and ideally finding your destiny is unhelpful in the extreme. I would say that is problem number one because the student who solves that problem everything else is easier. A person that knows who he or she is and I would think knowing who you are is a big deal in being successful at any level of ones life. It just seems to make perfect sense to me, not to everyone else but I am not speaking for everyone else.

What topics are the hardest to understand for students? Why?

There are certainly some idea that students struggle with and in this they reflect their society. So to some extent one of their biggest academic challenges is simply to extricate yourself from the popular culture of ignorance. We do not live in a society that praises learning basically we live in a dark place where learning is more marked by its presence than by its absence and many students just struggle with failing to understand that and trying to somehow relate what they are doing in the classroom to the mass of disorganized culture out there. One of the key points would be the students’ willingness to believe things without evidence. This is after all a university and the common attribute of all programs of all faculties is; you are an educated person and an educated person is guided by two key principles logic and evidence. That is what makes you different from someone uneducated. The more educated you are the more you are supposed to be able to master complex logic and highly diverse evidence but the rule of logic and evidence must always stand. We test your memory and frequently that has nothing whatsoever to do with testing your ability to pursue a logical answer. Or of course the evidence, where is the evidence I want evidence I want examples, I want illustrations, I want data. Large numbers of students seem to be startled by the idea that one would need evidence to actually come to a conclusion that you could defend. I do believe many students just see this university as “Super high school” without recognizing that they were supposed to have taken a very major intellectual step into a culture of learning which of course implies logic and evidence. More evidence is better than less, tighter logic is better than loosy goosey logic and god forbid no logic whatsoever or self contradictory arguments which I have to listen to. So, those are big intellectual problems. You have to get out of an ignorant culture and understand what a non ignorant environment is. Logic and evidence and then there is the supplemental issue there and its not always easy to articulate but students have to stop differing to authority. For all their bravado, sarcastic language and occasionally obscene language when someone says “jump” they say “How high?” especially if a paycheck is involved and they have abdicated the independence of their mind. They are not trying to achieve an independence of mind. If I find you intellectually understand that logic and evidence are the basis of an educated person’s decision making. What do you do when your mind or the evidence leads you to one direction and the mob screams at you to go in the other direction? Will you have the independence of mind to follow logic or learning or will you doubt yourself. At the end of the day, do you have the courage to say no to the mob? I think many students choose not to encounter the question and in many of our classrooms it is not forced upon them.

I find it so amazing how students will talk a brave line but to get that job they are prepared to do quite a bit. In one way its very ironic, they are looking for another parent. They want someone to look after them so that their material concerns are all taken away and someone will look after them and provide them a very generous allowance. Ironically enough they will offer to their employer surrogate parent something that they never offered their real parents which is obedience. Its really quite amazing. I have watched people, by in large my former students, in large corporations now for several decades, the earliest ones, some of them have knuckled under. The weight of the world has crushed them, the independence of mind. Now they are just a great cog in the machine and they are disposable. So now they must rely on luck and prodigious work effort to wait until retirement and their freedom. I have found it profoundly depressing because even if their plan is to live to this day of freedom at retirement, even assuming that they can manage their finances and get to whatever age and this retirement they aspire to I do not believe that when that day comes they will have the slightest knowledge of what to do with their freedom. By the end their brain will have just turned into mush.

What do you enjoy most about teaching?

I certainly enjoy a lot of aspects of it. For me teaching is this totally integrated package of things; I will try to separate them but I don’t really believe I can. To be in a room of young minds is stimulating. The questions I get, I hear questions of every conceivable kind that I would never in a thousand years thought of myself. I get information from students that I would never have gotten. To simply be with young people, yes some of them are idiots and some of them are lazy and some of them I would not trust as far as I could throw them. That doesn’t matter, the majority of them are bright and their minds are engaged. Then they get older and they get less energetic, more constrained, more stagnant more conventional. But in those late teens early twenties they are thinking about the widest range of things and the strange things they can tell me. Students have told every major technological advance on this planet since I have started teaching my students told me about it first and I read a lot so I am not plugged into the world and the best source of my information for just new stuff is just talking to my students.  Now that is stimulating.

I am trying to have an impact and I have some evidence to believe its successful. So there is the satisfaction of doing something useful. That you so enjoy because it is as useful to [the students] as it is to me. It nice that it is quid pro quo because I don’t want to get excited about hearing all of this information without providing some returning value so presumably that is what teaching is supposed to be I had thought; a relationship, not a dissemination of wisdom from on high.

If you were to recommend a book to aspiring economists what would you suggest they read?

I am torn because in general I am still a fan of the classics. The masters; Smith, Ricardo, Keynes, Marshal. You know, the titans. If you are really going to be an economist, if economics is more than just a path to law school, don’t you really think you don’t want the textbook to tell you what Keynes said or didn’t say. Don’t you think that you should read the original words to find out what they actually said and you might well discover that it was not as you thought. One example is Adam smith: “Free market rules” are you sure that’s what he said. This is the same man in the Wealth of Nations that said “a conversation among business men never ends except in a conspiracy against the public” how much clearer could that be? It might be why Karl Marx thought Adam Smith was a social revolutionary, which of course, he was. Of course you should read some of Marx, how can you talk about the anti–capitalist view without actually reading it? So you understand what the man said, or didn’t say, and why he was wrong. If you believe he’s mistaken, what did he get wrong? Of all the things you could read, the masters. That is the answer I want to give, I’m sorry it’s not an easy answer because it’s hard work.  If I were to recommend a contemporary book, and I have an interesting definition of contemporary, I would recommend Joseph Schumpeter’s Economic Development and that is because it has some of the best language about entrepreneurship and the difference between the model of the firm and that of the entrepreneur. He made an argument that was always compelling to me and is not always taught and it is there are two different kinds of persons; the entrepreneur and the manager. Managers take an existing system and they respond to shocks to the system, so that classic equilibrium stuff and then there is the entrepreneur who changes everything and makes the business manager obsolete. Schumpeter has classic language about why most persons will never be more than managers; it is because they have become creatures of habit… The difference [between an entrepreneur and a manager] is best described by those who walk along a road and those who build a new road. Much of economics is about how you walk along the road but maybe the heart of our discipline should be about how and why people build new roads.  

Note from the writer:

If you would be interested in more gems of wisdom from Larry Smith I have included a link to his TED talk and his blog below.

Blog: lwsmith.ca

TED talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKHTawgyKWQ

Prof Profile: Maryann Vaughan

Contact Info:
Hagey Hall, Room 102 
Phone (519) 888-4567, ext. 36825
Email : mvaughan@uwaterloo.ca

What courses do you teach?

 I teach always the same courses; the big econ 102 and the big econ 202, that’s my job and I like macro so I have chosen those classes. But my job in this department is to teach those big classes.

What do you think students struggle the most with?

In first year I think students struggle most with the discipline that a university class requires. I think the jump from grade 12 to first year can be overwhelming and I am a disciplinarian because I think I need that. … A new initiative of mine is taking away their toys because in order to have any chance at learning anything you have to, at the very least, be listening to me. While I can never guarantee success, that discipline is something they must learn before they can learn the material.

What topics are the hardest to understand for students? Why do you think that is?

Well, in macro, you know the topics, particularly in first year are pretty big and general and they’re things that most people have heard of. What sometimes becomes problematic is math. Math is a problem for many, particularly arts student. If anyone tells you, you don’t have to do math to do economics, they are misleading you. You can get through my macro classes with basic high school algebra but its get heavy in a big hurry. So what ends up happening to me is I’ll get a kid in first year that is really excited and wants to become an Econ major but they dropped math in grade 11. So, sometimes I have to be very brutally honest and say, “you’re not going to make it, you’re just not, unless you also start taking courses in the math faculty to get that extra knowledge."

What do you enjoy most about teaching?

I didn’t come to this job in a direct path. I did my graduate work here, I was a mature student I was a wife and mother of, at that time a 6 year old, and somebody suggested to me, why don’t you teach a course? And I thought, uhh whatever, I had no opinion about it. But, once I got in front of a classroom, you know, once I got the hang of it I realized that this is really what I was meant to do. I mean, I love teaching and I love trying to get that connection between the student and the material because I have been able to explain it to them. It is such a joyful experience, I really had no idea when I started that I would love it as much as I do which is why I am still doing it after all these years. Unless my department has other ideas, I have no plans on stopping anytime soon. I have this recurring nightmare every term that I will walk in the first day of classes and it’s going to be empty, like nobody registered for my class [laughs]. I’m still not over that. But its just, there’s something about taking a bunch of kids and sort of grabbing them, and some people fall through the cracks, and when you have 250 its inevitable but the biggest reward I get are the kids that I see later. That I meet in town, the ones that e-mail me after they’ve gone on and tell me that it was me that inspired them in first year. That’s the greatest reward, you know, it’s better than anything they pay me. Its having kids remember you.

Have you had any memorable stories in your teaching career?

Oh my Gosh, well you’ve heard most of them in class. Let me think, it’s sometimes the little things and most of the time it’s the first year students because they’re young and their naïve. I often tell this story in my class when I talk about e-mail and protocol because I think its part of my job to teach these kids that you don’t write to a professor and say “hey” because if you are going off on a co-op term you know somebody has to tell them this. So, I got an e-mail from a student in first year, asked me a simple question. I can’t remember what the question was now, but it was a simple question. I sent him a simple answer and I thought that was the end of it. A little while later he writes back and says “thank-you, I love you” I tell my class and I say well you know” I’m married and there’s a difference in our ages” and of course they laugh but it was kind of cute in a way and I will always remember it. My own daughter says I mother my students. I always remember that one as being kind of cute.

I remember a kid in a parking lot in a group of students, this was during Oktoberfest and these students had clearly been festing. They were rowdy and I was walking to my car and didn’t one of them recognize me. He yelled at the top of his lungs “HEY PROF.VAUGHAN” I thought “oh god” and I turned around and he raised his hands above his head with his fists and he said “ECON FOREVER” [laughs] and I thought “right” and I got in my car and I left. It always astonishes me what kids will say to me sometimes. Sometimes it’s goofy and sometimes it’s heartwarming.

What is a book that you recommend all aspiring economists read?

Well, you know, more then a book or even a half a dozen books.  I would recommend that students take far more time to just read a business newspaper. You should be able to tell me, did you see the inflation rate went up, because you knew and you heard that. Econ happens everyday. There’s free newspapers online and all over campus. I think yes, there are a few good books I could recommend to you but for a first year student they probably wouldn't get much out of it. Read a newspaper everyday, particularly macro is happening in the newspaper. I personally like to emphasize Canadian institutions. Who’s the finance minister? Who is the governor of the bank of Canada? This is the information that I think students are missing.

What are some interesting research questions in your area of expertise that undergraduates can investigate as a senior essay research topic?

Well, you know everyone is on about quantitative easing and there is a lot of emphasis these days on the most recent recession; the causes, the effects and how to fix it. The previous recession was far different from the previous two in that it was largely based in financial circles. You know what’s interesting about finance and Economics? Economists hadn’t for a long time hadn’t paid much attention to finance. Finance is mathematics; while those are the most interesting issues currently they are also probably the most difficult. There is just a lot of material there in terms of looking at the economy and how to get things going. Here in Canada we have depended for so long on a low dollar value and exports. Times are changing so we have to look at productivity issues. How do we grow? The euro is pretty shaky and I think it is pretty interesting to look at the Europe as a currency union and the diversity of these countries that are trying to run on a single monetary policy. I just think there are fascinating thing to look at there.