Student Spotlight
Student Spotlight: Dan Swanson
Class: Junior
Majors: Science Pre-Professional & Economics
Hometown: St. Paul, MN
What made you choose economics?
I took Dr.Flannery's introduction to microeconomics class and fell in love!
What Econ related activities are you involved in or have been involved in (research etc.)?
Research with Professor Bachmann, Financial Wellness Taskforce for Student Government
How do you plan to use the Econ major?
Pursuing an MD/MBA program and hopefully opening my own private practice one day.
What have your favorite classes been?
Financial Economics with Dr. Pries
What is one thing you wish you had known when you started out the major?
What you have to do to go to econ grad school
What is the coolest/oddest thing you have learned in Econ?
Keynesian vs. Real Business Cycle model and how that plays into the modern political atmosphere
What is the worst/best Econ joke you've ever heard?
Economists do it discretely AND continuously.
Student Spotlight: Nick Barella
Class: Junior
Majors: Finance & Economics
Hometown: Glen Ellyn, IL
What made you choose economics?
I enjoy the top-down approach of looking at the way businesses and countries interact.
What Econ related activities are you involved in or have been involved in (research etc.)?
Econ club, historical baseball statistics research
How do you plan to use the Econ major?
To supplement my finance major to make me a better critical thinker and problem solver in the business world
What have your favorite classes been?
Econometrics, Intermediate Macro
What is one thing you wish you had known when you started out the major?
Don't get discouraged when the material is difficult!
What is the worst/best Econ joke you've ever heard?
How has French revolution affected world economic growth? Too early to say.
Student Spotlight: Grant Hagstrom
Class: Junior
Majors: Economics
Hometown: Wayzata, Minnesota
What made you choose economics?
Originally, I chose economics because I found it interesting - after all, the health of an economy has a very real impact on day-to-day livelihood. I continue to find economics fascinating, because at its core, it is the application of basic human behavior on a grand scale. The way economics uses basic human behavior to create sound laws is unique to the field.
How do you plan to use the Econ major?
The great thing about economics is its wide range of uses. Economics majors have the ability to enter many fields, from data analytics to consulting. The practicality of the major makes it very appealing to a wide variety of majors. I plan to join the private sector after my studies.
What have your favorite classes been?
So far, I have found econometrics, monetary theory, and the economics of China to be some of the most interesting classes.
What is the coolest/oddest thing you have learned in Econ?
Coolest thing: how to run a proper regression. Oddest thing: learning that what you learned in earlier economics classes is wrong.
What is the worst/best Econ joke you've ever heard?
There were two economists who were shipwrecked on a desert island. They had no money, but over the next three years they made millions of dollars selling their hats to each other.
Spotlight
The power of economics, said Greg Duffy ’15, is that the intangible becomes tangible. Duffy, who majored in economics and sang in an a capella group at Notre Dame, now uses that power to help connect artists with new audiences as a research analyst at the music-streaming service Pandora.