Teaching an Economics Capstone Course Based on Current Issues in Monetary Policy

Economics faculties often struggle with the design of a Capstone course for Economics majors. The goals of such a course are diverse but usually include the need to both assess and improve students' writing and oral presentation skills, to introduce students to research methods, and to ensure that all students have been exposed to a certain set of topics that may not have been covered in other required courses. In this paper, I describe one way to accomplish these goals in a format that provides much value added to students and holds their interest. The main idea is to structure the course in terms of a debate about monetary policy issues, and I will describe how I have organized the course for several years and how successful it has been at accomplishing its goals.