The Department of Economics held its Fall 2025 Graduate Assistant (GA) Training Workshop on Monday, October 13. Offered each semester, the workshop brings together faculty and GAs to share practical guidance on effective teaching, classroom management, and student engagement.
This semester’s session featured presentations by Professor Chihwa Kao, Professor Jackie Kai Zhao, and Professor Tianxu Chen, who leads the GA training program and teaches Econ 6492: Teaching Economics. Professor Kao shared insights from his extensive teaching experience on creating engaging classroom environments and encouraging active student participation. Professor Zhao discussed strategies for fostering meaningful learning through constructive feedback and helping students reflect on their progress. Professor Chen highlighted approaches for promoting active learning and building supportive classroom communities, drawing on her experience teaching large undergraduate courses.
The workshop also provided GAs with an opportunity to exchange experiences and reflect on ways to enhance their teaching effectiveness. It continues to serve as an important platform for developing pedagogical skills, building community among graduate instructors, and reinforcing the department’s commitment to high-quality undergraduate teaching.
Huari’s research interests are in asset pricing, financial econometrics, macro finance, and machine learning. At Sewanee, she teaches the courses, Investment Finance, Derivatives and Fixed Income Securities, Financial Modeling, and Financial Engineering.
Current UConn PhD students, do reach out to Huari and Tao for advice on building a successful academic career at a liberal arts college.
Anastassiya Karaban presented her paper, “The role of gender comparisons in determining reference wage and labor supply.” She finds that when people make different wages, we choose to compare our wage to others of the same gender. Women work harder when making more than other women (but not when making more than other men). Men work less hard if they are making less than another man (but not if they are making less than a woman).
Victor Volkman presented his paper, “Race and experimental design: How respondents may read context into a neutrally framed scenario.” Traditionally, economics experiments have participants engage in “context free” simulated economic transactions. Victor examines whether such absence of context can affect individuals differently based on their racial backgrounds. He finds evidence that different racial groups interpret context-free scenarios differently, and thus their actions are not directly comparable.