My goal as an economics instructor is to teach students to think like economists. Whether I am teaching Principles of Microeconomics or an advanced course in cybersecurity, I want students to leave the classroom better able to identify trade-offs, understand incentives, evaluate evidence, and use economic models to make sense of real-world problems.
I teach economics as a way of thinking rather than simply a collection of theories and diagrams. In introductory courses, this means building a strong foundation in concepts such as opportunity cost, marginal analysis, comparative advantage, market equilibrium, and the role of institutions. I emphasize applying these tools to questions students encounter outside the classroom so that they learn not only how an economic model works, but also when and why it is useful.
In my upper-level and interdisciplinary courses, students move from learning economic tools to using them to investigate open-ended questions. My teaching has therefore incorporated game theory, empirical analysis, programming, predictive analytics, financial economics, and policy analysis. I have taught students with backgrounds ranging from economics and finance to business analytics, computer science, and law, and I adjust the technical tools of a course while maintaining the same emphasis on careful economic reasoning.
A central part of my teaching philosophy is that students learn economics by doing economics. I want students to work with data, construct and critique models, read academic research, communicate their reasoning clearly, and confront problems for which the answer is not provided at the back of a textbook. Whenever possible, I design assignments that move students from being consumers of economic analysis toward becoming producers of it.
One example of this approach is Economics of Cybersecurity, a course I developed and taught at the University of Minnesota and the University of Texas. The course applies economic theory and empirical methods to questions at the frontier of cybersecurity research. Rather than treating cybersecurity solely as a technical problem, students examine the incentives of attackers, defenders, software vendors, consumers, and policymakers.
Questions such as How much should an attacker be willing to pay for a booter service?, How frequently should software vendors release security updates?, and How should vulnerabilities be disclosed? provide opportunities for students to translate real cybersecurity problems into economic questions.
The course has three principal objectives:
Economic reasoning: Students learn the major economic questions in cybersecurity and how incentives, strategic behavior, information, and institutions shape security outcomes.
Theory and evidence: Students learn to construct game-theoretic models, analyze data, and use both approaches to evaluate potential policies.
Economic research: Students learn how to read, critique, and write empirical and theoretical economics papers.
The broader objective is not simply to teach students what the existing cybersecurity literature says. It is to give them the tools necessary to ask and answer new questions themselves.
My teaching also extends beyond traditional economics courses. I have taught programming, business analytics, predictive analytics, FinTech, and policy research. These experiences have strengthened my emphasis on quantitative literacy and reproducible analysis in economics courses.
At the University of Texas, I helped develop and teach the Policy Research Laboratory, where students learned to approach policy questions as researchers: formulate a tractable question, identify appropriate data and methods, analyze the evidence, and communicate the results to an audience interested in policy rather than merely producing an answer for an instructor.
I have similarly taught programming and analytics courses using Python and other quantitative tools. These courses reinforce a principle that carries throughout my teaching: technical skills are most valuable when students understand the question they are trying to answer. Programming, econometrics, and statistical methods are tools for economic reasoning rather than ends in themselves.
At Louisiana Tech University, I currently teach Principles of Microeconomics. My approach brings together the different parts of my teaching experience: rigorous economic foundations, real-world applications, quantitative reasoning, and clear communication.
Across courses and levels, I want students to leave with more than knowledge of a particular syllabus. My aim is for students to develop a durable set of habits: identify the incentives, recognize the trade-offs, build the appropriate model, examine the evidence, and communicate what the evidence allows us to conclude.
Those skills are useful whether a student continues in economics, enters business or public policy, works with data, or simply wants to make better sense of the economic decisions and institutions around them.