Research Across the Curriculum: Teaching Undergraduates to Complete a Good Senior Capstone Paper

Despite the urging of the profession to include a capstone experience in the undergraduate economic major, little has appeared in the literature about such courses. Additionally, though changes in computing have made it possible for undergraduates to complete reasonable professional-style research, a natural capstone experience, little has been written about teaching undergraduates to complete research at that level. At our small university, we have discovered that a successful capstone research project requires teaching students the rhetoric of economic research as well as economics and econometrics. We have also discovered that the complexity of completing that task requires more than one semester for most students. We describe our curriculum, our method of assessment, and some evidence that our students have improved as the curriculum has evolved.