Anna Klis is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Dr. Klis taught an honors seminar in the spring 2025 semester titled, “Private Valuation (Or, How to Get People to Tell You What They Really Want)”
- Why were you attracted to offering an honors seminar?
I really liked the theme for this year – fantasy/reality. I love fantasy/fiction books and video games, and I see part of my field as trying to connect the two and understand why some fantasies are not reality. Plus, I had this idea for understanding valuation and wanted to implement it into a class!
2. How do you teach your subject or specialty to an interdisciplinary group of Honors students?
For me, hitting the foundations is key, and it just takes understanding of what the exact foundations are. To learn about the concepts of valuation, my students don’t need a full understanding of everything from micro and macro principles, but they do need to understand concepts of economic rationality and willingness-to-pay. I love teaching students from non-econ majors and highlight their contributions even in my ECON courses, and I just make sure to bring in lots of relatable examples.
3. What are some of your tricks of the trade to engage students in the course materials?
Readiness Assessment Quizzes – you have to read the material ahead of time, and then there’s a small quiz in class on the material that is pretty low-stakes, but you’re responsible to your grade and the rest of your team to be prepared. Choosing interesting assignments that allow students to bring their creativity and interests to the table. Interactive games and experiments to highlight how decision-making works.
4. What’s the best thing about teaching Honors students?
Their openness to trying things out – I’m so appreciative of my students this semester who joined me for the ride of this new class, how they’ve been open to integrating the information from class with their own majors and interests, and how they’ve been up for innovative assignments like a group midterm and the podcast assignment. I often start out the semester with “Know, Expect, Want” – an exercise where I ask students to tell me what they already know about a subject, expect from the class, or want to learn – and I think that really helped this seminar gel.
