The UNO Center For Economic Education

Over the past 25 years, the UNO Center for Economic Education has developed educational materials to help K-12 teachers integrate economic education into their classroom presentations. UNO's colleges of business and education co-sponsor the Center for Economic Education. This co-sponsorship makes the center unique among more than 250 such centers in the United States. Initially, economics professor Donald Connell carried out the Center's activities with public and parochial schools in Omaha's tri-county metropolitan area. Currently the Center is coordinated by James Dick and Kim Sosin who serve as co-directors, and Mary Lynn Reiser who is the Center's associate director. The UNO center is part of a five-center Nebraska network through the Nebraska Council on Economic Education.

Since 1986, the Center has maintained an affiliation with the Nebraska Council on Economic Education. Also the UNO Center has been accredited by the National Council on Economic Education from the time it initiated its accreditation program. Two five-year accreditations have been granted the UNO Center. Five-year terms are the maximum.

The UNO strategy to economic education combines expertise in economics and best practices in classroom teaching. This approach has become a national model. Through appropriate teaching methods and materials, the UNO Center helps teachers improve the economic literacy of all students. Using developmentally appropriate student learning methods, the Center hosts seminars and credit courses for teachers throughout the three-county metropolitan area. The Center's staff serves on curriculum review committees at the district and state level and has written and edited a new curriculum used nationally to teach K-12 economics.

In addition to courses and seminars, the UNO center hosts a website created and managed by Dr. Kim Sosin, chairman of the Economics Department. The web is an ideal medium for reaching teachers throughout the state of Nebraska because of its large geographic area. Teachers can download pertinent teaching materials and economic data from this site. The web site has attracted national and international attention because of its usefulness to teachers. Ecedweb recently received the Education Index Award as one of the best economic education-related resources for teachers of economics on the Internet. UNO has granted permission to several foreign nations to translate web site materials into their local languages.

Recent Center-developed curriculum for the website include classroom lessons highlighting international trade in Nebraska and its trading partners throughout the world. The Center has also made connections internationally through education exchanges and is developing teaching materials for possible use in the newly developing Soviet countries as they adopt market economies.

The UNO center conducts both research and provides curriculum advice to other economic educators. The Center staff has published in such premier journals as Journal of Economic Education. Personnel from the UNO center were instrumental in the preparation of Nebraska's recently adopted state curriculum standards for social studies programs, which include economics through the K-12 curriculum. The Center's Web Page should be reproduced and inserted in this document.