Quick Bio
Dr Jonathan Graves is an Associate Professor of Teaching and the Director of Undergraduate Studies (Curriculum and Students) at the University of British Columbia’s Vancouver School of Economics. After completing his doctorate in economics, Dr Graves became interested in educational leadership and the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). He combines his economics training (including data science, modeling, and casual analysis) with qualitative methods and frameworks from education and SoTL to improve teaching and learning. His recent research includes alternative assessment, curriculum mapping and evaluation, applied econometrics education, and economics education. He is proud to call Vancouver his home.
Personal Profile
My name is Jonathan Lewis Graves, and I am an associate professor of teaching at UBC’s Vancouver School of Economics. I am part of UBC’s educational leadership faculty, which means that I specialize in performing research and projects which particularly relate to how we teach and learn economics. However, I am also an economist who specializes in industrial organization, microeconomics, and applied econometrics.
I did my undergraduate studies at the University of Victoria (BSc), and my graduate studies (MA, PhD) at the University of British Columbia. I hold degrees in both economics and mathematics, and have also previously worked in the private sector as an analyst. You can find more details about my professional career on my curriculum vitae.
I primarily teach undergraduate students, at the 2nd year and higher level. My non-teaching interests include curriculum development, scholarship of teaching and learning, innovative teaching tools, and online teaching. I am particularly interested in:
– Community engaged learning: how do we bring real-world experiences into the classroom in a manageable and practical way? What are the advances of this kind of education for economics students?
– Indigenous curriculum development: how do we expand the curriculum of economics to include topics relevant to the Indigenous experience in Canada? How do we do so in an authentic and respectful way?
–Experiential learning tools: how can we build innovative tools to help students engage in experiential learning?
–Evidence-based teaching: how do we evaluate the kinds of tools and techniques we use to teach and learn? Can we do this in a meaningful way, given the complications of the educational environment?
–Undergraduate research: how do we facilitate serious academic research at the undergraduate level? What are the goals? What are the obstacles?
You can find many items related to these topics in the menus above. If you are interested in learning more about any of these topics, I encourage you to send me an email or otherwise get it touch with me.