David Lindauer

I joined Wellesley College’s economics department in January 1981 and retired in June 2022. Throughout my four decades on the faculty, I tried to provide students with innovative and valuable learning opportunities. As an economist, my primary interest was in explaining why some nations are rich and others poor.

In trying to understand how to improve the well-being of people who live in emerging economies, I complemented my work as a faculty member by working for the World Bank and other development agencies. My specific focus was on the labor market and included research and policy advising on such issues as skill mismatches in Belize; labor relations in Korea; racial affirmative action in Malaysia; worker productivity in Ethiopia; minimum wage policy in the Philippines; and government pay and employment in Zambia. I also was a co-author of the 6th and 7th editions of Economics of Development (W. W. Norton), a leading textbook in the field.

My teaching portfolio included Principles of Microeconomics (the first course in an economics major), Development Economics, Inequality, and Trade Policy. Early in my career, I also introduced a new course to the department’s curriculum, Economic Journalism. This course asked economics majors to write about their field using language someone who had never studied it would understand. The course was gratifyingly successful, and I devoted the last decade of my career to sharing its success with other teachers and students.

As I hoped, the pedagogy I developed for Economic Journalism proved adaptable to other disciplines. With a generous grant from the Stanford Calderwood Charitable Foundation, Wellesley College launched the Calderwood Seminars in Public Writing Program in 2013. Since that time, more than 20 departments have offered Calderwood Seminars. The program continues to thrive with 15-20 percent of Wellesley students completing a Calderwood Seminar before graduating.

In 2018, I began expanding the program to other institutions. Over a dozen colleges and universities now offer Calderwood Seminars. Including Wellesley, over 140 faculty members have introduced one of these seminars and more than 3000 students have taken one. I directed the program at Wellesley until 2020 and continue to direct and develop the larger program as an emeritus faculty member.

Watch David Lindauer’s 2022 Distinguished Faculty Lecture, What the Calderwood Seminars Teach Us About Our Students and Ourselves, here.

In all my teaching, I took pride in introducing new ideas in economics to majors and non-majors alike, seeking to engage students both inside and outside the classroom. Many former students have told me that a particular research paper or assignment in my class was an important first step in their subsequent careers. Some alumnae of the Calderwood Seminar have gone on to distinguished careers in public writing. It continues to give me immense pleasure to hear from students who were helped by my teaching to discover their voices as independent thinkers.