FGCU students get real with economics through skits

It's pretty common to see groups of Florida Gulf Coast University students out on the central lawn on campus, listening to a professor, studying the plant life or working in groups on a project.

Representing a strong economy, Florida Gulf Coast University student Jason Brown perches on the shoulders of Pete Masouras while acting out a macroeconomics skit with classmates, Amy Gode, left, and Brough Breeland, on the campus lawn on Monday. Dan Wagner/Staff

It's even somewhat common to see the students putting on skits or presentations.

But it's not often you see a class of macroeconomics students out on the lawn, acting out fiscal policy concepts or putting on a skit that represents cyclical unemployment.

That's changed with the arrival of Javier Stanziola, a visiting professor in FGCU's College of Arts and Sciences. He wants to make economics real to his students and help them understand how broad concepts can have very real effects on their individual lives.

In pursuit of that goal, he invited Megan Dolan from the Center for Creative Education in West Palm Beach to lead his class Monday in exercises based on theatrical technique.

The Center for Creative Education, established in 1995, works to improve the lives of children through the arts and humanities. It holds summer institutes and teacher training and conducts Project LEAP, a program sending artists into classrooms to enhance academic achievement in a variety of subjects using artistic techniques.

It's not often you hear a college teacher begin a class with the command, "If you've got books and notes, put them away."

But that's exactly what Dolan, director at the Lake Worth Playhouse, told the freshmen and sophomores sitting in the grass under the sun. After a series of ice-breaker exercises and a sort of economics charade, Dolan asked the students to figure out how to cut $100,000 from a regional theater's budget and to portray the effects of the firings in a skit.

The students took to the idea like pros, portraying selfish lead actors who wouldn't take a pay cut because they just bought a Learjet and their fourth Viper, a theater manager who shifts employees and their duties around like chess pieces with no remorse, and a passionate actress and single mom who wondered how she would feed her two children.

Megan Dolan, an instructor with the Center for Creative Education, asks the students the meaning of their skits. Dan Wagner/Staff

Dolan said the students' portrayals weren't too far from the truth.

"People in art administration do tend to get Learjets and Vipers and are less interested in people,"she said, praising the students for their improvised skits.

The idea of mixing theater with numbers-heavy disciplines like science and economics springs from the idea that everybody learns in different ways. A lecture format may work well for one student, but it may not work at all for another, Dolan said.

Stanziola said he successfully used the Center for Creative Education concepts last semester with his students, some of whom devised a skit about ladies' night at a bar to illustrate price discrimination and elasticity of price.

This semester, his students are required to earn 10 service hours by talking about economics and entrepreneurship in local schools and disadvantaged neighborhoods.

One group has devised a foreign exchange game for grade-school students, he said.

"I wanted them to see how important it is, how it affects them," Stanziola said.

"I think it's really good he gave us this opportunity because it is not something we do in most classes," said Magali Solimano, a freshman who plans to major in computer information.

"It makes you see what you are learning about in a different way, because sometimes learning from the book is not best," she said.

Jason Brown, a sophomore who portrayed an overly emotional artistic director named Sven who got the ax, wants to major in film but also earn a master's degree in marketing. He was happy to have the opportunity to combine two of his career interests.

"It was a good twist," he said, "to help people who don't understand the concepts of economics."

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