Dr. Subhasree Basu Roy has found success through empowering her students to apply theoretical knowledge to real-world settings while engaging with the community.

During the 2023 and 2024 semesters, service-learning graduate and undergraduate courses in economics, (ECO 504/604/HCM 504 Healthcare Economics), graduate students collaborated with healthcare providers to explore ethical leadership and policy impacts. ECO 310 (Labor Economics) connects undergraduate students with local business owners to analyze hiring practices. ECO 397/GER 480 (Policies and Older Adults) partners undergraduate service-learning students with SeniorAge, the Area Agency on Aging, to address aging-related policies. These projects highlight reciprocity, enriching student learning while benefiting local organizations and businesses.

Dr. Basu Roy was kind enough to chat with me and offer insight into how she balances theory and practice with service-learning.

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Connecting economics to community engagement

Charlie: This might be tough, because you do so much, but could you try and boil down your work within a few sentences?

Dr. Basu Roy: I’m an associate professor in the economics program within the Department of Finance, Economics, and Risk Management. …My specialization is in healthcare and labor economics, so I’ve taught courses in both of those areas. In addition, I’ve taught Industrial Organization, Intermediate Microeconomics, and a Healthcare Economics course outside of my college.

Charlie: Healthcare Economics. What is that like?

Dr. Basu Roy: So, it’s basically taking the economics theories and concepts and applying it to the healthcare field. Like, so everyone knows that economics has a demand side. It has a supply side. So, in the healthcare field, if you apply to the demand side, it would be the patients, it would be the people seeking healthcare. And then on the supply side would be the providers. It would be the physicians, the nurses, the hospitals.

Charlie: So, you’ve taught courses in a number of areas. How did you get started with applying service-learning to them?

Dr. Basu Roy: I think you know motivation for most professors comes from their students. From their classes. So, I think when I joined as an assistant professor, something that was constantly coming from my students [was that the] economics is so abstract. [They think:] I don’t want to major in economics because I don’t know how it applies to the real world. …I thought that service-learning is kind of a great way of helping students to connect the dot between the theories and concepts they learn in class and how it really applies in the real world.

Injecting service-learning in the work

Charlie: Do you remember when you got started with service-learning?

Dr. Basu Roy: Oh, you know that is interesting, because I was always doing projects in my classes. I don’t remember teaching a class without a project, you know… I always feel like you need to do something hands-on for all of it to kind of make sense and to tie the loose ends in your mind, right? …Honestly, I’ve been doing the projects for a long time, but they have started counting as service-learning courses and showing up as service-learning courses, more recently, post-COVID, because that’s when I really connected with Dr. Nordyke to [formalize] that process.

Charlie: Why do you feel it’s important to engage your students in the community while they learn?

Dr. Basu Roy: Economics is so much about society, right? Our decisions, our individual decisions, are always interacting with others. We are surrounded by that—could be family members, could be peers, could just be other members of the society we live in. So, it is important that we kind of go out as students of economics in the society, and we kind of see how the interaction of choices happen between us and other members of society. …There is only so much you can learn in a textbook. You actually have to experience decision making processes. You actually have to talk to people, see what people are doing, to understand what motivates decision making and what’s the impact of decision making. And what better way to do that than to go engage yourself in the community.

Charlie: Proponents of service-learning promise a series of benefits for students. Hands-on experiences, critical thinking, improving communication, growing leadership skills. What benefits have you noticed that you attribute specifically to service-learning?

Dr. Basu Roy: First of all, I would say, being self-driven. Since the time I started to do service-learning, which was post COVID, we had the cohort of students who were in high school during COVID, so naturally, they were tied to their computer screens, not getting much interaction with peers, not kind of interacting as much in, you know, community. They were students who kind of lacked a little bit of motivation, and they were not as self-driven as our students used to be. So, I would say the first benefit of the projects that I did was them taking charge and ownership of their work during the semester, and that work being self-driven.

Making it all gel together

Charlie: So how do you strike a balance between giving them that autonomy but not leaving them like they’re feeling on their own?

Dr. Basu Roy: I give them a guideline in terms of what kind of organization to choose. For example, in my labor economics course in the spring of 2024, I used a service-learning project, which I titled Work, Wages, and Well-Being: A Hands-On Approach to Labor Economics. …I told students they could contact any employer, but the employer should be a business owner who employs at least 10 people. I provide that guideline because I want to ensure there’s enough structure in the organization for them to study what they need to study. You couldn’t just go to someone who employs one person. …In this way, I’m providing structure—kind of like guardrails—so they stay on track. But within that track, they have flexibility to choose whom they want to work with. Sometimes it’s about their personal interests, too. Labor economics can be applied to any labor market; it doesn’t have to be limited to nonprofit organizations or any particular type of business.

Charlie: Service-learning requires layering in a new academic method to coursework that you may have been doing a certain way for a while. What was it like when you talked with Dr. Nordyke to make it official? What changed when implementing service-learning into your curriculum?

Dr. Basu Roy: I would say the transition—or the integration—was pretty seamless for me because, like I said, I was already doing projects in my classes anyway. I just had to put them into the mold of a service-learning project. That meant adding a statement in the syllabus about the embedded service-learning component and being a little more intentional with the guidelines. I knew my students would be out in the community, representing both me and the institution, so it was important to set clear boundaries.

Charlie: Could you tell us about the overall impact the service-learning has had on your students?

Dr. Basu Roy: I would say the overall impact is very positive—especially in courses like labor economics, which can feel very dry, theory-heavy, and math-heavy in a traditional classroom setting. But when students are able to do a project out in the community, I think it kind of lightens things up for them, for lack of a better word. They begin to realize that it’s not just about solving numerical problems—which is still critical and important—but it’s also about applying these theories to the real world. They get to see how the concepts actually play out in areas like hiring practices, employee benefit programs, discrimination, disparities, and so on. Yeah, it really helps make the material more meaningful.

Charlie: So, if a colleague asked you if they should implement community engagement opportunities in their courses, how would you respond?

Dr. Basu Roy: Absolutely. Thumbs up. 100%!

Charlie: What concerns you most about your students and their futures?

Dr. Basu Roy: One of my biggest concerns is student engagement—how engaged students are in college today. We often hear about attention span issues, and that’s certainly part of it, but students also have a lot on their plates. Many are working long hours, either on or off campus, and mental health is a major concern across college campuses. So, I often ask: how engaged are students with their academics, or with campus activities that are tied to academics? How engaged can they realistically be, given everything they’re juggling? If we’re able to engage them more effectively, we can deliver greater value through our teaching. That, in turn, translates into what they’re able to contribute in the job market.

Charlie: And to conclude, tell us what excites you the most about the future of your work here at Missouri State.

Dr. Basu Roy: I’m really excited about where this university is headed over the next five or six years. I’m especially enthusiastic about the strategic plan we’re currently developing. Since I’ve been here, this feels like the first time there’s been such a high level of faculty involvement from the very beginning. There have been workshops, feedback sessions—it’s truly been a collective effort. I really appreciate that, and I’m eager to see where this plan takes us.