William Bosshardt, Director, FAU Center

Bill Bosshardt has been director of the Center for Economic Education at Florida Atlantic University since 1995. Over the past five years, the Center has offered 50 programs to over 800 teachers. These programs focus on teaching economic and financial education concepts through active-learning techniques in a variety of secondary school subjects. Since he arrived at FAU, Bill has trained hundreds of teachers in the Florida Stock Market Challenge.

Bill has been a faculty member of the Council on Economic Education’s Trainer of the Trainers program which conducted workshops for teachers in Russia, Ukraine, Malaysia, and Armenia. He is a coauthor on publications of lesson plans by the Council on Economic Education including “Focus: Globalization” and “Focus: Civics and Government.” Bill was the project director for “Focus: Middle School World History” and has recently finished the publication “High School Economics.” He also was in charge of the Council for Economic Education’s project that recently created the “National Standards in Financial Literacy.” A version of the standards is now part of Florida’s standards in financial literacy. Bill won the 2014 Bessie B. Moore Award for outstanding service to economic education.

Bill is an active researcher in the area of economic education, having published in leading journals such as the Review of Economics and Statistics, Economic Inquiry and the Journal of Economic Education. He received the Henry H. Villard Research Award in 2004, presented by the National Association of Economic Educators for outstanding published research in economic education.

Bill received his Ph.D. in economics from Purdue University in 1991 and his B.A. in economics and German in 1985 from St. Thomas University.