The first issue appeared in May 1978—a 10-page typewritten bulletin “devoted to horn-blowing,” according to its founding editor, James Anderson, the William B. Neenan, SJ, Millennium Professor of Economics. True to its mission, the inaugural Boston College Economics Department Newsletter included a nine-page catalogue of more than 90 department-generated research grants and publications from 1976 to 1978. Over the next three decades, in the hands of successive professor editors (Joe Peek from 1988 to 1990, Christopher Baum since 1991), the semiannual pamphlet would evolve into an annual publication, with photos, a flashy title (it became BC EC in 1991), and an occasional nod to extracurricular feats (in 1988, BC’s economists made it to the finals of the University’s summer softball league, losing—not for the first time—to the dynastic buildings and grounds team).

Now, the complete archive of newsletters is available online for scrolling at the economics department’s website. Among 30 years of headlines, some mark important dates in the department’s history (“Major Initiative Supports Economics Expansion,” from a 1998 issue, names economics as one of 13 departments targeted in a $260 million University capital campaign); others commemorate the utterly out-of-date (“We now have an office in the department devoted to . . . two scope terminals and an LA 120,” from a 1980 story marveling at the six-foot-wide machine’s ability to “act as a small printer”).

For Baum, who has chronicled events for the last 17 years, the newsletter records—however informally—an important time in the department’s history. “In many ways,” he says, “our evolution over the last three decades echoes the University’s trajectory.”

When the first newsletter appeared, the year Baum joined the faculty, its headlines announced the 1977 retirement of Alice Bourneuf, a founder of the department (and the first woman appointed to the faculty of the College of Arts & Sciences). Over 18 years, Bourneuf helped transform the small department, known mostly for its teaching, into a leading research engine. Now ranked among the top 24 economics departments in the country—as recorded in a 2004 newsletter (and according to an evaluation by the Combes-Linnemer worldwide ranking system, which tallies faculty publication in major journals)—BC economics has a roster that includes six professors “ranked among the world’s top 1,000 economists” by the European Economic Association, as a 2001 story reports, “including two, Peter Ireland and Arthur Lewbel, in the Top 20.”

News of the department’s mounting superlatives, however, rarely made front-page headlines in the office press over the years; top stories profiled new faculty members (most recently, econometrician Karim Chalak, whose “ongoing research considers the definition, modeling, identification, and estimation of causal effects”); saluted milestones (“Economics Celebrates 50 Years of the Ph.D.,” from 2003); or broadcast wedding and birth announcements (“Department Productivity Reaches Record High!” from 1991).

From 1995 to 2003, headlines chronicled economics’ eight-year housing saga that began with a promise of “a complete renovation of Carney Hall before the turn of the century.” The department’s then 40-year-old home (“BC’s largest, and shabbiest, academic building,” according to a 1996 story), was in need of a face-lift, but as 1998 and 1999 updates titled, respectively, “Waiting for Godot” and “[Still] Waiting for Godot” reported, construction, stymied by legal obstacles, was on hold. In late 2002, the department moved to its current—and now permanent—home in 21 Campanella Way, a newly constructed building that permitted, for the first time, “all [economics] faculty staff, teaching fellows and assistants, and research assistants to work in adjacent space.”

BC EC‘s most recent front page announces Professor Joseph Quinn’s return to the department after eight years as the dean of the College of Arts & Sciences and his appointment to fill the James P. McIntyre Chair—the department’s fourth endowed professorship since 2004. At the bottom of the page in much smaller font, a headline reads “Popularity of Economics Major Rises,” over a story describing the steady increase from 510 majors and concentrators in 2001, to 689 in 2007. It’s a headline that has appeared several times over the past three decades, says Baum. “Enrollment in our discipline is countercyclical,” he explains. “When the economy is bad, people suddenly want to study it.”

Read more by Cara Feinberg