Rate My Professor Michelle Vachris

Michelle Vachris serves as Professor and Chair of the Management, Business, and Economics Department at Virginia Wesleyan College and as Director of the Master of Business Administration program in the D. Henry Watts School of Professional Studies. She leads the department in delivering a value-based business education committed to the Principles for Responsible Management Education and supports student-led initiatives such as the Marlin Business Conference. Vachris earned a B.A. in Economics from the College of William & Mary in 1984, followed by an M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics from George Mason University in 1992, where she received the William P. Snavely Award for Outstanding Achievement in Graduate Studies in Economics as the most outstanding graduating Ph.D. student. Prior to her current position, she was Professor of Economics and BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism at Christopher Newport University, where she developed innovative online economics courses.

Her research interests encompass economics education, particularly the comparison of online and traditional instruction methods, public choice theory, principal-agent relationships in bureaucracy, and the integration of economic concepts with literature. Key publications include the highly cited article “No significant distance between face-to-face and online instruction: evidence from principles of economics” (Economics of Education Review, 2004, with D. Coates, B.R. Humphreys, and J. Kane), “Teaching principles of economics without ‘chalk and talk’: The experience of CNU online” (The Journal of Economic Education, 1999), “Using illustrations from American novels to teach about labor markets” (The Journal of Economic Education, 2012, with C.E. Bohanon), and “Why democracy does not necessarily produce efficient results” (Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice, 1994, with C.K. Rowley). Vachris co-authored books such as Pride and Profit: The Intersection of Jane Austen and Adam Smith (Lexington Books, 2015, with C.E. Bohanon) and Dystopia and Economics: A Guide to Surviving Everything from the Apocalypse to Zombies (Routledge, 2018, with C.J.R. Acchiardo). She has delivered public lectures, including on economics and literature at Susquehanna University in 2018, contributing to broader discussions on pedagogy and economic thought in popular culture.