Great Engineering Assignment

Below is the assignment in the context of an economics class.  You could flip the assignment toward the Secretary of Transportation who is testifying before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and your boss is a Congressman on the committee.

"Imagine that you are a staff member working for a member of Congress who sits on the Joint Economic Committee (JEC).  Fed Chair Janet Yellen is about to testify before the JEC and you are assigned to write a three-page memo to prepare your boss—the member of Congress.  You are to focus on economics. This is not a political question and you should assume for this assignment that the member of Congress you work for is interested in economics and not politics.

The first part of this assignment is for you to provide your boss with a concise briefing on the state of the U.S. economy, focusing on the aspects of the economy that are relevant for the decision facing Chair Yellen.  The second part of the assignment is for you to write a question that your boss will ask Chair Yellen, and then explain to the member of Congress the information that the question is intended to elicit from the Fed chair.  You can split the three pages however you wish between the questions."

Source of the assignment idea