Sethuram Soman

Sethuram (Seth) Soman has been teaching and conducting joint research with undergraduate students for over a decade. His research interest is on the process and effects of environmental decision-making. 

Along with designing and delivering courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels, he served on a number of universitywide committees and as an interim department chair. Courses designed for both face-to-face and online include Principles of Economics; Business Statistics; Financial Management; Commodities Futures and Options Market; Natural Resources Economics; Graphic Information System for Business; Remote Sensing; and Farm Management and Agriculture Marketing.

Soman considers himself an early adopter and enjoys employing a variety of instructional technologies in his classes. He is well versed in using online teaching platforms such as Blackboard, Moodle and Canvas. He employs clickers in his classes along with simulations and trading games. A career highlight was leading a team of students that won first place in a national commodity trading competition.

Most of his research is done in collaboration with multidisciplinary teams and designed to understand the economic, social, and environmental trade-offs associated with alternative policies. Some of the recently completed projects include the use of agent-based models to study the impact of landowner behavior in the provision of ecosystems services at a watershed level.

His research also uses GIS and integrated modeling techniques to understand the human impact on ecosystems, spatially linking those outcomes at a landscape level, with a view to inform policymaking.

Before joining Norwich University, Soman served on the faculty at Northwest Missouri State and Dickinson State universities.