Candace Smith gives instruction during an etiquette demonstration on Thursday, Feb. 27, in the Wolford Family Athletics Center. Photo by Angela Foster.
Manners matter.
On Thursday, Feb. 27, at the Wolford Family Athletic Center, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga students, faculty and staff were shown the importance of proper business etiquette during a lunchtime demonstration.
“Economics and Etiquette” was organized by Dr. Claudia Kramer, the Scott L. Probasco Jr. Distinguished Chair of Free Enterprise, whose mission “is to study the American free enterprise system and the conditions under which it operates most efficiently, engage in high-level scholarly research and contribute to the public knowledge and understanding of economic theory and practice.”
Candace Smith, the founder of “Etiquette for the Business of Life,” took participants through a “Meet, Greet and Network at Social Events” course and an etiquette lunch titled “The Art of Dining.”
Smith demonstrated how to network at events by using proper manners—such as which way to pass the food at meals, which eating utensils to use and setting goals for a certain number of people you want to network with at an event.
By the way, according to proper etiquette, you should pass bread to the right of you at the table.
Kramer explained that these skills are something that students can utilize for the rest of their careers.
“We just want to reduce any of those barriers for our students so that they feel incredibly confident,” Kramer said. “They have the knowledge. They have the skillset coming out of UTC, but this is somewhat of the soft skills and the manners to signal that you should hire me.”
From left: UTC students Joshua Clay, Anthony Bracero and Jordan Fall.
Senior Kyle Rains echoed this sentiment.
Rains is an economics major, mathematics minor and a Phillips Scholar in Free Enterprise at UTC.
“It’s really useful,” Rains said. “Learning all of these tools you can (use), and then being able to hear from someone so successful and seeing what motivates them.”
Smith was joined at the etiquette luncheon by her husband, Dr. Vernon Smith—the George L. Argyros Chair in Finance and Economics and professor of law at Chapman University.
A Nobel Laureate in economics, he won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 2002 “for having established laboratory experiments as a tool in empirical economic analysis, especially in the study of alternative market mechanisms.”
He gave a speech of his own titled “Propriety, Property and Freedom.”
“It’s sort of a philosophical perspective on why manners matter in the big picture of the human career,” he explained. “Just as etiquette concerns the mannerliness of following rules, but treat others with dignity and respect.
“Free social and economic exchange systems emerge from the actions of people bound by the same moral principles.”
Smith has published over 350 works on capital theory, finance, natural resources and experimental economics, rationality in economics, and the housing origins of economic instability.
He has published multiple books on economics, including “Adam Smith’s Theory of Society,” coming out in April.
Kramer hopes events like these will educate and inspire people and fuel a passion for economics.
“Economics is awesome,” Kramer said. “Oftentimes—especially right now—you’re hearing lots of things in the news, but economics is more than that. We can speak to those subject matters, inflation or tariffs, but it’s really about problem-solving. I think that was something that Dr. Smith illustrated in his talk.”
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Phillips Scholarship in Free Enterprise
Candace Smith took participants through “The Art of Dining” and a “Meet, Greet and Network at Social Events.”
