By Andy Baker
Welcome to the first CU Political Science newsletter in seven years! It is high time that we catch up. But first things first: Who’s the new guy? My name is Andy Baker, and I became chair of the CU Department of Political Science on July 1, 2021. I’m thrilled to share with you in this newsletter just a small portion of the fun things that have been going on in CU Political Science over the past several years
As you surely know, COVID presented many challenges to higher education everywhere—health and safety threats to students and staff, declining enrollments, decreased revenues for universities, and occasional chaos around new ways of teaching (to Zoom or not to Zoom?). But our department weathered this storm exceedingly well and in some ways is even stronger. Despite falling enrollments elsewhere in the CU College of Arts and Sciences, our classrooms are bursting at the seams. Since our last newsletter in 2015, the number of political science majors has increased from 700 to nearly 1,100, and we just graduated 260 seniors! By these metrics, we are now the largest department in the social sciences at CU and one of the ten largest on campus. The department offers over 150 courses per year—including dozens during the summertime—on topics in US politics, international politics, political philosophy, statistics, and more. Non-CU students can even take online or in-person courses through Continuing Education: https://ce.colorado.edu/
This exploding interest in political science at CU is due in part to our new and exceedingly popular learning-by-doing curriculum. A few years ago, the department decided to adopt a teaching style that gives undergraduate students a more active, hands-on approach to learning about politics at home and abroad. This new pedagogical approach shows up in a variety of ways both inside and outside our classrooms. For instance, our students role-play leaders of the French Revolution in elaborate simulation games, they contribute to original political surveys of Coloradans, they intern with local political organizations, they design their own social science experiments, and they publish in the undergraduate-led Colorado Political Science Review. One of our most exciting learning-by-doing initiatives is the STUDIO Research Lab, through which undergraduate students are paid to work on original research projects with CU faculty. STUDIO is the brainchild of my colleague, Sarah Wilson Sokhey, and we describe the exciting success and growth of STUDIO in an article in this newsletter.
Not coincidentally, our department has recently graduated some amazing young people. In 2019 Serene Singh received the prestigious and internationally competitive Rhodes Scholarship before graduating with her BA in Political Science and Journalism. A year later yet another one our seniors, Jake Regan, was chosen to become a Rhodes Scholar. (Two Rhodes Scholars in two years is a record that I would proudly put against any department—in any discipline anywhere in the world!) Finally, this past spring Kavya Kannan, herself a Rhodes finalist and the CU Student Body President, received the CU College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Graduate Award as she completed her triple major in Political Science, International Affairs, and Economics. Kavya was kind enough to let us interview her for an article in this newsletter.
Amidst these achievements in teaching and student life, our faculty have been researching and publishing away. Since 2018 our faculty have won five different best-book awards. We will describe one of these books in each of our newsletters. In this article, my colleague Jennifer Fitzgerald talks about her book Close to Home: Local Ties and Voting Radical Right in Europe, which was named the best book on European politics and societies in 2018. Given the nature of the times, her book is on an important topic, so I’d encourage you to read it! I’m also certain you’ll be fascinated by the research of our newest assistant professor, Alexandra Siegel. Alex recently published an article in our discipline’s flagship journal about religious prejudice, politics, and … soccer! What could be more interesting?! Read about it in our article on Alex’s research.
These successes notwithstanding, we have faced obstacles in recent years. Many of our students struggled academically, financially, and emotionally during the COVID crisis, as did students on college campuses everywhere. To provide some assistance, our department awarded roughly $30,000 in donor funds to undergraduates last year, and you can read about one of those scholarship recipients, Parker White, in this article. There are a variety of ways you can help out: DONATE to our student scholarship and/or faculty research funds, share your ideas for advancing CU Political Science with me, and don’t be a stranger when you’re in Boulder!
Enjoy, and please feel free to forward this newsletter to friends and family who might be interested!