Join us on our mission!

Greetings!  My name is Andy Baker, Chair of the Department of Political Science. Our mission is to understand the political world and to equip our students and community with the skills for a lifetime of inquiry and engagement. If you would like to join us in this mission, pledging resources to our programs is an excellent way to become actively involved. Our goals include enhancing our students’ academic experiences through research opportunities and workshop and conference attendance, sustaining and strengthening our research activities, and strengthening connections with our local communities and the broader public. We welcome donations to support undergraduate and graduate scholarships and fellowships, research initiatives, and community outreach at the local, national, and international levels. Please consider contributing to a specific program area (below) or giving to the general political science fund that helps pay for outside speakers, purchase data, and hold events for alumni and our community partners. Please join us on our journey! 

How your gift makes an impact: 

Students

Your gift helps enable our students to attend national workshops and conferences, conduct research with our top-notch faculty, and be recognized for their achievements.

Research

Our faculty work together with graduate students to plan, conduct and present research on a wide array of questions such as what factors influence citizens to vote, why do people choose to engage or avoid political disagreement, and what factors people's views of climate change. Processes that constitute the research realm include drafting proposals, designing studies, conducting field work, implementing data collection and analyses, presenting findings, and drafting reports and papers. Your gift can help facilitate our students’ involvement in these research activities by providing stipends for field work, expanding access to national surveys and data, and supporting attendance at professional conferences to present research findings and network with other political scientists.  

How to Donate 

Gifts to the Political Science General Fund help support a broad range of activities and programs that reward academic and teaching excellence, strengthen our research capabilities, and help sustain education and community outreach activities that connect students and faculty with alumni and other members of the community. Recognition programs that support academic excellence include the annual graduate research presentation award, the graduate student paper prize, and supplemental stipends for students who receive national fellowships. Our annual teaching excellence award is given to one faculty member with an outstanding teaching record. The department is also working to extend our involvement in the community by providing timely forums for presentations, debates and discussions about important political events and issues of the day. 

Undergraduate Fellows Program: In fall 2014 the department will launch the Political Science Research Fellows Program, which is part of our initiative to strengthen the methodological skills and training of undergraduate political science majors. The program is organized around the principles of individualized instruction and research collaboration between talented undergraduates, faculty, and advanced graduate students. Goals include strengthening research and analytic skills through immersion in the research process and the formation of close professional relationships with individual faculty. The Davidson Family Fund provides support for this fellows program.

Davidson Family Fund: Contributions support attendance at conferences, visiting lectureships, publications, and undergraduate scholarships or graduate fellowships, stipends, or prizes. Note The Davidson Family Fund was created in 2003 by CU alumni Roger and Nancy Davidson to honor the memory of Henry W. Ehrmann and Curtis W. Martin, two of the department’s founding faculty members (1950s).

Political Science Legacy Fund: Contributions to this newly endowed fund will provide support for activities such as sending teams of undergraduates to participate in Model EU or Model Congress, travel stipends for undergraduates doing research abroad for Honors Theses, seed grants to graduate students to engage in pre-dissertation field work, and helping build teams of faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates who are engaged in focused research projects. The Legacy Fund also helps provide startup funds for faculty exploring new and exciting streams of research.

Jacob Van Ek Scholarship Fund: This fund, created in 1980, provides one scholarship each year to a high achieving political science undergraduate major in honor of Jacob Van Ek, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts from 1929-1959.

 

Graduate Program Gift Fund: Contributions support graduate program activities including sending students to conferences to present papers, purchasing specialized software and documents, funding research activities, recognizing outstanding scholarship and research, and bringing guest lecturers to campus.

Political Science Legacy Fund: Contributions to this newly endowed fund will provide support for activities such as sending teams of undergraduates to participate in Model EU or Model Congress, travel stipends for undergraduates doing research abroad for Honors Theses, seed grants to graduate students to engage in pre-dissertation field work, and helping build teams of faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates who are engaged in focused research projects. The Legacy Fund also helps provide startup funds for faculty exploring new and exciting streams of research.

Political Science Gift Fund: The department’s general gift fund was created in 1982 to support a broad range of departmental programs and activities including cutting-edge research, programs to recognize academic excellence among students, recognition of faculty teaching excellence, and community presentations and programs.

 Robert Vernon Stover Scholarship Fund: To provide a scholarship to a masters or doctoral student in the Department of Political Science at UCB in memory of Robert Vernon Stover.