Political Science Educator: volume 28, issue 1
As another spring semester comes to close, I want to reflect on our accomplishments and our future as a section.
Work on updating the mission statement for the section is ongoing.
I am proud to announce that two candidates proposed by the section will be on the ballot over the summer to serve on American Political Science Association Council: J. Cherie Strachan from the University of Akron (who was nominated by the section) and Julie Mueller from Southern Maine Community College (who was nominated by the section and by the APSA Status Committee on Community Colleges in the Profession). I encourage everyone to vote for both candidates to ensure the role of teaching-focused faculty in the APSA transition to a new Executive Director.
Please consider attending the Teaching and Learning Conference at APSA 2024 conference in Philadelphia and the upcoming standalone TLC (which the location and dates will be announced soon). The TLC at APSA conference offers an outstanding opportunity to work with your colleagues to advance the scholarship of teaching and to build relationships for future projects. Last year at APSA in Los Angeles, we offered small travel grants to graduate students attending TLC at APSA and may continue that this year if the section can ensure the graduate students’ attendance at the TLC. In the future, the section is considering working with APSA to waive the registration fee for graduate students attending the TLC and create a mechanism to ensure their attendance at the TLC and the section business meeting.
The section also hopes to expand our outreach to better serve the needs of faculty in teaching-centric institutions. The Executive Committee continues to discuss several initiatives to increase diversity within the section:
- We are looking to expand the TLC at APSA travel grants for graduate students, contingent faculty, community college faculty, and faculty with teaching-focused appointments.
- We are considering creating ad-hoc subcommittees within the section mirroring the APSA-wide status committee (for example, Women and Politics, New Immigrant, LGBTQ, Community College, etc.). The goal for ad-hoc subcommittees would not be to duplicate the work of others but to ensure these subcommittees remain teaching-centric. These subcommittees could issue white papers to air concerns specific to different faculty needs or specific to the pedagogy linked to teaching demographic-specific courses.
- One of the most interesting ideas percolating in the Executive Committee, discussed briefly at the section business meeting in Los Angeles, is the creation of micro-credentials for teaching and political science pedagogy. Micro-credentials could create criteria and a mechanism for issuing credentials for attending APSA short-courses and APSA/PSE co-sponsored Teaching Symposia, completing pre and post course online modules, attending a certain number of PSE panels, and/or attending the PSE business meeting. There are several questions remaining. How would we use APSA funds to pay section members for their labor to develop the curriculum and oversee the work? Can APSA host such online modules and can we get some of them included in the APSA conference? How would costs be handled? How and in what form would credentials or certificates be awarded to ensure that PSE gets proper credit rather than just APSA?
Do you have any suggestions for these initiatives? What other issues should the Executive Committee consider?
It will soon be time to seek nominees for section leadership. I encourage you to consider a role in leadership. My colleagues on the Executive Committee are some of the most dedicated and thoughtful people that I know in the discipline. Our sole mission remains growing the section in a way that best serves our members. The service within the section will be noticed, valued, and rewarded.
Finally, I wish to recognize my good friend and former PSE President, Terry Gilmour from Midland College for her much-deserved award for teaching excellence. To others within the section who have also earned awards for their teaching and mentoring, you rightfully possess our admiration and our congratulations.
Joseph W. Roberts
(jroberts@rwu.edu)
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Joseph W. Roberts is Chair and Professor of Politics and International Relations at Roger Williams University. He is also the president of the Political Science Education section of the American Political Science Association.
