Political Science Educator: volume 29, issue 1
Dear Colleagues,
I hope this message finds everyone well as spring terms wrap up in the coming weeks.
The Political Science Education Executive Committee has been busy with continuing and new initiatives this spring. As discussed at the Teaching and Learning Conference (TLC) and in the February newsletter, our major initiative this academic year has been the Political Science Pedagogy Certification initiative.[1] This is an exciting professional development opportunity where political science graduate students and faculty can earn up to three levels of certification in research-based pedagogy on select topics through a series of asynchronous, synchronous, and in-person modules and workshop opportunities. Pedagogy Fellow applications were due on April 25, and I’m thrilled to report that we had 12 colleagues apply for the generalist Pedagogy Fellow position and 31 apply for specialist positions. These numbers far exceeded our expectations. On behalf of the Section, I’d like to sincerely thank all who applied. Your interest and early commitment to this important initiative bodes well for its success. Again, thank you!
The PSE Executive Committee–together with Michelle Allendoerfer (APSA), Bennett Grubbs (APSA), and Terry Gilmour (past Section President)–are currently busy reviewing applications. We will have two review meetings in May and plan to announce Fellows by June 1, 2025. We anticipate that asynchronous courses will be available for enrollment by February 2026, with in-person or synchronous virtual short courses available by the Annual Meeting 2026 (in Boston).
Also on the agenda for May is finalizing the language for two new Section awards: an award for best new undergraduate textbook, and an award for best new Scholarship of Teaching and Learning book. These will be posted to the Section website before the 2025 Annual meeting and we anticipate will be open for nominations by October 2025.
Our final Executive Committee meeting of the academic year will be in June when we’ll decide on Section committee assignments based on responses to the Member Survey we ran last fall. I’d like to thank Committee members Young-Im Lee and Tavishi Bhasin for co-leading the Committee’s efforts in this area. If you were not able to complete the Members Survey in the fall, and would like to become more involved in the Section, please simply email your interest to me at mfeeley@ucsd.edu with “PSE Section Interest” in the subject line by June 1.
Finally, plans are moving along for the 2025 Annual Meeting (September 11-14), which will be held in Vancouver, BC. The Section Business meeting has been scheduled for 5:45-6:45 pm, Saturday, September 13, with the TLC at APSA reception scheduled immediately afterwards at 7 pm. We’re currently working on a hybrid option for the meeting for those not be able to travel to Vancouver.
We’ll send out a Section schedule for the Annual Meeting by early September, but please mark your calendars for the Business meeting and TLC now. For their commitment to the Section and their leadership as program co-chairs this year, I’d like to thank Najja Baptist (University of Arkansas) and Justin Lance (Presbyterian College), who are serving as Division Co-Chairs for APSA 2025, and Alison Rios Millett McCartney (Towson University) and Erin Richards (Cascadia College), who are serving as Program Co-Chairs for TLC at APSA on September 13.
In keeping with the overall 2025 Annual conference theme “Reimagining Politics, Power, and Peoplehood in Crisis Times,” the 2025 TLC at APSA theme is “Teaching Politics, Power, and Peoplehood in Crisis Times.” Specifically, Co-Chairs Alison and Erin ask that we all contemplate these questions as we prepare for TLC at APSA in September:
- How can political science educators advance students’ understanding of democracy and power dynamics within democratic systems as we prepare students to adapt to and address current crises and challenges facing democratic systems worldwide?
- What is the role of higher education in preparing future leaders and citizens to not merely participate in democratic governance, but also to develop, navigate, and debate the democratic innovations needed to meet new challenges and address threats from anti-democratic forces?
As they additionally remind us[2]: “Amid these new uncertainties, teacher-scholars can encourage and model democratic learning and skill-building in the classroom and in co-curricular spaces through educational options that include problem-solving, collaboration, compromise, information and media literacy, and critical thinking. Political scientists have the opportunity—and the need—to educate our students about the benefits, limitations, challenges to, and changing nature of democracy in the 21st century.”
I cannot think of a more important message to focus our efforts in the classroom, and beyond, in the coming weeks and next academic year. Thank you, Alison and Erin!
Best of luck to everyone as you wrap up the academic year, and looking forward to hopefully seeing many of you in Vancouver in September!
With all best wishes,
Maureen
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Maureen Feeley is a Teaching Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Science Department at UC San Diego. She has teaching and research interests in the areas of human rights, the politics of development, gender and globalization, electoral systems and minority representation, comparative public policy, and undergraduate teaching and learning. She currently serves on UCSD’s Council on Undergraduate Education and the Senior Council for UCSD’s Teaching and Learning Commons. She also serves on the steering committees for UCSD’s International Institute, UCSD’s Center for Advancing Multidisciplinary Scholarship for Excellence in Education (CAMSEE), and UCSD’s Human Rights and Migration minor.
[1] https://educate.apsanet.org/certification-in-political-science-education
[2] https://apsanet.org/programs/academic-professional-development/teaching/tlc-at-apsa/
Published since 2005, The Political Science Educator is the newsletter of the Political Science Education Section of the American Political Science Association. As part of APSA’s mission to support political science education across the discipline, APSA Educate has republished The Political Science Educator since 2021. Please visit APSA Educate’s Political Science Educator digital collection.
Editors: Colin Brown (Northeastern University), Matt Evans (Northwest Arkansas Community College)
Submissions: editor.PSE.newsletter@gmail.com
