One year ago, Ada Finifter completed her service as Editor of the APSR and I assumed the post, assisted by Elizabeth Cook, the new Assistant Editor, and Editorial Interns John Donaldson, Jason MacDonald, and Tricia Mulligan; our new editorial office opened at The George Washington University; Susan Bickford and Greg McAvoy, the new Book Review Editors, opened their office at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with a staff of Elizabeth K. Markovits, Maria Murray Riemann, and Carisa R. Showden; a new Editorial Board, 45-strong, was appointed and a six-member Executive Committee was named; and Cambridge University Press began publishing the APSR.

Honoring one of its former presidents, Mount Vernon Campus at George Washington University (formerly Mount Vernon College) unveiled a portrait of Victoria Schuck on October 11, 2002 in Merriweather Post Hall.

In March, 2003 APSA will publish its newest journal. Perspectives on Politics is a journal of political science that seeks to provide political insight on important problems, as it emerges from rigorous, broad-based research and integrative thought. The editors anticipate authors and readers primarily comprising political scientists, but also including journalists, policy analysts, public officials and their staff, and other social scientists.

The 50th class of APSA Congressional Fellows begins to settle into their congressional staff assignments, emerging as the proud survivors of an intensive, monthlong orientation that opened with daily seminars and concluded with a two-day advanced legislative process institute hosted by the Congressional Research Service. Joe Bowersox, a political scientist Fellow from Willamette University, described the experience as “policy and legislative boot camp,” but stressed that “for the political scientists, [it was] a tremendous opportunity to meet people they'd always read and heard about.”

Pi Sigma Alpha, the national political science honor society, is pleased to announce the winners of its twenty-first annual Chapter Activity Grants Competition. This is the biggest and most visible of Pi Sigma Alpha's awards programs in both the amount of funding allocated and the number of chapters benefitted.

The Roper Center is pleased to announce Public Perspective for the Classroom, a new program offering students of political science electronic access to the only magazine devoted entirely to public opinion and polling, published by the oldest and largest archives of polling data in the world.

In September 2003, the Bush Administration allowed the charter of the National Human Research Protections Advisory Committee (NHRPAC) to expire. APSA and other scientific societies wrote to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tommy Thompson urging the reinstatement of NHRPAC which had been ably advising HHS on ways to improve the protections of human participants in scientific research, including social science research. The Bush Administration did not reinstate NHRPAC and is in the process of establishing a new committee. Neither the timing nor composition of the committee are certain.

American Political Science Association

Annual Meeting

Wednesday, August 28, 2002

Boston, Massachusetts

Present: Robert Putnam (President), Theda Skocpol (President-Elect), Robert Holmes, Susan Clarke, Nancy Burns, Lawrence Dodd, Richard Brody, Kirstie McClure, Desiree Pedescleaux, Robert Kaufman, David Collier, John Jackson, James Scott, John Garcia, Doris Marie Provine, Kristen Monroe, Katherine Tate, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Valerie Martinez-Ebers, Ronald Schmidt, Sr., Margaret Weir, Mary Segers, W. Phillips Shively, Kathryn Sikkink, Lee Sigelman, Jennifer Hochschild, Michael Brintnall.

Nominees: Susanne Rudolph, Steve Macedo, Marsha Posusney, Gary Segura, Fran Hagopian, Martha Crenshaw, Margaret Levi, Wilbur Rich.

Not attending: L. Sandy Maisel.

Staff: Rob Hauck, Jeff Biggs, Linda Lopez, Rebecca Odum.