In developing the theme of this meeting, “Political Science and Public Life: Knowledge, Politics, and Policy,” the program chairs highlight the current and possible contributions of political science research to politics and policy. They note that political scientists in all subfields produce analysis and research with important implications for the political activities of the public and policymakers, yet that political scientists infrequently extend into a dialouge with these audiences about the implications of political science.

PS: Political Science and Politics is now available in the JSTOR Archive of scholarly journals as part of JSTOR's Arts & Sciences II Collection. This multi-disciplinary collection contains titles and disciplines that complement those in the Arts & Sciences I Collection.

In Golde and Dore's succinct analysis, “doctoral programs and doctoral students are operating at cross purposes.” (2001, 44) While many factors contribute to this assessment, two are especially germane to the Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) initiative: the question of mismatch and the limited notion of scholarship emphasized in many doctoral programs.

All teachers develop their own ideas about teaching and learning, but most of us have too few opportunities to focus directly on those ideas. Over the past few years, teaching a course on college teaching for graduate students has given me such an opportunity. Two years ago, my participation in a panel at the Midwest Political Science Association meetings provided a chance to pull together some of my thoughts about the role of the teacher. This essay presents some of those thoughts.

The APSA Council has approved a motion by President-elect Theda Skocpol to establish a nine-member Task Force on Graduate Education in Political Science.

The Task Force has been asked to study the issue of graduate education and to prepare a formal report for the August 2003 Council meeting in Philadelphia.

While I have won eight teaching awards—two of them national—the thought that I am capable of conveying pearls of wisdom about teaching seems as ridiculous today as it did when I started teaching 12 years ago. I do, however, feel comfortable sharing one “secret” of my success. My advice to new teachers is always as follows. Turn it inside out: Focus on the students as great learners, not on yourself as a great teacher.

APSA is pleased to announce the release of Voting Behavior: The 2000 Election by Charles Prysby and Carmine Scavo.

The political science department at the University of Illinois at Chicago had been planning two years ago to revise our graduate program even before we received the Preparing Future Faculty Program (PFF) grant. We were revising our curriculum because of the arrival of new faculty and our switch from a more specialized multi disciplined public policy analysis Ph.D. to a more general political science Ph.D.

The 2002 Annual Meeting will feature addresses by David Mayhew of Yale University and Hugh Heclo of George Mason University. Committee chairs of the three-member James Madison and three-member John Gaus award committees made their annoucements in early Spring.

Linda Lopez has joined APSA as a staff political scientist and program director. Lopez leaves Chapman University inCalifornia where she served on the political scence faculty as an assistant professor. Lopez is an active scholar, teacher, and academic administrator. Her scholarly interests include attention to the interface of racial and ethnic politics and public policy making, especially related to law and public policy. She has most recently been director of the Legal Studies Program at Chapman, and is currently a member of APSA's Committee on the Status of Latinos y Latinas in the Profession. Lopez received her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in 1999.

Academics often treat political crises as “teachable moments.” They step back from their syllabi and use breaking events in the “real world” to spark classroom discussions that engage their students and also help them see aspects of the planned course material more clearly.

I became a member of the PFF steering committee as the graduate student representative at UIC. In that role, I have been actively participating in roundtable discussions dealing with PFF at both the American Political Science Association and the Illinois Political Science Association meetings, which has enabled me to supplement my curriculum vita. For the spring 2001 class, I was responsible for compiling all of the teaching portfolios for the students participating in the program at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Essential components of the PFF training include writing a teaching philosophy statement, building a curriculum vita, creating a teaching portfolio, and encouraging students to attend and participate in political science conferences. I made sure that each portfolio contained certain vital elements: a curriculum vita, sample course materials, past student evaluations, and peer evaluations. I informed the students whenever I discovered that one of these elements was missing. This responsibility reinforced for me the importance of a properly compiled portfolio, especially in the context of a job interview.

The international policy strategist Ralph Bunche once said, “If you want to get an idea across, wrap it up in a person.” Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey, the award-sweeping documentary that restores his extraordinary legacy, heeds its hero's advice and showcases two-thirds of the twentieth century through Bunche's life's arc (1903–71).

This article provides additional information on community college tenure-track opportunities for job candidates in political science who might be considering expanding their searches to include posts at two-year colleges. I write from the perspective of the successful community college job-search candidate, and provide reflections and advice relating to three areas of the community college job search and teaching environment. In the first section I discuss my decision to seek a position at a two-year college and I address the dilemmas of professional self-image that may face new Ph.D.s considering community college employment. The second section recounts key strategies and practices that I found successful as a candidate on the community college market. In the final section I describe what I have learned during my first year as a community college instructor, focusing on the specific adaptations I have made in creating a classroom environment that is academically challenging for advanced students yet not rigidly inaccessible to students with limited basic skills.

When I was asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up,” my varied responses never once included “college professor.” Unable to afford a direct path to graduate school after obtaining a B.A. in politics from Cornell College, I worked for several years, saved money and eventually enrolled in a master's program in public administration. My goal at the time was to obtain a management-level position with a government agency or nonprofit organization. While working on my M.P.A., I attended classes at night and worked full-time as a Continuing Education Program Coordinator at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Nearing end of my master's program, I accepted a part-time position as a teaching assistant for the UIC political science department. I viewed that position as simply a means to an end—a way to help finance my last semesters of graduate school. That “means to an end,” however, soon became my life's passion.

It is impossible to do justice to the full range of Kahneman's research in the limited space available here, and I restrict my focus to his research programs on judgment and on decision making. Each is defined by an extraordinarily influential article coauthored with Tversky: a 1974 Science article on “Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” (which was followed by a 1982 anthology with the same title with Slovic and Tversky, and a 1979 Econometrica article on prospect theory).

Perspectives on Politics is a general 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 articles aim to clarify for such an audience the political significance of accumulated research regarding a particular area of the world, an important policy problem, a deep normative conflict, or a significant institution or process; they may also demonstrate the insights that accrue from viewing politics from a distinctive viewpoint, method, or type of evidence.

The Preparing Future Faculty programs organized within the American Political Science Association are best understood as part of a larger effort to attempt to enhance doctoral professional training. Other initiatives include, but are by no means limited to, “Rostering” in APSA, the “Re-envisioning the Ph.D.” project funded by Pew; the “Responsive Ph.D.” initiative of the Woodrow Wilson Association; the “Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate;” and complementary “Preparing Future Faculty” programs at Emory, Syracuse and elsewhere. These efforts are based on a number of often implicit propositions which I shall briefly identify.

The following were major items addressed by the Executive Council at its April 26, 2002 meeting:

1. Proposed Budget for Fiscal Year 2003

2. Report of the Elections Review Committee

3. Report of the Public Presence Advisory Group

4. Civic Education and Engagement Initiatives

5. Proposal for a Mentoring Program for Women

6. Proposal for a Study of the Graduate Curriculum

7. Report from Lee Sigelman, editor of American Political Science Review

8. Report from Jennifer Hochschild, editor of Perspectives on Politics

9. Discussion of Family–Community–Friendly Initiatives

10. Discussion of the Minority Fellowship Program

11. Discussion of Publications issues, including the publication of committee reports in PS: Political Science & Politics