In Memoriam: Bruce R. Andrews, Fred G. Burke, Andre Gunder Frank, Ralph M. Goldman, Judy Emily Gruber, Fred Holborn, and Wallace Mendelson

Jewel Limar Prestage recently retired from academia after five decades of a professional career as a political scientist. Through teaching, mentoring, research, and service, she has had a profound influence in the political science discipline and on the lives of thousands of students.

It is often advised to “know your audience” before giving a lecture, and this is especially important when we lecture to students. Moreover, knowing your audience is critical in quantitative analysis courses, where it can be especially challenging to teach mostly math-phobic students. But it is in quantitative analysis courses where faculty may know their audience the least. While many subfields in the discipline have implemented pedagogical innovations such as seminar-style discussion, simulations, and even learning communities, quantitative methods courses seem to be the last hold-out for the traditional lecture format.

G. James Fleming was a quiet, unassuming man who lived an exemplary life, made a big difference in society, and impacted on many lives across the country and abroad. A search of the archives reveals that very little written record on this impressive individual is readily available. In discussions with many that knew him, they had only kind words to say, but nothing in writing that could be shared. It is hoped that this paper will add to the written record and further memorialize a pioneer.

Over a career that spans the late 1960s to the present, APSA President Ira Katznelson has mounted a long and fruitful interrogation of political liberalism in the United States and Europe—asking for definition of its many forms, their origins, their strengths and weaknesses, and what kinds there can be. In doing such work, Katznelson has reframed several consequential phenomena and issues. They include African-American political incorporation over the course of the 20th century and the role of partisan strategy and policy design (as opposed to racial attitudes among Whites) in structuring such incorporation, the roots of American exceptionalism in the lived experience of “class,” and, most recently, the surprising extent to which rational choice and historical institutionalism conceptually overlap.

The use of active learning strategies can involve students with course material in ways that the traditional lecture can not. As described by Bonwell and Eison (1991), active learning requires that students engage in activity (other than listening) that emphasizes the development of cognitive skills through higher order thinking tasks such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. There are numerous ways to integrate active learning strategies in the classroom, including: collaborative or group exercises, experiential learning, guided discussion, computer-based instruction, peer-to-peer teaching, and participant demonstrations. Incorporating active learning exercises into course curriculum can have a powerful effect on the development of learning skills. The benefits of active learning for students include an increased motivation to learn, increased responsibility for learning, improved attitudes toward learning, better interpersonal skills, and an increased ability to appreciate and consider a variety of perspectives (Jacobs, Power, and Inn 2002).

Executive Director's Report, News and Notes, PS Political Science & Politics January issue preview, Washington Insider, and Perspectives on Politics December issue preview.

The Homestead Act of 1862 enabled the great grandparents of Merze Tate (Harris 1981) to migrate from the east in Ohio into central Michigan. Many other blacks, whites, and immigrants from northern Europe also migrated to central Michigan. The Homestead Act provided 160 acres of unoccupied public land to each homesteader for a nominal fee after five years of residence.

The Internet and other electronic media have changed the way undergraduate students conduct research. The effects of this technological change on the role of the professor are still not well understood. This article reports on the findings of a recent study that evaluated the scholarly content of student citations in a political science course and tested two interventions designed to improve their quality. The study finds that these students' use of electronic sources was not as poor as some may have assumed, and that the quality of bibliographies improved when in-class instruction was combined with academic penalties. This article reflects on the study's findings, and offers suggestions for how instructors might encourage students to improve the quality of their research.

The final chapter on the 2004 presidential election may not yet be written, but it is not too soon to look ahead to the 2008 contest. Public pollsters have been assessing opinions about the 2008 campaign for months already. Given the importance of frontrunner status in an increasingly frontloaded presidential primary system (Mayer 2004), the 2008 race has already begun for many prospective candidates, parties, and voters. In this article I analyze early public opinion polling data available from the Roper Center's IPOLL database about the 2008 race to determine the frontrunning candidates (at least through June 2005) and to reflect on the preliminary dynamics of the next presidential race.

It is indeed an honor and privilege for me todiscuss the careers of two outstanding early black political scientists—Twiley and Lucius Barker. They have both singularly and jointly plowed and tilled the fields for other young black political scientists to follow. I consider myself as one of their followers—young I am not, but a follower I am.

The scenario is as unpleasant for the teacher as it is for the student. After spending countless hours trudging through a stack of mind-numbingly repetitive bluebooks, the teacher has finally returned graded midterm exams to her class. With grading safely in the past, she gleefully returns to other teaching, publishing, and personal responsibilities. At least she tries to—until a concerned student appears at the office door asking her to explain the points she assigned to a given answer. She flips to the relevant page of the bluebook and discovers no comments in the margin. The teacher is now on the spot to rack her brain for the reasoning that justified the score she assigned several days or even weeks before and explain to the student clearly and accurately why he did not receive full credit. The student is in a likewise awkward position, wondering how much thought went into the grade the first time around.

James C. Garand, the Emogine Pliner Distinguished Professor of Political Science, recently completed his term as President of the Southern Political Science Association (SPSA). His presidential address, entitled “Fragmentation and Integration in Political Science: Exploring Patterns of Scholarly Communication in a Divided Dis ci pline,” given at the SPSA annual meeting in New Orleans, will be published in the November issue of the Journal of Politics.

CFP announces 2005–2006 Fellows, AAUP issues statement on academic boycott (with APSA response), APSA Nominations 2006 (including nomination form), Center PAGE, In the News, and In Profile: Jennifer Nou.

The 2004 Conference for Political Science Department Chairs was dedicated to discussing the strategies available to chairs who are dealing with growing budget constraints. Themes included declining state budgets, surviving administrative mandates, tradeoffs of using adjuncts, and supporting professional development. APSA President Susanne Rudolph opened the conference, noting the theme is both relevant to the discipline and valuable for political science department chairs. Susan Pharr, Departmental Services Committee (DSC) chair, moderated the panel, which consisted of Michael Baer, Stephen Majeski, Shirley Geiger, Donald Baumer, and John Brehm. The Conference drew over 65 attendees to hear the five presentations and to consider concrete suggestions for how to operate efficiently under a shrinking budget. Given the widespread interest in the topic, the DSC has asked that the participants publish their findings in this symposium.

A. Leroy Bennett, age 90, professor emeritus of political science and international relations at the University of Delaware, died from complications of pneumonia November 9, 2004. Lee taught at the University of Delaware from 1962 until his retirement in 1991 and continued his research and publication activity to the very end of his life, publishing the seventh edition of his widely used International Organizations: Principles and Issues in 2002.

In 1997, lobbyists for the Independent Insurance Agents of America, under pressure from then Senate Banking Committee Chair Alfonse D'Amato (R-NY), threw in the towel and agreed to negotiate with their long time enemies, the banking and Wall Street investment industries, on new laws structuring the financial industry for the 21st century. Their compromise removed a major legislative barrier to facilitating the emergence of large, one-stop shopping financial corporations. More surprisingly, the Consumer Federation of America and other public interest groups also started bargaining over the shape of the consumer protection laws governing these new institutions. Getting something through bargaining, they believed, was better than letting the financial industry write these laws themselves. Not all consumer groups participated in these negotiations or gave support to the final bill; there were just not enough consumer protection provisions included to please their ideologically motivated members. Nor did every banking and insurance agent organization support the final deal, largely because their members felt threatened by the prospect of an industry dominated by a few financial behemoths. Yet the final interest group coalition that drove the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 across President Bill Clinton's desk was truly surprising in its ideological breadth.

It should come as no surprise that both the amount and pace of administrative work that departments must accomplish at almost all higher education institutions has increased substantially over the past 10 years. If this is news to you just talk to your department administrator—if she/he has time to have a pleasant conversation. After all, for most institutions, operations budgets have been cut and professional and classified staff have been reduced, while at the same time, administrative work has escalated in response to increases in student enrollments, greater demands for accountability, the increasing importance of fund raising efforts, and the generation of sponsored research. No wonder that the lives of department chairs, administrators, and other professional and classified staff have become more challenging. The increase in administrative work at the department level is largely a function of increases in administrative mandates.

Valerie A. Earle, professor emeritus at Georgetown University, died at the age of 85 on August 20, 2004. Her death came unexpectedly because of heart problems.

Ever since I have been involved in higher education, I have noticed a consistent cyclical pattern in state funding of higher education. Would that this were the pattern of the future! Although funding has historically been cyclical, since the 1970s the proportion of a state's budget dedicated to higher education has shown a steadily declining trend, from 9.8% in 1980 to 7% last year (Schmidt 2004). We are witness to a changing pattern in the relationship between the states and higher education. Higher education is increasingly viewed as a private rather than a public good, and this evolving perception will substantially impact both public and independent institutions. Tuition will become more comparable and competitive.