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         Miguel Centellas, Mount St. Mary’s University
         Jonathan C. Eastvold, Charleston Southern University
         Renee Bukovchik Van Vechten, University of Redlands
         Tyson D. King-Meadows, University of Maryland Baltimore County

Political Science’s “Mission” within the Curriculum 
Participants in the Core Curriculum and General Education track engaged in a spirited debate about a variety of crosscutting topics. Although political science’s “appropriate role” varies with the needs of different kinds of institutions, from community to liberal arts colleges, from religiously-oriented campuses to large public universities, various learning environments raise unique challenges to and expectations about how political science courses should serve an institution’s curriculum goals.

There was general consensus that our courses serve two fundamentally different functions, or “missions.” The first focuses on majors, who take a variety of courses in the discipline, at all levels, in integrated, department-specified curricula. The second focuses on undergraduates who have no intent to become political science majors. Our discussion focused on the difficulty of defining the purpose of a “general” undergraduate political science course that serves both populations simultaneously within a liberal arts framework.

One issue is the need to “justify” political science’s presence within the general curriculum. With pressures to improve undergraduate students’ performance in math, science, and other more “practical” or “useful” areas of learning—as well as pressures to reduce total graduation requirements—several presenters described pressures to drop political science requirements from core curriculum requirements altogether. One problem was external preconceptions that American government courses (the most common offering in “the core”) were redundant because such material is covered in high school. Many of us suggested instead that undergraduates, as adults, were uniquely positioned as “stakeholders” to appreciate an American government course.

Several of us urged seeking out courses beyond American government as points of entry into the core curriculum. We pointed to other important contributions political science makes to a liberal arts education: critical thinking skills, statistical literacy, an understanding of global issues, and an appreciation for the theoretical questions that have shaped political life for centuries. Some suggested that community colleges and small liberal arts colleges are particularly well suited to more flexibly address political science’s role in general education. Perhaps this could be a topic of future conference sessions.

The Better Making of Global Citizens
We also considered preparing students for global citizenship. We acknowledged the difficult task of teaching introductory classes to a diverse range of students. Overuse of American-specific references may suggest (falsely) that other polities deviate from the American golden standard. Core courses should enable students to understand the various ways citizenship is constructed. It is important to expose students to both theoretical relationships (what is possible) and empirical relationships (what has happened) connecting institutional design, citizen preferences, and policy outcomes. A properly designed core course encourages students to ask critical questions about the dynamics of citizenship inside and outside the American context.

We expressed concerns about the value of a political science as it relates to citizenship. First, concern about the civic value of political science: are there attitudinal, behavioral, or cognitive differences between majors and non-majors? Can we see such differences in students before and after completing a core course? Second, concern about the monetary value of political science: where do we fit within broader graduation requirements? How do we defend our “practicality” to students seeking jobs, companies seeking talented applicant pools, or legislators seeking to reduce higher education costs? Third, concern about the substantive value of political science: do we offer students a way of thinking and writing about non-political phenomenon in ways that uncover underlying premises about citizenship, power, or policy? Most agreed that an introductory course on American government was essential. Others were wanted to offer a second course in international relations, political theory, or comparative politics. In the end, we wrangled with whether our courses made students better informed, deliberative, and collaborative citizens.

We also discussed how concerns about the value of political science education reflected changing conceptions of academic culture (as the learning styles of today’s college student force changes in faculty teaching styles); where non-Americanists increasingly teach introductory courses in American government; where student and faculty bodies are more diverse; and where recent upheavals in the economy facilitate student enrollment pressures and downturns in faculty hiring. Overall, we agreed that courses within the core curriculum must prepare students to become better global citizens.

Engaging Political Science Students
We also addressed the need to engage students already determined to be bored. One critical task is to expose how important—and universally human—politics is. Some ideas included building pop culture references into the curriculum. These ranged from using American Idol as a vehicle for comparing Tocqueville and Marx to using The West Wing to illustrate concepts in American government. Another idea was to use service learning to engage students with “hands-on” experience. 

We drew a number of caveats from this discussion. First, pop culture must be used to teach rather than simply to entertain. One participant used American Idol as a springboard for a paper in which students were required to cite the required texts several times. Such an integrative practice is not simply a means of appearing relevant or hip; it is a hook that draws students into asking core questions about politics. Second, what we regard as contemporary culture may be dated. The West Wing was past its prime before today’s college freshmen entered high school. Its value as an instructional tool is not that it satisfies students’ need for pop culture, but that it presents political concepts in an attractive and emotionally engaging format. Third, not all college students are the same—especially in contexts with high percentages of nontraditional and lower-income students. Pitching examples at “millennial” students may exclude other students. Similarly, it is wrong to assume that all college students are “digital natives.” Because many students may have limited experience with computers, a teacher who pushes his or her class to do more online may find herself doing more technical support than lecture preparation.

We were divided between “traditionalists” and “nontraditionalists.” Traditionalists argued that efforts to engage students with pop culture betrayed the gravitas of our discipline; they questioned why such an approach is necessary, when political science has not traditionally needed to make itself “relevant.” Nontraditionalists countered that such integration bridges the emotional distance between students and the material; in their view, pop references are necessary for genuine learning (rather than soon-to-be-forgotten memorization).

New Technologies and Political Science Education
Students are often drawn to political science because theoretical questions, issues, or policies relate to them. Teachers can help students forge those connections with a variety of tools. When used judiciously, Internet, cellphone applications, broadcast programming, and other media can help students “plug into” course material and make meaningful connections with each other.

Though further research will show whether “millennial” is a proxy for “white, middle-class, privileged,” we acknowledge changes among traditional college students. One presenter offered evidence that today’s students want continual feedback and hands-on activities. Without transforming education into a consumer product—and accounting for subpopulations that do not fit the “millennial” profile—we can make courses more accessible by incorporating Internet-based assignments, video clips, simulations, contemporary examples, and social networking tools that many students recognize and use comfortably.

Course websites that promote interaction (beyond course management tools like Blackboard) build on students’ familiarity with online social networks and provide additional forums for student discussions and can create spaces for collaborative learning among students from campuses across the world. Still, teachers must highly structure planned activities to stress their academic nature. Those who experimented with these approaches reported positive responses from students and attested that learning outcomes were generally met. However, we acknowledged the need for further assessment of learning outcomes associated with assignments incorporating new technology.

Finally, not all students respond positively to technological tools, just as many professors discount the utility of such devices. As one of us pointed out, “Just because students can use tech, doesn’t mean they will; and just because we provide them the tools, doesn’t mean they’ll use them.” Being aware of students’ relative openness or reticence to new tools and patiently teaching them how to use them is critical.