• They encourage "learning by doing" through close faculty-student mentoring. As a result, our students have had significant success in obtaining tenure-track positions both at research universities such as University of Chicago and University of Michigan and liberal arts colleges such as Middlebury and Wellesley. On the strength of our placements, a recent ranking in PS: Political Science and Politics places our department among the top 20 political science graduate programs in the country.
  • The requirements of the program are designed to provide opportunities to our students to develop and practice the skills necessary to become successful researchers. We offer a variety of substantive courses in three major fields - American government and politics, Comparative politics, and International relations - from which students discover and develop their own substantive interests.
  • Through our methods training, students develop the sophisticated methodological tools they need to pursue their research puzzles and questions. Besides coursework, students present a paper at a poster session in spring of their second year, and write and present a scholarly paper in the departmental speaker series in the fall semester of their third year.