Research, teaching, and service are typically considered the three pillars of an academic appointment. Service, though, is considered a time – suck—there are so many committees that faculty are asked to serve on and administrative responsibilities that seem never ending. However, as a result of my recent service commitments (Director of Undergraduate Studies in the…
Category: teaching
Teaching Award Spotlight: Alexandra Cockerham from the Department of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences
How do you approach teaching (do you have some guiding principles you can share or tell me about you decide to set up your classes)? I have a number guiding principles for teaching and this orients my approach in the classroom. Regardless of whether students plan to conduct their own research, I encourage students to…
Research Spotlight: Telling Stories with Data
Over the past decade, there has been an increase in data-focused job opportunities for our social sciences students. Several programs are revamping analytics to produce effective data scientists for enterprises. Students are well-aware of an increase in the importance of data literacy and have shown great interest in learning it. Being literate with data and…
Teaching Spotlight: Connecting Class Content with Data
Substantive, upper division classes in political science provide huge opportunities to connect substantive questions and themes with data to encourage greater data literacy, critical thinking, and understanding of the social science process. For these reasons, I transformed my public opinion and political behavior course to one that focused on learning how to ask and answer…
Meet a Social Scientist: Jeff Brown from the Department of Urban and Regional Planning
Why did you decide to become an academic? I have always been fascinated by cities and their transportation systems. As a child in Southern California, I was fascinated by the freeway system and the Thomas Guides that people used at the time to find their destinations in a pre-GPS world. I soon became an expert…
Research Spotlight: Unequal Early Adulthoods: Wealth Disparities During the Great Recession
How did young adults fare during the 2008 real estate collapse and economic crisis? We know that younger families who were economically and racially disadvantaged had a greater amount of relative economic loss than their older counterparts. Consequently, there are signs that younger generations such as Millennials are more likely to delay the purchase of…
Graduate Student Spotlight: Harley Roe from the Department of Political Science
What department are you a graduate student in? I’m a member of the political science department. Why did you decide to go to graduate school? This is my second round of graduate school. I have an MA in International Studies from University of San Francisco that gave me a strong qualitative foundation, but I knew…
Award Spotlight: COSSPP Graduate Student Receives Oksar Morgenstern Fellowship
Political science Ph.D. candidate, Anastasiia Vlasenko, was recently awarded the Mercatus Center’s Oskar Morgenstern Fellowship. The Oskar Morgenstern Fellowship is a one-year program for doctoral students from any university and discipline who are interested in political economy. Her research interests include electoral politics and democratization, with a specialization in politics of Ukraine and Russia. She…
Graduate Student Spotlight: Justin Crofoot from the Department of Political Science
What department are you a graduate student in? Political Science. I study public policy and state politics. Why did you decide to go to graduate school? As an undergraduate student, I became passionate about investigating and discussing complex issues. This inspired me to pursue a career as a professor. Throughout graduate school I have been…
Meet a Social Scientist: Dawn Carr from the Department of Sociology
Why did you decide to become an academic? Initially, I didn’t want to become an academic. I was raised by an academic (my father) and was intimidated by the idea of fitting the mold of what I saw of academia at that time in history. That said, as I was completing my master’s degree, I…
Wicked Problems, Wicked Solutions 