To: Political Science Alumni From: Scott Bennett, Head Re: Political Science Department Update Date: November, 2010

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1 Department of Political Science College of the Liberal Arts Phone: The Pennsylvania State University Fax: Pond Laboratory University Park, PA To: Political Science Alumni From: Scott Bennett, Head Re: Political Science Department Update Date: November, 2010 I am pleased to share information and news on developments and events in the Political Science department over the past six months. We have many exciting things happening in all areas of the department relating to faculty, undergraduates, graduate students, visiting speakers, and national visibility. This is a brief summary of some of the many things going on. A fuller version of this update was presented to the Alumni Board of Visitors at our fall, 2010, meeting. If you should have any questions about specific items that are mentioned here, please feel free to contact me at sbennett@psu.edu. We appreciate your continuing interest in the department! 1. Spring 2010 hiring The department hired four new faculty members in Matt Golder and Sona Golder join the department in the subfield of Comparative Politics, and study the legislative processes of different countries, particularly European countries and the European Union. James Piazza joins the department in a joint appointment with Penn State s International Center for the Study of Terrorism. Professor Piazza studies International Relations with a focus on understanding the root causes of terrorism. David Lowery joins the department as the Miller LaVigne Professor of Political Science. Professor Lowery is a prolific scholar, with almost 150 articles and a 6 books to his credit. A scholar of American Politics, Professor Lowery studies interest groups, tax policy, and American public policy. 2. Our initiative in Online Education / World Campus for an Online Political Science BA was approved by the faculty senate Political Science will join select other departments in the College of the Liberal Arts in offering our B.A. degree online through Penn State s World Campus in We expect this initiative in online education to contribute to department links to new students across the country and abroad. 3. Our dual graduate degree program with Asian Studies was approved by faculty senate Students in the dual degree gain expertise both in the broad study of political science, and detailed knowledge of Asian language, politics, and culture.

2 4. Paterno Fellows program going strong The Paterno Fellows program is the College s new specialized honors program. Students can become fellows by achieving a high GPA and obtaining high grades in a specified set of courses. As the College assesses the first 2 years of the Fellows program, we learned that Political Science students make up 25% of the Paterno Fellows. Although the department is one of about 20 in the college, our students constitute 25% of the Fellows, reflecting their high achievement and ambition. We are currently in the process of developing our first research/senior seminars capstone experience courses for the first students in the first Fellows class due to reach their senior year in Some recent awards Grad student paper award: Julie Pacheco won the Best Graduate Paper Award from the American Political Science Association State Politics and Policy Organized Research section Book Award: Marie Hojnacki's co authored book "Lobbying and Policy Change: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why" was selected for the 2010 Epstein best book award from the Political Organizations and Parties section of the American Political Science Association. [coauthored with Frank Baumgartner, Jeff Berry, David Kimball, and Beth Leech.] Graduate students Eitan Tzelgov and Jon Moody received National Science Foundation dissertation grants. These highly prestigious awards give the students additional research funds that will help them complete more ambitious dissertations. 6. Selected fall events Bhutan s Prime Minister Jigme Y Thinly (PSU Master of Public Administration, 1974) came to campus and received PSU s Distinguished Alumni Award. While visiting, he talked with a group of undergraduate students from Political Science and Asian Studies. Vice President Joe Biden visited campus in late September. He spoke to a crowd of over 1000 in Alumni Hall in the HUB (there was also an overflow room with 300 people). The Political Science department was given a set of tickets which were distributed to members of Pi Sigma Alpha and the Political Science Association. The tickets gave the students VIP access, putting them towards the front of the room. Two years ago, in conjunction with our student alumni banquet, the Political Science Alumni Board of Visitors organized a ceremony to honor Lt. Michael P. Murphy. Lt. Murphy, a former Political Science undergraduate and Navy SEAL, received the Congressional Medal of Honor in 2007 for actions in Afghanistan. As part of that ceremony, we renamed the Political Science conference room (302 Pond Laboratory) as the Murphy Conference Room. In September, Dan and John Murphy (Michael Murphy s father and younger brother)

3 returned to campus in a visit arranged by Rich DiEugenio, PSU s Special Assistant to the President for Governmental Affairs. We had an hour long session in 302 Pond (the Murphy Conference Room) in which we discussed how the room was being used (by departments for regular meetings, for conferences, by students for regular meetings, for presentations). Three students from the Political Science Association joined Scott Bennett, Doug Lemke, Bruce Miller, the Murphy s, Rich DiEugenio, John Groenveld of the Navy League, and Gary Williams, the author of Seal of Honor (a book about of Michael Murphy). Since then, the PSU class of 2011 has voted to create the Lt. Michael P. Murphy/Penn State Veterans Plaza as the 2011 class gift. We have regular mentoring events with students; the most recent was a session about attending graduate school which was attended by 35 undergraduates. 7. Wrap up on graduate student placement, 2010 In a very tough academic job market, we had a terrific set of placements for our new Ph.D. recipients: Kanisha Bond: Assistant Professor, University of Maryland Julie Pacheco, Robert Wood Johnson fellowship, Ann Arbor, Michigan Martha Thomas, Assistant Professor, University of Vermont Emre Hatipoglu, Assistant Professor, Sabanci University, Turkey (a top private university in Turkey) Ekrem Karakoc, post doctoral fellowship, University of Montreal Andreea Mihalache, visiting Assistant Professor, Roanoke College 8. National Science Foundation Funding: PSU Political Science research funding is on the upswing The National Science Foundation released a report of what Universities were top in receiving research funding from the National Science Foundation. Overall, Penn State was 9 th out of all Universities in 2009 in total research funds received. The University had 12 programs that were in the top 10 nationally in receiving such funds. PSU Political Science was #11 out of all political science programs in receiving research funds from the National Science Foundation in Between we averaged 17 th. Between we averaged 26 th. 9. NRC Rankings: PSU Political Science ranked #5, #22 on two scales The National Research Council assesses graduate programs nationwide approximately every 10 years. The latest rankings were released in mid September, after many delays that had many scholars wondering if they would ever come out. These rankings are more systematic

4 (but less frequent) than the U.S. News and World Report rankings which some rely on for program assessment. PSU s political science department did very well in these rankings. Rankings were released on two scales. On the first S scale, based mainly on faculty productivity, citation of faculty, and graduate student accomplishment, we ranked 5th in the country out of 105 programs. On the second R scale, which incorporates information from reputation, we ranked 22 nd. To reflect that any ranking system has some inherent uncertainty (it is always difficult to decide exact positioning), the NRC actually released the ratings in a range in this report. Our ranges were that we fall between #3 and #7 in the country on the S scale, and #16 and #33 on the R scale. In the last ranking, in 1995, we were ranked 69. Political Science had the biggest increase in the College of the Liberal Arts from 1995 to the present. More details were included in an I sent to all members of our department after the rankings were released. A slightly edited version of the is below. Colleagues, As you may know, the National Research Council surveyed and collected data on departments for its Assessment of Research Doctoral Programs during the academic year. The longdelayed rankings report (delayed for repeated revisions of its methodology) is finally publicly available at The last prior report was issued in 1995, and we were ranked 69 in that survey. 105 Political Science graduate programs were included in this study. The biggest differences in this iteration vs. the ranking system used previously are that 1) there are two rankings, one labeled S and one labeled R, and 2) rankings are reported in a range based on simulations of the data (this reflects the uncertainty in any set of rankings). In general, the R ranking is informed by a regression based on reputation, while the S ranking does not use reputational information but only objective survey information on faculty productivity, program size, and other indicators. Political Science Overview Overall, the department was ranked very well, with an S ranking of 3 to 7, and R ranking of 16 to 33. Within the CIC (the Big 10 plus Chicago), PSU ranked 2nd of 12 on the S scale (behind only Michigan), and 6th on the R scale. The Dean noted in a Heads meeting today that Political Science had the biggest increase in the College from the 1995 survey. Although the rankings are based on data that is now 5 years old, this is a terrific showing for the department, and something we should be very pleased about. An Excel spreadsheet showing the rankings of other Political Science programs is attached. Looking at some of the raw indicators which went into the compilation of the rankings, we scored in the top 10% of the 105 Political Science programs on: Faculty publications per capita

5 Average citations per publication Median time to degree FYI, among several other highly ranked programs in the College, Anthropology, English, Political Science, Sociology and Spanish all ranked in the top 10% of comparison programs on the S scale. Another short summary of results with the top 25 programs (by S and R) graphed is at More on Methodology [This overview was written largely by Associate Dean Denise Solomon and Dean Susan Welch. A 65 page detailed methodological guide is available at the NRC website.] In general, the R scale has a reputational impact whereas the S scale is based only on the quantitative data about the department. R rankings are calculated through a regression model. In brief, the impact of 6 program features on rankings was inferred by having scholars rank random subsets of 15 programs on their quality. (Different reviewers received different lists of 15). This ranking was basically a reputational ranking, though rankers could consult the data on the six program features provided on the fifteen departments. The rankings were then used to infer the weights of the various features of departments as contributors to their excellence. So, for example, if Harvard was number 1 and Harvard ranked low on research but high on student support, then student support would have a bigger weight than research; or similarly if Harvard ranked high on program size but low on percapita publication, program size would receive a higher weight. These regression weights were then applied to the actual data of all the departments in that field to get the rankings. (So think of R for reputation, though it is a bit more complex than that). S rankings are also calculated by applying weights to program features. In this case, the impact of 20 features was based on a survey of respondents, within discipline, who indicated how important each of the 20 features are to defining program excellence. These respondents did not rank specific departments nor did they have departmental data. The aggregated weights for each of the 20 features were then applied to data collected by the NRC on each program, and that yielded the S rankings. These ratings are free of reputational impact. Rather than report a single ranking, the NRC report provides a 90% range within which the ranking is likely to fall based on Monte Carlo simulations. To generate this range, for both the S and R rankings, the ranking algorithm was applied to each program 500 times; each iteration was conducted on a random subset of the weighting data. In other words, every single program that was evaluated had 500 R rankings computed and 500 S rankings computed. These 500 rankings were then ordered from best to worst. The top 5% were lopped off, and the best next score is the 5th percentile score. The bottom 5% were lopped off, and last remaining score is the 95 percentile score. The 5th percentile and 95th percentile score give the range within which 90% of the 500 ranking outcomes falls. A wide spread indicates less consensus about the program's ranking; a tight spread indicates greater consensus about the program's ranking. So for

6 example, on the S scale anthropology had a very tight range, they were either number 1 or number 2 among the 82 departments. On the R scale, they had a larger range, from number 8 to number 19. Still quite good, but you don't really know exactly where they rank.