Giving in Action: Political Science

Every gift to the Department of Political Science makes a difference. Your donation helps our students succeed, opens avenues for innovation, and funds research that benefits our communities among numerous other avenues that matter most to our donors, students or faculty.

 

The CU Political Science Department conducts research and teaches courses on politics in Colorado, the U.S. and abroad. Our undergraduate program follows a rigorous learning-by-doing curriculum that gives students opportunities for hands-on, applied learning. In the past four years alone, we have graduated two Rhodes Scholars. Our graduate program trains PhD students for the academic market, and recent graduates have secured tenure-track jobs at Harvard University, University of Chicago, University of Iowa, and more. Finally, our faculty are renowned leaders and scholars at the top of their respective fields. Members of our department have won five best-book awards since 2018. We use your support to fund scholarships for undergraduates and graduates, especially those in financial need. Thank you!

Andy Baker, Chair, Department of Political Science

Student Support

 

50

Graduate students received funding

 

14

Honors scholarships awarded, totaling $10,500.

The Political Science Honors Student Scholarship is a yearly award given to our honors track seniors after they successfully complete their first semester of research for their undergraduate theses. 

 

39

Freshman scholarships awarded, totaling $19,500.

This scholarship is a tool to recruit talented high school seniors to CU Political Science and goes to students with strong high school academic records and demonstrated financial need.

 

1

Other scholarship awarded

Studio Research Lab

The STUDIO research lab was officially launched in 2020 to provide top-notch hands-on training for undergraduate students in social science research. We admit undergraduates as STUDIO fellows who are matched with faculty projects and paid to work as research assistants. STUDIO fellows attend lab-sponsored professionalization and socialization events, present their research at CU and outside the university, and submit their work for publication.

Emerging Faculty

The Need for Speed

Professor Adrian Shin seeks to answer questions surrounding the use of public transportation in connecting people together through a study of the high-speed railway (HSR) in Spain. Through this collaborative project with PhD Candidate Alberto Burgos-Rivera, Shin asks 鈥淲hat are the effects of HSR lines on population movements and individual attitudes toward regional autonomy and independence? How do these demographic dynamics shape the politics of identities and political relationships between the central and regional governments in Spain?鈥  

Learning about the Graduate Student Teaching Assistant (TA) Experience

How can undergraduate students and graduate students work better together?  Professor Sarah Sokhey and Professor Megan Shannon are conducting research to answer this question. They explain that 鈥渓earning more about the TA experience can help TAs meet classroom challenges and ultimately improve undergraduate education鈥 which distinguishes it from much of the literature on how graduate students and undergraduate students engage with each other from the perspective of the graduate student, rather than the undergrad. This will offer new insights into the classroom experience at 兔子先生传媒文化作品.  

Electoral Politics and Extreme Interethnic Attitudes

How do elections shape the ways that people feel about each other? While elections are the cornerstone of democracy, they can also intensify negative feelings that different groups have toward each other. Professor Jaroslav Tir, who is working to help us understand how self-proclaimed ethnopolitical rivals respond to each other in the context of democratic elections, writes, 鈥淧aradoxically, elections may be both a foundational element of democracy and a source of potentially problematic and destabilizing attitudes. Such attitudes arise from divisive campaigns and electoral results that separate people into winning and losing camps.鈥

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