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One of the key goals of any academic program is to ensure that skills taught in the classroom apply to post-graduate employment. Failure to do so can impact an academic department’s recruitment and retention efforts, strain relations with alumni and damage the institution’s reputation. Using interviews conducted during a faculty externship at a high-performing municipal government, this paper identifies soft skills employers expect students to have when entering the public-sector workforce, and offers suggestions for how to best prepare students for public-sector employment in light of these findings.

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Geographic polarization arises when partisan, or like‐minded, voters live in enclaves separate from voters of differing partisan behavior. Research studies at multiple scales of analysis suggest that geographic polarization most typically occurs regarding partisan voting behavior; however, few studies have analyzed polarization with a focus on policy preferences. This research examines same‐sex marriage policy through two statewide issues that shared the presidential election ballot in 2004. The results of that presidential election and these two ballot initiatives are examined in Cincinnati, Ohio, and counties in its surrounding Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) in both Ohio and Kentucky. A geographically polarized relationship was found between partisan results and same‐sex marriage results. In addition, the findings suggest that despite a close link between partisan voting and issue voting on same‐sex marriage, spatial clustering (geographic polarization) was identified of those who voted differently from their fellow partisans.

The region identified as the "South" arguably has been and continues to be the most politically interesting and analyzed region in the United States. Using election results and county maps of the eleven southern states, this study provides a spatial analysis of the counties in this region. Through the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), this study analyzes the 2008 presidential election using counties as the unit of analysis within these states. This exploratory study will provide data as to which candidate won each county as well as a "landslide" county map that denotes counties that supported a candidate by a margin of twenty percent or more. This study will also investigate the difference in county-level voting between the 2004 and 2008 election to see how the preferences of the electorates changed. Finally, a contextual analysis, using data gathered from the United States Census Bureau will identify county population demographics that help explain voting behavior as well as the change in vote between 2004 and 2008.