Using Alumni Views to Connect the Past, Present, and Future in Political Science

Abstract

This article describes the collection of views from political science alumni via a web-based survey as a central part of efforts to review and improve the curriculum and the broader political science program at a public university. Based on the literature and on interviews with faculty members and former students, we iteratively constructed a questionnaire containing five categories of items: program structure, content/knowledge, skills, outcomes, and learning environment. These categories were intended to capture curricular elements and outcomes that include but extend beyond employment and professional-skill attainment. Graduate students contributed in meaningful ways to the effort through a research-methods course. The article discusses how results of the survey fed into the curriculum-revision process specifically and program review and assessment considerations more generally. D espite much initial (and some ongoing) pushback against externally mandated assessment in recent decades, political science has a history of evaluating program quality and student learning and engagement (Deardorff 2016b;Young 2016). More recent overviews of these assessment efforts include the Wahlke Report (Wahlke 1991), Assessment in Political Science (Deardorff, Hamann, and Ishiyama 2009), and the January 2016 Profession Symposium in this journal. As broadly construed, assessment has become a common part of the landscape in political science departments and has assumed a variety of different forms including but extending beyond assessment of student learning (Deardorff 2016b;Young 2016). Within this context, we developed curriculum-review procedures that contribute to a more general program review, which is itself a form of assessment (Deardorff 2016a). Whereas others discuss models for organizing a political science curriculum (e.g., McClellan 2015), this article describes procedures for collecting data from program alumni to inform a curriculum review and for feeding this information into broader, ongoing assessment activities.We designed a questionnaire (see the online appendix) and data-collection procedure that allow for systematically gathering relatively low-cost information while also serving pedagogical goals by engaging students in a service-learning project. The questionnaire balances professional skills and outcomes (recognizing pressures to consider employment outcomes) against other benefits of higher education. This article describes the process of developing and administering the instrument as well as applying the results. This survey was only one input-albeit a vital one-in the curriculumreview process. Though others may want to modify the instrument and procedure for their own particular contexts, we hope that our discussion provides an advanced launching point for such efforts. ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Using Policy Briefs as Assessment to Integrating Research-Led Employability in Foreign Policy Courses

“…The key elements of synthesis and analysis are honed via the use of policy briefs according to Penncock (2011). Feedback from alumni highlights that they would have welcomed the opportunity to engage with shorter pieces of writing that were more akin to the tasks they had to produce in their graduate jobs and chimes with feedback I have received and is discussed in the literature (Raile et al 2017).…”