Major & Minor
The Department of Political Science offers two program options:
We have a strong tradition of providing undergraduate instruction of the highest quality. Many of our faculty have received all-university teaching awards. We offer a wide range of diverse classes from lecture-based instruction to smaller seminars, as well as an internship course.
Political scientists concern themselves with topics such as:
- Exercise of power and influence
- Sources and resolution of conflict
- Politics in the economy
- Culture and society
- Adoption and implementation of public policies
- Development of political systems over time
- Normative judgments in which institutions, policies, and actions are evaluated
These topics are studied at all levels, from local communities to the global community.
However politics is defined, it is clear that actions in the political arena have vital effects on our lives, liberties, and well-being. From this standpoint, political science deals with how we reach the collective decisions that shape our common fate.
The purpose of a liberal arts education is to provide a multi-faceted understanding of the complex, richly textured world in which we live. This world is increasingly being shaped by political factors and forces; to understand, to participate in, and to help to shape it requires that we comprehend the nature, the causes, and the consequences of these political phenomena. Political science deals rigorously and intellectually with the all of the various problems and paradoxes of an increasingly politicized world.
Undergraduate Lulete Mola shares about her experience with professors, classes, academic programs, and new opportunties.