THE PRESENTATION

As children learn from their parents, graduate students learn from faculty in their department. In the case of conferences, graduate students are socialized over time to adopt cardinal conference sins (King Reference King2006). The first year that students are accepted to present at a conference, they work diligently to produce a paper that can be submitted by the published deadlines for uploading papers or delivering materials to discussants. Then, time is spent learning how to produce a 12-minute presentation with slides and data analysis that will potentially catch the eye of a reputable scholar in the discipline. Students may opt to practice the presentation in an empty room or to an audience from their department to ensure that nothing will “crash and burn.” ^{Footnote 1}

Once at the conference, graduate students may encounter different issues—for example, a meager and silent audience, a discussant who provides little or no feedback, or a panel that is missing all but two presenters. With any luck, students also will see that others have prepared far less than they did, which will adjust their assumptions about future conferences. In the second year, graduate students will procrastinate but will still make a concerted effort to meet deadlines as required by the conference or panel chair. In the third year of attending, the thought process follows a vague guideline of eventually finishing the paper, even if it means delivering it to the discussant a day or two before the presentation. Additional experiences may lead to questions that further detract from the original meaning of the conference: Does it really matter whether a paper is posted online? Will anyone show up for my presentation? If they do, will anyone ask me a question? For graduate students, incentives should still come from the desire to do well on the job market, but these negative norms are largely instilled from watching other scholars follow similar patterns of behavior to manage the “lumbering dinosaur” of political science conferences (Rom Reference Rom2012).

Graduate students generally leave a conference with three lessons related to the structural and behavioral norms of political science. First, conference deadlines mean little to political scientists. Proposal deadlines often are extended, and many scholars do not post a paper to the conference website by the recommended date (or at all). ^{Footnote 2} Unless senior scholars change this norm, it is highly likely that the trend will continue to be adopted by graduate students adjusting to the discipline (i.e., there is some desirability effect in wanting to look like others). Second, students learn that there is no real norm for participation by attending sessions that are not their own. Although this trend may be related to a lack of interest in the subject matter, it can also be linked to the lack of name recognition. On multiple occasions, I have been told to attend conference sessions that feature people I want to meet, not papers that I think sound interesting. This means that I might ignore panels composed of graduate students or new assistant professors. Others examining the program are likely to do the same, which means I should not expect an audience in my panels until I become the next Gary King or Elinor Ostrom. The third lesson that graduate students learn is to not expect to receive constructive feedback unless they are fortunate to be on the same panel with a senior scholar who draws a larger audience. Graduate students gain experience by presenting in front of an audience (even if it is small), but rarely do we return from a conference with a list of items to address in our papers to prepare them for publication.

NETWORKING

The second major goal of graduate students is (or should be) to meet others in the discipline. Networking can put a face with a name during the job-search process or lead to collaborative research opportunities. Long-term effects include references for tenure cases, multiple coauthorships, and other opportunities to serve in the discipline. Although graduate students often are encouraged to network with professors, this task is not for the fainthearted. Regardless of how approachable political scientists try to be, personalities and social skills are not common among academics. ^{Footnote 3} Graduate students who are risk averse may find it difficult to approach a professor and begin an interesting conversation. These individuals are more likely to spend time with peers they already know.

Even controlling for personality, it can be difficult for graduate students to network given the current structure of conferences for the reasons previously mentioned. Generally, graduate students perceive that the people worth meeting are already at a restaurant or pub, catching up and reminiscing about the “good old days.” Students are encouraged to attend sessions with people they want to meet; however, these interactions are not meaningful in many cases, especially if others want to meet the same individual. A quick introduction may be all that is possible in this setting before leaving for another panel or meeting. It is possible to find people at receptions designed to foster graduate student–professor interaction; the value of these interactions again relies on individual social skills. Of course, networking can be attempted after a conference. However, because it is unlikely that papers are posted, students have only a short presentation on which to base the beginning of a conversation (often via e-mail) with a scholar.

SOLUTIONS

Generally, the problems associated with the research and social goals of graduate students at conferences are related, first, to some need for interaction either in the form of reactions to research presentations, or in simply creating relationships with others in the discipline (Davenport Reference Davenport2013). Interactions certainly occur at conferences, but it is difficult for graduate students to break into existing groups. The second problematic trend occurs with taking conferences seriously, as opposed to a system of pseudo-deadlines that are as flexible as the individual needs them to be.

These problems can be addressed without requiring a shift in the norms of conferences in the discipline. In terms of generating high-quality papers and more stringent deadlines, Meier’s recommendation (in this issue) of a reward system is certainly one option (see also Rom Reference Rom2012). A second option is to require a higher level of investment during the proposal-submission process. The Academy of Management (AOM) requires “fully developed papers” to be submitted for review (AOM 2014). In my opinion, this may be a requirement that results in diminished quality; if a paper is fully written, the author is better off submitting it to a journal than waiting several months to present it at a conference. Furthermore, to complete the submission, the paper may be compiled at the last minute, resulting in a set of sloppily written papers for many panels. Even though an attempt at a rating system is used, reviews can sometimes be brief and provide minimal feedback.

A middle ground may be achieved with a system that requires more than a single paragraph but less than a full paper. For conferences in many other disciplines, proposals are 2,000 to 2,500 words in length and include documents with draft tables and references. The proposal then is assigned to three reviewers in a blind process, which is similar to the article-review system for journal submissions. Reviewers assign a value of 1 to 5 to each of the following characteristics ^{Footnote 4} :

• • importance of the topic to political science

• • originality of the work

• • quality of theoretical or conceptual framework

• • soundness of research design, analysis, and interpretation

• • reasonableness of conclusions and implications

• • likelihood that paper will be completed before conference

• • overall clarity of the proposal (i.e., writing, organization, assumptions, and logic)

Short comments from reviewers are welcomed but not required. Papers with the highest scores in each section are accepted for presentation. Posters may substitute for papers that are not appropriate for a traditional panel or for interesting proposals that are less likely to be completed in time for the conference.

Of course, the implementation of this system would likely generate negative feedback. Proposals would require more work initially and could not be completed at the last minute. Section heads also would be required to manage reviewers in assessing proposals, but this would also provide individuals with the experience of being an editor. Both professors and graduate students interested in attending the conference could review the proposals. The payoff for this time investment could be significant. Participants would be more likely to produce completed papers and show up to present them. Section heads would have a better way to evaluate papers and assemble more cohesive panels. If individuals are not willing to do the work, they simply would not be invited to the conference.

In terms of problems related to interaction, large conferences should adopt a system of “conferences within a conference,” or mini-conferences. This arrangement, which has been used by major associations in recent years, works best when one section hosts a series of panels in the same room for an entire day (or multiple days). Participants would have a greater incentive to stay because the panels align with their research interests. The sessions allow for a mix of graduate students and professors of all ranks. When a group of 20 presenters and audience members spend the day together (which works exceptionally well if lunch is provided), the presenters have a larger audience and receive meaningful feedback on how to revise their work for publication. Networking is increased among people of similar interests with less effort on the part of junior scholars to find those whom they want to meet. The entire atmosphere of mini-conferences would be more collegial. Even though the larger conference occurs simultaneously, an individual might attend two or three mini-conferences during the course of the larger event. Furthermore, so that they hold a similar weight to presentations, posters could be highlighted during one session in each mini-conference. Again, this would allow for more participants and encourage the exchange of ideas.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

At the risk of sounding cliché, it is a truism that graduate students are the next generation of scholars in political science. They can be trained and mentored to participate in the discipline and raise awareness of the relevancy of political science research, or they can be socialized to current norms by which isolation and complacency produce a subpar national network of scholars. This results in research that is irrelevant to the field; our discipline is already fighting the notion that it has no meaning for policy makers and practitioners. Participating in conferences is one of the first systems through which graduate students are socialized to the norms of political science outside of their own department. Presently, graduate students are learning by example that deadlines and serious scholarship are taken for granted and that meeting other scholars at these events is not guaranteed. If conferences are not valued, they may lose to market forces that will enable virtual communication to replace disciplinary norms. Although there are advantages to the technologies, we will become more insular as individuals and as a discipline—emphasizing the ways that we are irrelevant to observed relationships with government and politics in the real world.

Instead, graduate students should learn to emulate serious scholarship and cordial professional networks. In national conferences, where the size of meetings adversely affects the quality of research presentations and networking abilities, structural adjustments can be made that address both issues. Grander proposal requirements and conference commitments, as well as the mini-conference structure, are changes that can be implemented easily within existing systems. These changes may be a step in the right direction for solving long-standing issues that surround conferences and they would not require any significant alteration of the current system so as to create a rift among scholars.