The Mission (and We Did Choose to Accept It, Didn't We?)

The University of California, Merced, is the tenth campus of the University of California system and the first American research university built in the twenty-first century. Classes began on September 5, 2005, with nearly 900 students. The ultimate planned size for the university is 25,000 students, although it will obviously take a few decades before this enrollment projection is met.

When the campus opened in 2005, there were no political scientists on the faculty. To rectify this shortcoming, we were both hired during this first year and arrived on campus at the end of the summer of 2006. We were not strangers to one another, as we overlapped in graduate school at University of California, Davis and kept in touch over the years. We were especially pleased to learn of one another's job offer and decision to accept. Each of us had his own reasons for coming to UC Merced, but perhaps the biggest consideration was to pursue the opportunity to build a political science program the way we thought one should be built.

We immediately got to work. Our short-term goal was to put political science on the map at UC Merced. To do this, we first needed to create a political science major and the accompanying courses as well as promote the field of political science within the university. The creation of the major and the “marketing” of political science within the UC Merced community were of particular short-term importance in the sense that political science was already behind several other related disciplines (e.g., cognitive science, economics, history, and psychology) in terms of campus presence and recognition. This initial disadvantage resulted from the fact that faculty associated with these disciplines had been on campus for at least two years prior to our arrival.¹

Fortunately, as we discuss below, the head start these other disciplines enjoyed also provided us with an important set of resources. Nonetheless, we needed to make the case that political science can and would be an important component of the intellectual, research, and educational life of the university.

UC Merced's primary goal is to become a comprehensive world-class research university. Our long-term mission as a political science program dovetails with that of the broader university. We seek to build a top-notch program that produces innovative research of the highest quality, provides graduate students with cutting-edge training, and produces well-trained undergraduates who are prepared for graduate school or to begin their careers. Although the development of a top political science program with a thriving graduate program is not something that we can reasonably attain in the short-term, we faced our first year with the belief that it is imperative that we begin laying the groundwork as soon as possible.

Exciting Opportunities and Important Resources

Building a new program is a daunting task. Fortunately, we enjoy several significant comparative advantages and important resources while engaging in our program-building mission.

Constraints and Challenges

With the excitement and possibilities offered by the opportunity to begin a new political science program at a new university come unique challenges, problems, and frustrations. Many of these challenges flow from the same source as the opportunities and advantages discussed above.

Progress Thus Far

It is amazing how much the UC Merced campus has changed in the year we have worked here. The three main academic buildings are now fully functional and have earned distinctions for their environmental friendliness, a gym has been built, and the first club sports teams have been founded (and etched their first victories). The campus even has a grassy quad now, where previously there was just a dirt field. We believe the political science program has also made considerable progress this year.

Perhaps our most concrete accomplishment involved developing a political science major and steering it through to approval. We had many discussions about what the ideal political science major should look like. Several questions informed our discussions. Should we reject conventional approaches and do something bold and innovative? Should we propose a traditional major? How is political science at UC Merced going to be distinctive? On the one hand, we did not want to automatically follow what other universities had done, but at the same time we didn't want to create a major that students or future colleagues might find unfamiliar or strange.

For a while we thought seriously about proposing a major that was “not your parent's political science major.” Rather than traditional fields of study, we considered organizing the study of politics around political institutions and behavior. This division made great sense to us given that it largely reflects what we see as a major organizing principle of the discipline. Pedagogically, we thought that organizing the major in this way would encourage students to think broadly across subfield boundaries. As much as we liked this idea (and still do), in the end we opted for a more traditional major with a few distinctive twists.

The traditional aspect of the major is that we offer American politics, comparative politics, and international relations as the major fields of study. Our decision to retain the traditional subfields was informed by discussions we had with prospective undergraduates, parents, and colleagues in and outside the university. In these conversations, people would often ask about specializing in one of these subfields. In the end, then, familiarity was important.

We did not, however, have such doubts with regard to two somewhat unusual features of the major. First, part of our major requires students to choose from a selection of classes from cognitive science, economics, history, philosophy, and psychology. Although these courses are outside the discipline, they provide tools useful for understanding politics. The second modification is that we emphasize the research enterprise in the undergraduate major. Undergraduate political science education is typically quite distinct, in a qualitative sense, from research and graduate training in the field. We seek to bridge the gap by teaching students how to be critical consumers of political science research and providing them with the most basic skills necessary to conduct their own research. To this end, we require a rigorous research methods class and incorporate a meaningful research component into most upper-division courses. While not a function of the major, it is also worth pointing out that we are involving undergraduates as research assistants, which further reinforces the centrality of research to a political science education at UC Merced.

We have also had success in marketing political science to undergraduates and, for that matter, to UC Merced faculty in other disciplines. Nine months ago there were no political science majors on campus. While we do not have any hard numbers at this point, we do know that many students have made it clear that they now consider themselves as political science majors. Faculty in other disciplines are also excited about working closely with political science now and in the future. The next few years should witness numerous collaborative projects between political scientists and scholars in other disciplines.

On the Agenda

In the coming years we will prioritize the creation of a political science graduate program. We have decided for now that we will accept applications for graduate study in political science, but only if the students' interests align to some degree with either of our own research agendas and if he or she will be able to leverage relevant disciplines outside of political science. For example, we will seek students who can either benefit by working with economists versed in institutional development and applied econometrics or cognitive scientists working on reasoning and judgment. After we have added faculty, we hope to create a full-service graduate program in political science that continues to draw on related disciplines.

Last and definitely not least, we will be hiring new faculty. At this point our strategy will be to hire the best faculty we can, regardless of subfield specialty. Although this might appear an odd decision since there are only two of us and we have specific curriculum needs, we are mindful that our early hiring will have critical implications for political science at UC Merced. The number one influence on how successful we are at building a strong research-based political science program will be the quality of the faculty we hire. Thus, we believe it unwise to impose rigid subfield constraints on our hiring choices.

The subject of hiring has been recurrent in the questions we have been asked about building political science at UC Merced. Both of us have had colleagues tell us they used to have late night pub conversations with friends in graduate school about how it would be fun to start their own department and hire their friends. Others have told us that they think it is great that we can hire anyone we want doing any type of research we like. The truth is a bit more complicated, however. Given that UC Merced is a new campus and that there are currently only two political scientists, the hiring process involves many more faculty than just the two of us. When candidates interview, they interview with us and with faculty members in related disciplines. After the committee selects a candidate, the faculty in our personnel group—mostly social scientists from other disciplines—vote on this decision. Furthermore, since we are a new UC campus, our university-level personnel committee is primarily composed of UC faculty from other campuses. This committee must approve all faculty hires and plays the crucial role of ensuring that UC Merced hires faculty who meet the standard of scholarly excellence expected within the University of California system.

Time will tell how successful we are at building a thriving political science program at UC Merced. After a year on the job, one thing we can state with certainty is that the journey will not be a dull one.

Afterword

It has been about six months since this essay was accepted for publication and there have been a few important developments. First, the title of the essay will soon be outdated—N = 2 will soon become N = 3 with our hiring of a new faculty member in the fall of 2007. Nathan Monroe, a scholar of congressional politics, will be joining us this summer. By the end of the academic year, we hope to have hired a fourth faculty member. Second, there is good news about the political science major. Despite being new to UC Merced this academic year, political science has become the third largest major in the school of Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts. We would love to take all the credit for this development, but given the popularity of the political science major across the University of California system and nationwide, it is not surprising. Lastly, we are in the very early stages of strengthening our ties to related disciplines by planning a new institute focusing on social science research. It is our hope that such an institute will further promote interdisciplinary collaborations.