Continuing a tradition begun in 1997, the Association hosted its Honors Reception the Wednesday evening before the annual meeting in Philadelphia. Hosted by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the first established art museum in the United States, the event honored Dale Rogers Marshall and Nelson Polsby with the 2003 Frank J. Goodnow Award for their significant contributions to the political science profession and to the American Political Science Association.

Dale Rogers Marshall has consistently combined scholarly achievement, excellence in teaching, and leadership in higher education with an enduring commitment to expanding opportunities within the profession. She has produced numerous publications exploring racial and ethnic politics in America's urban centers, including the co-authored volume Protest is Not Enough: The Struggle of Blacks and Hispanics for Equality in Urban Politics, which was recognized in 1985 by the Gladys Kammerer award for best book on American policy and by the Ralph Bunche Award for the best book on ethnic and cultural pluralism.

A leader in higher education, she has served as associate dean of the University of California, Davis, academic dean and acting president of Wellesley College, and president of Wheaton College. She has served as a board member for numerous educational institutions including Cornell University, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, and the American Council on Education's Commission on Leadership and Institutional Effectiveness.

She has served the profession as APSA vice-president and Council member, as president of the Western Political Science Association, as member of the editorial boards of the American Political Science Review, the Public Administration Review, and PS: Political Science & Politics, and as a member of numerous award committees. For the past five years, she served as co-chair of the Association's Centennial Campaign, enabling the development of numerous research fellowships and the creation of the Centennial Center for Political Science and Public Affairs.

Nelson Polsby has been a mentor to generations of political scientists, with a prolific record of creative scholarship and service to the profession. His numerous books, edited volumes, and journal articles are a remarkable collection of scholarship artfully explicating contemporary political behavior, institutional change and development, and policy innovation in America. Presidential Elections, coauthored with Aaron Wildavsky and in its tenth edition, is a mainstay of the study of the presidency. Forty years after its original publication, Community Power and Political Theory continues to shape learning on pluralism and empirical approaches in the discipline.

As Heller Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley and director of the Institute of Governmental Studies he has encouraged and guided young scholars. As editor of the American Political Science Review he created the APSR internship program.

He has served on the APSA Council, as Annual Meeting Program chair, on numerous award committees, and as a member and chair of the Congressional Fellowship Advisory Committee. He has served on the editorial board and as managing editor of the American Political Science Review, as editor of the Annual Review of Political Science, and as the political science editor of the International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and as vice-president of the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom.

He has applied his encyclopedic knowledge of American political behavior and institutions to enrich popular understanding of Congress, the presidency, elections, political parties, and policy making in the national press, and on advisory committees such as the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Government Research; the Commission on Vice-Presidential Selection; and the Commission on Presidential Debates.