EDITOR'S NOTE

PS is entering its forty-second year of publication. Over these many years the journal has gone through many changes from its almost exclusive yearly coverage of “news and notes” of the profession to its addition of topical articles on contemporary politics to being a peer-reviewed journal covering contemporary politics, teaching, and professional development.

The “look” of PS has also changed over time and with this the first issue of 2009, PS has again taken on a new look. The changes are intended to make it easier for PS readers to find the essays and information they are looking for, to read them with greater ease, and to clarify the presentation of tables and figures. I hope that you will agree that the changes in presentation accomplish all these ends. I wish to express my appreciation and that of the PS Editorial Board to Cambridge University Press for generously underwriting the redesign project carried out by David Herbick of Bethesda, Maryland.

Although PS's layout has changed, its commitment to covering political life and behavior in a lively and accessible manner; its efforts to facilitate career development of political scientists; its extensive coverage of pedagogy; and its role as the Association's journal of record remain the same. Symposia and featured articles in future issues of PS will focus on French politics, women and fieldwork, serving diversity and equality in the profession, the Magna Charta, and breakdowns in the legitimacy and administrative capacity of the American state. Undoubtedly new controversies around the world and within the profession will spawn essays as yet unimagined.

On behalf of the PS Editorial Board, myself, and managing editor Rebecca Fowler, I thank you for your continued interest in PS and encourage you to share with us any ideas you may have on how to continue to improve the content and presentation of materials in the journal.

Robert J-P. Hauck, Editor

RESPONSE TO “ALL-KNOWING OR ALL-NURTURING”

I was quite taken aback by Michelle Dion's short article “All-Knowing or All-Nurturing?” in the October 2008 issue of PS: Political Science & Politics. In fact, I think I verge on being insulted. Perhaps it is my feminine nature? Dr. Dion is attempting to give me, a junior female instructor, advice on how to make “strategic adjustments that may improve” my Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET). She details numerous ways I can “meet student gender expectations” including smiling, expressing concern for students, displaying enthusiasm for material, appearing nurturing, and appropriately dressing my 5 feet six frame in “neat looking professional attire that is age appropriate—professional but hip.” I am left to wonder: is she serious? While the reality of the situation may be that 18–22-year-old students unfairly judge female faculty on the basis of appearance and gender expectations, the response should not be to encourage female faculty to meet these expectations. Dr. Dion does suggest that once women play the game and get ahead through higher SETs then women will be in charge and “determine the rules of the game.” I take little comfort in this idea. Surely part of the solution should be criticism of the SET itself. If Dion's research is correct, and it seems substantive, then it appears that SETs are most effectively measuring whether or not gender expectations are meet inside a classroom—as opposed to whether or not the instructor is an adequate teacher. Perhaps it is time to rethink how we evaluate teaching. Articles of that nature should be most welcomed in the the Teacher section of this journal. It is time for a real discussion about what a “good” political science teacher looks like (beyond just hip clothing). If our profession wants to continue to value teaching and base tenure or promotion upon teaching, then our profession needs adequate and fair measures of teaching. Clearly this is not the SET as it is presently administered. I think PS should welcome new ideas and new suggestions from both female and male faculty.

Andrea Olive, Ph.D. Candidate, Purdue University

REPLY TO MS. OLIVE

I agree with Ms. Olive: faculty should not be expected to meet the gendered expectations of 18–22-year-olds. I also find it troubling that my students evaluate me not based on the quality of my teaching or how much they have learned in my class but the extent to which I perform the gender role they have assigned me. Unfortunately, hiring and promotion committees frequently request or require “evidence of teaching ability,” by which they usually mean SETs. This is despite the voluminous literature, only a fraction of which I cite, that demonstrates that students evaluate women and men differently. (Students also have gendered expectations for male faculty.) I agree that “our profession needs adequate and fair measures of teaching,” and would welcome a broader discussion of best practices in teaching evaluation. A robust literature documents the problems and offers correctives, but until the warnings and recommendations of the literature are heeded, I believe it is important that women think about how to best to succeed within the constraints of an imperfect system.

Michelle Dion, Assistant Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology

CORRECTIONS TO “THE POLITICAL SCIENCE 400”

In the January 2007 (volume 40, issue 1) edition of PS, in our article entitled “The Political Science 400: A 20-Year Update,” we presented the names and total citation counts (1960–2005) of political science faculty employed (circa 2002) in U.S. Ph.D.-granting institutions who were among the 400 most cited. In the October 2007 (volume 40, issue 4) edition, we offered an addendum to that article including a list of corrections that were sent to us after the January article was published. Since that addendum, a few additional corrections have been brought to our attention.

In particular, in addition to the earlier corrections reported for citation counts or other data for Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Morris Fiorina, Robert Keohane, Richard Lau, Kathleen McGaw, Bruce Russett, Steve Wasby, and Aaron Wildavsky, we would note the following important corrections.

Omissions also affected the following scholars:

Given the size of the dataset, inconsistent treatment by departments of emeritus faculty regarding the APSA listings, the limitation to faculty teaching at Ph.D.-granting departments, and the limitations of the Web of Science coding (e.g., the problems of disentangling citations by political scientists and other scholars with the similar names (reported as initials in the database), and the fact that only first authorship was recognized on books—leading for example to the peculiarity of one Professor Rudolph but not the other being in the PS 400 despite the fact that much of each one's citations are to joint books by Rudolph and Rudolph (with related problems for David and Ruth Collier, to name but one additional example), some miscounts were inevitable But that does not excuse us from the errors that we made. We would again like to thank the authors who have drawn errors in reporting to our attention—often not just errors affecting themselves but also errors affecting others. And we can only apologize to the affected scholars (and their departments) for these errors we have reported here and in the previous erratum, and for any remaining errors in our dataset.

Any further errors called to our attention at BGrofman@uci.edu will be corrected in the dataset we maintain at http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~bgrofman/. But this will be the last erratum published in PS, and we remind scholars who access this dataset that the data remains circa late 2005 and is not being updated.

Natalie Masuoka, Tufts University

Bernard Grofman, University of California, Irvine

Scott L. Feld, Purdue University