Students who started the political management degree in fall 2008 or later operate under the revised curriculum. Alumni may not have had the chance to review the new curriculum, so here is a quick overview for you.

Why did we reorganize the program of study? Program reviews occur regularly in academia, and it was time for the political management to reflect on recent experience and emerging trends in politics. We did a year-long series of faculty retreats and a survey of alumni to gather thoughts on the effectiveness of our classes, and we discovered that we needed to refine our approach. Everybody agreed with what we were teaching in the core curriculum – but also wanted to see us address two topics more forcefully. Many faculty and alumni thought we should do more on the communications, so we shifted PMGT 207 “Strategy and Message Development” into a two-course sequence so we could devote more time to building communications skills. We also added a former elective, “political Leadership,” to the core to help all of our students learn their individual leadership styles.

Six-Course Core Sequence (18 credits)

The core curriculum is described in this chart. Some key features:

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The core curriculum is required of all students and must be completed during the first four semesters (eight courses).

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The core curriculum provides students with history and development of the field of practical politics, political leadership skills, media and communications theory, ethics, and quantitative research methods.

The faculty retreats also made it clear that the many tracks we had developed 1995-2006 were very complicated to explain, and that the ‘track’ structure obscured the commonalities of many jobs in practical politics. Therefore, we reorganized the tracks into three focus areas, which remain voluntary for students. The focus areas demonstrate the common features of many jobs by collecting them into three broad categories. Students still retain the flexibility to design their own focus areas, but the three categories bring more courses together so students can see the connections between them.

Focus Areas (9 credits)

Three focus areas are offered: advocacy politics, which comprises lobbying, grassroots, corporate public affairs, and non-profit operations; electoral politics, which is campaign management and running for office; and advanced political skills, which supports the full range of political activities (this group includes polling, communications and the new media, fundraising, and public policy). The tables below show you all the courses in each focus area. Remember: students are not required to elect a focus area, and may develop their own sequence of courses in consultation with the program director and with director’s approval.

Students who want to pursue the advanced skills focus may take three courses from among the courses listed below. With the permission of the program director, students may also design a three-course sequence that pulls from courses across all three areas (for example, a student desiring to gain expertise in state politics might take the party fundraising class, lobbying, and state/local campaigning).

Capstone sequence options (9 credits)

The final stage of the political management degree has not changed. Students complete the final three classes (nine credits) in one of two ways: students may take any two electives, followed by PMGT 295, Advanced Problems and Strategy, the capstone course; or they may take any one elective and the two-course thesis option, PMGT 299-300.

We launched the new curriculum in Fall of 2008, so we are still learning how it is going. Our intent is to make sure all graduates have the skills and knowledge needed for success in the world of politics. We will see another review in a few years, and we will again seek the advice of our alumni and our faculty when that review occurs.

In the meantime, please share your thoughts on the curriculum with us any time. If you have ideas for new courses or new faculty who could help us with new insight, please let me know!