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Wesson

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  1. Upvote
    Wesson got a reaction from comp12 in Why Mostly PhDs and Not JDs in University Political Science Faculties?   
    There are various points to consider. A J.D. is a trade degree. It prepares one for the practice of law. People who receive a J.D. typically receive no training in teaching. People who receive a Ph.D. typically have to take one or more courses on how to teach, and also typically are assigned to teach discussion sections to help prepare them to become professors. Thus, the J.D. will, on average, be much less prepared to step into the classroom than will be the Ph.D.

    Beyond that, there is the matter of substantive preparation. You seem to think that the entirety of political science is about U.S. law and policy. The J.D. would have no substantive qualification to teach the vast majority of courses on political theory, comparative politics, international relations, or political behavior, and only would be qualified to teach a portion of courses on U.S. institutions and policy. Even within the realm of law and politics, keep in mind that a lot of law students are busy taking courses on contracts, antitrust, etc.--matters that are relevant for politics, but that hardly are central to what political science departments teach.

    Another point is that people with J.D.s do get hired to teach some political science courses. There are some tenured and tenure-track political science faculty who hold J.D.s as their highest degrees, and there are many, many people with J.D.s who are hired as adjuncts to teach courses on law and politics, Constitutional law, etc. Of the offerings in any given political science department, I'd guess that a J.D. might possess the substantive qualifications to teach 5-10%.

    Let's turn this around--if the Ph.D. and J.D. are as interchangeable as you have suggested, should we permit people with Ph.D.s in political science to practice law? I would think not. Yes, there is a tiny bit of overlap between training in law and training in political science, but we're talking about two mostly different disciplines.
  2. Upvote
    Wesson got a reaction from Sigaba in assistant profs for POIs   
    At most places, associate professors are tenured. Some schools (e.g., most or all in the Ivy League) have longer tenure clocks, and do have untenured associates. There also are a few other rare exceptions, such as public universities that are not allowed by state law to hire with tenure, meaning newly-hired associate and even full professors may be untenured for a year or two.

    As a general rule, I'm not a fan of listing specific faculty with whom you'd like to work. It's better, in my view, to say that your interests are in the areas of X, Y and Z, and it's clear that the department has considerable strength in those areas, and leave it at that. When you list a specific person, that person may be 1) the department's most disliked member, 2) about to be denied tenure, 3) about to leave for another university, 4) increasingly unproductive, 5) unwilling to work with grad students, 6) fine in general, but on bad terms with one or more members of the admissions committee, 7) about to move into administration, 8) in the process of shifting the focus of his or her research, etc. It's really hard for you as an applicant to know this, yet there's a risk that the admissions committee will view you as being clueless for naming who you named.
  3. Upvote
    Wesson got a reaction from IRdreams in Why Mostly PhDs and Not JDs in University Political Science Faculties?   
    There are various points to consider. A J.D. is a trade degree. It prepares one for the practice of law. People who receive a J.D. typically receive no training in teaching. People who receive a Ph.D. typically have to take one or more courses on how to teach, and also typically are assigned to teach discussion sections to help prepare them to become professors. Thus, the J.D. will, on average, be much less prepared to step into the classroom than will be the Ph.D.

    Beyond that, there is the matter of substantive preparation. You seem to think that the entirety of political science is about U.S. law and policy. The J.D. would have no substantive qualification to teach the vast majority of courses on political theory, comparative politics, international relations, or political behavior, and only would be qualified to teach a portion of courses on U.S. institutions and policy. Even within the realm of law and politics, keep in mind that a lot of law students are busy taking courses on contracts, antitrust, etc.--matters that are relevant for politics, but that hardly are central to what political science departments teach.

    Another point is that people with J.D.s do get hired to teach some political science courses. There are some tenured and tenure-track political science faculty who hold J.D.s as their highest degrees, and there are many, many people with J.D.s who are hired as adjuncts to teach courses on law and politics, Constitutional law, etc. Of the offerings in any given political science department, I'd guess that a J.D. might possess the substantive qualifications to teach 5-10%.

    Let's turn this around--if the Ph.D. and J.D. are as interchangeable as you have suggested, should we permit people with Ph.D.s in political science to practice law? I would think not. Yes, there is a tiny bit of overlap between training in law and training in political science, but we're talking about two mostly different disciplines.
  4. Upvote
    Wesson got a reaction from SOG25 in Why Mostly PhDs and Not JDs in University Political Science Faculties?   
    Well, again, I agree that there are some courses the J.D. could teach. In my department, we have just over 100 undergrad courses on the books. If I really stretched it, there are 20 that I probably could teach. There are about 10-12 that I am very comfortable teaching. Depending on the breadth of the person's training, it looks like there are as many as 8-10 that a J.D. could teach, and 4-5 that most J.D.s should be able to teach. So, consistent with my earlier claim, I'd say the J.D. can teach something in the neighborhood of 5-10% of what my department offers. And, for what it's worth, we bring in some J.D.s to teach some of those courses.

    As to your other points, first, I don't think it's moot at all that the J.D. has had no teaching experience. My kids have watched me drive their whole lives, but I wouldn't put them behind the wheel with no added training. Sitting there watching just isn't enough. Now, if the J.D. is willing to take a semester or two to enroll in some courses on how to teach, and to lead some discussion sections, this deficit could be rectified.

    Second, as to your claim that political scientists teach law and politics courses outside of their specialties, this isn't so in my experience. The people who teach such courses are faculty who either hold both a Ph.D. and a J.D. or who quit law school after a year or two before moving to a Ph.D. program. Also, there are several Ph.D. programs with strong law and politics concentrations, and they produce a large number of the judicial politics faculty. These faculty aren't teaching law courses, they're teaching on the intersection of politics and law, and they possess direct training in that area.

    Third, political scientists generally do not teach very far outside of their areas, nor would they feel they possess the competence to do so. My case, as outlined in the first paragraph, exemplifies this: stretching matters as far as absolutely possible, I still wouldn't feel competent to teach over 80% of what my department offers. So, sure, with some remedial work on how to teach, the J.D. can teach a few courses, but it's a long way from there to claiming that the J.D. can step in and teach more than a small segment of political science courses.

    All of that said, the other posters also are right that a large part of what we do is research. In my department, research is, by contract, defined as a larger portion of my responsibilities than is teaching. For nearly every tenure-track job in political science, the person will need to publish something, whether a little or a lot. What passes for research in law schools is very, very different from what political scientists do. It's quite hard to imagine many J.D.s finding this to be a smooth transition. And note that there's an important trade-off here. The sort of department that could most easily hire a J.D. would be a large department, one that is large enough to have one or two faculty devoted to law and politics. That probably will mean a faculty with a minimum size of at least 15 to 20. Well, departments that large usually are the ones with the highest bars in terms of research expectations. Thus, the dilemma for the J.D. is that the sorts of departments where that person is most qualified to teach will, as a general rule, be the ones where the person is worst-suited to meet the research requirements for tenure.
  5. Upvote
    Wesson got a reaction from SOG25 in Why Mostly PhDs and Not JDs in University Political Science Faculties?   
    There are various points to consider. A J.D. is a trade degree. It prepares one for the practice of law. People who receive a J.D. typically receive no training in teaching. People who receive a Ph.D. typically have to take one or more courses on how to teach, and also typically are assigned to teach discussion sections to help prepare them to become professors. Thus, the J.D. will, on average, be much less prepared to step into the classroom than will be the Ph.D.

    Beyond that, there is the matter of substantive preparation. You seem to think that the entirety of political science is about U.S. law and policy. The J.D. would have no substantive qualification to teach the vast majority of courses on political theory, comparative politics, international relations, or political behavior, and only would be qualified to teach a portion of courses on U.S. institutions and policy. Even within the realm of law and politics, keep in mind that a lot of law students are busy taking courses on contracts, antitrust, etc.--matters that are relevant for politics, but that hardly are central to what political science departments teach.

    Another point is that people with J.D.s do get hired to teach some political science courses. There are some tenured and tenure-track political science faculty who hold J.D.s as their highest degrees, and there are many, many people with J.D.s who are hired as adjuncts to teach courses on law and politics, Constitutional law, etc. Of the offerings in any given political science department, I'd guess that a J.D. might possess the substantive qualifications to teach 5-10%.

    Let's turn this around--if the Ph.D. and J.D. are as interchangeable as you have suggested, should we permit people with Ph.D.s in political science to practice law? I would think not. Yes, there is a tiny bit of overlap between training in law and training in political science, but we're talking about two mostly different disciplines.
  6. Upvote
    Wesson got a reaction from SOG25 in Why Mostly PhDs and Not JDs in University Political Science Faculties?   
    As to what JDs could teach, in my department the obvious ones are Con Law, Supreme Court, Law and Policy, and International Law. Other options would depend on the person's focus in law, but could include courses such as Ethics and Politics, Intro to Policy, Federalism, International Organizations, etc. Someone with a focus in international law presumably would have a different 3-4 courses than someone with a focus in Constitutional law or someone with a focus on law and policy.
  7. Upvote
    Wesson got a reaction from repatriate in Getting Published...Help or Hurt if in Low Tier Journal?   
    Actually Tufnel, your original speculation was on the mark. All journal publications will not necessarily help you as an applicant, and some may hurt you. There are a lot of journals. Many refereed journals are generally viewed as being third- or fourth-tier. They publish some weak research and they have relatively high acceptance rates. They may be viewed as credible in the discipline as a whole, but, as an applicant, your audience isn't the discipline as a whole. The highest-ranked graduate programs are also the largest, which means most people apply to and receive their Ph.D.s from departments ranked in the top 40 to 50. Faculty at those kinds of departments generally aim high with their research, especially the faculty who are likely to be on graduate admissions committees (because deadwood faculty don't get placed on these committees). The last thing faculty want to have to do is break incoming graduate students of bad habits. If you have published in a fourth-tier journal, and especially if you make a big deal of it in your statement, you risk having someone on the admissions committee think that you don't get it, that you'd be coming in misinformed about the nature and quality of work expected of you. At these programs, virtually all faculty have journals they view as falling below the line of being credible, journals where, given the choice, they'd rather not publish a paper at all than publish it in journal x, y or z. If you have published in those journals, it is unlikely to help your case, and it may hurt. When putting your application together, I highly recommend that you read through it from the perspective of someone on the admissions committee, and especially that you do so with an eye toward red flags.
  8. Upvote
    Wesson got a reaction from herself the elf in Advice from an actual PhD (redux)   
    The Georgia example supports why I think looking past the top 25 to the top 40 to 50 can be reasonable.

    As to the matter of whether this is all too utilitarian, it's certainly true that one doesn't gravitate toward academia to become wealthy. But we do need to pay the bills, and for that we need to be employed. Thus, some concern with career makes sense. But even if one is only interested in academia for intellectual stimulation, keep in mind that you'll likely find a more vibrant intellectual environment at the 10th-ranked graduate program than the 63rd.
  9. Upvote
    Wesson got a reaction from APGradApplicant in Waiting list...   
    Most departments have a minimum size they hope to achieve for the incoming class. If you want at least 10 students in the class, you may make initial admission/funding offers to 20, recognizing that many of them will go elsewhere. People will move up from the waiting list when one of two things happen: a) the list of possibles drops below 10 (i.e., 11+ of the original 20 notify the DGS that they are going elsewhere), or the list of possibles for a subfield drops below the desired minimum (e.g., all but one admitted student in American decides to go elsewhere, and the department wants at least two students in American). This can take a while to sort itself out, mostly because risk-averse students often are slow to notify the DGS that they have ruled out a department. There can be a lot of action in the days leading up to decision day. Some DGSs will call or email you if things are looking promising, as in "it looks quite likely that we'll have a slot for you, but we won't know for sure for at least two more days. So, we encourage you to hold off on making a decision among your other schools until we get back to you."
  10. Upvote
    Wesson got a reaction from combos in Fall 2010 Admission Results   
    I don't really see it this way. First, I'm not sure it's a matter of broad vs. narrow interests. Instead, it's more about whether the faculty, including the admissions committee, perceive the applicant to be open-minded and interested in learning. Some SoPs read like the applicant thinks he or she already knows everything, and views the PhD program as a hoop to be jumped through rather than an opportunity for intellectual growth. Second, although some faculty probably do wish to "continue their own research through you," most prefer that you find your own path. If you do, you'll be a better, more innovative scholar. But faculty do gravitate toward students with research interests similar (i.e., related but not identical)to their own, and to students interested in learning more about how to do research. Third, keep in mind that you eventually have to face the matter of marketability. Your dissertation has to help you land a job. Some dissertations are quite narrow and/or quite dry, making it hard for their authors to find the right market niche. A good adviser will see this early on, and try to nudge the student in a more promising direction. One thing I would suggest is to try to put yourself in the shoes of the professor, the person who has been on the faculty 10, 20 or 30 years, and think about how the way you depict yourself will strike that person.
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