Hi, my name is Jodi Baumgartner and I'm the
undergraduate director in the Department
of Political Science at ECU. In this
short video I want to talk a little bit
about political science as a major field
of study, political science in general
I'll start with that actually just a
minute or two about that. And what
might be the benefits of majoring in
political science. Before I go any
further let me let me say now thanks for
being with me today I realized that this
orientation online is a bit of a trying
process so I surely do appreciate the
the fact that you're spending a couple
of minutes with us today.
Political science generally is the study
the scientific study the systematic
study of the political world. It can
include studies about American
government legislative studies for
example presidential studies studies of
campaigns and elections.
It can include studies about politics in
other countries. British politics Indian
politics Chinese politics or comparing
those things politics in those countries
together. It can also include what we
call international politics, the
relationships between countries these
would be studies of war studies of Peace.
Studies about how effective
international organizations like the
United Nations are. The final component I
guess that we could call it a political
sciences public administration which is
the study of how government actually
works. It's kind of like the Business
School of Political Science.
They look at things like how government,
how government agencies at the state or
local or federal level deal with human
relations or budgeting and so forth. So
it's a pretty diverse field. One of the
common misconceptions about political
science is that it's all we do is study
government. Nothing could be further from
the truth. That's actually sort of given
away in the title it's political science
not
government science. At least in this
department we call it political science.
There's any variety of classes that
you might not necessarily expect to find
in a political science department that
we offer. Voting behavior for example
black politics women in politics
politics through film.
I personally teach a course called humor
in American politics.
Genocide in the 20th century there's an
any number of classes that look at focus
on various political aspects of society
that fall under the category of
political science. There are two
different tracks or degree programs for
people interested in majoring in
political science in our department. The
first is The Bachelor of Arts track and
the second is the bachelor of science
track ba or BS. The differences
between the two can be simplified
I suppose. In one sense we can think
about it as The Bachelor of Arts track
is the more traditional liberal arts
track, it's a little bit looser let's say
with respect to the what courses you
have to take. In addition to that
there's a few fewer courses. There's a
few less courses that one has to take in
The Bachelor of Arts track. The Bachelor
of Science track is a little bit more
structured and you have to take another
couple two or three classes to do that
one. Another way to think about the
difference is that and for many
people this is the decision rule . In the
Bachelor of Arts track students have to
take four semesters or pass four
semesters of a foreign language, four
semesters of a foreign language or
they're equivalent.
In The Bachelor of Science track
students have to take two statistical
methods classes two statistics classes
in other words. One in our department and
one in another department. For many
people in other words
it comes down to a simple question of
what do I dislike more statistics or
foreign languages and people who want to
make the decision that way that's just
fine. The good news is this people
just thinking about declaring political
sciences their major don't need to
decide this particular question quite
yet, this is a problem or an
issue rather it's not a problem at all
it's a it's a question that gets
addressed and resolved by oh let's say
the start of the junior year or so maybe
at the end of the sophomore year. Part of
the additional structure and the
Bachelor of Science track is the fact
that students need to declare a
concentration in one of four areas
pre-law comparative politics and
international relations campaigns and
elections or public administration, which
again provides a little bit more
structure or specialization if you will
to their major or to their
major degree program. In addition to
Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science
degrees in political science our
department also houses a major in
security studies. It's technically a
multidisciplinary program meaning that
there are other subjects or disciplines
involved in it but political science is
the central element of it. Here we have
again both Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor
of Science
tracks. In addition to that by the way
looking forward we also have a graduate
certificate program in security studies
and a Masters of Science program in
security studies but that's likely not
going to be of that much interest or
relevance to incoming freshman. I thought
I'd get that free plug in there anyways.
Finally in terms of major degree
programs we also offer in a degree a
Bachelor of Arts degree in International
Studies. This too like the Security Studies
degrees is multidisciplinary
in nature but it also is housed in the
political science
environment which is why I'm talking to
you about it as opposed to somebody else
in some other department. Finally with
respect to the programs we offer in the
strange unusual I never quite understand
it chance that some incoming students
don't actually want to major in
political science and again I truly
don't understand that.
Yes this is my attempt at sarcasm by the
way, I think I'm doing pretty well at it.
We have a variety of minors we offer
in our department. A minor in
political science a minor in leadership
studies a minor in comparative
government in international relations a
minor in security studies and a minor in
public administration. So we have a
little something for everybody it turns
out. Alright let's move on now to the
subject of careers that one can think
about with a degree in political science.
The first thing I'd like to say is
that there's some there's some obvious
choices here that you probably wouldn't
need me to tell you about with respect
to the type of careers that political
science can prepare one for. There are
the let's call them the usual suspects
right? Careers in local or state or
federal government interest groups
working for various campaigns working as
a political consultant. A bachelor's
degree in political science won't
necessarily get you all the way there
but it'll certainly it'll certainly do a
lot towards prepping you in that regard.
These are what I call the the usual
suspects the the political or government
jobs. In addition to that for anyone
who's thinking about law school after
their four-year degree political science
is the traditional path toward law
school. I have to say that you know full
disclosure here you do not one does not
need to major in political science in
order to go to law school. Law schools
look for a good score on the LSAT and
look for a good GPA in a respectable
discipline. Now I'm not going to get into
what a non respectable discipline might
be or at least not publicly because I
don't want anyone get mad at me but if
you were to ask me privately I'd be
happy to tell you. Political science is a
respectable degree and
there's some obvious connections between
the study of the law and the study of
politics and government so that's probably
got something to do with why it's the
traditional path to law school. What I
want to talk about is the idea that
we in terms of careers we can think well
beyond government or politics or law
school with respect to the direction
someone might want to go with their
career. Career choices or career paths
for people with political science
degrees vary widely and they certainly
vary widely with respect to our
graduates. The reason for that is fairly
simple, it's because we prepare people
with a set of skills. In particular our
program focuses a great deal on helping
students helping young adults develop
their analytical ability and
communication skills. Both of these
skills are widely valued by employers in
any variety of fields with respect to
analytical ability. What we're talking
about are one or both of two things
First of all analytical ability can mean
the ability to take a large
amount of diverse information and make
some sense out of it right? Boil it down
into its essentials. Certainly any
number of employees would value this.
Being able to take for example two or
three or six dozen different short
reports and consolidate and condense
them into three bullet points for one's
boss or for one's clients
or for a sales meeting for example.
This is thinking in other words, this is
just straight up thinking. It's funny
universities in the past 20 or 30 years
have started calling this critical
thinking but I've often wondered why we
have a different name for something we
already had a name for it's called
thinking. It's just called thinking and
the ability to distill and find
commonalities between sort of disparate
pieces of information and tie it all
together in a way that makes sense to
other people. In addition to that
analytical ability and this is for The
Bachelor of Science program can mean the
ability to manipulate data. Here we're
talking about that dreaded word
statistics. Make no mistake about it
graduating with a Bachelor of Science
degree in political science passing the
statistical methods course in our
program will not make one a statistics
expert, and even if you don't want to be
one, rather even if you don't want to be
one what it will do is enable someone to
go on a job interview and not be afraid
when the person doing the interviewing
says something like you know this job
involves analyzing large amounts of data.
There's going to be some data analysis
involved in this job. What our program
does is gives you the ability to sit
there and look that person straight in
the eye and say ok that doesn't bother
me. I may not necessarily know the
particular techniques you're using or
the particular software you're using
right out of the gate but I'm quite sure
I can learn. It gives someone in
other words a confidence that one would
not otherwise have and I think that's
important we think that's important and
a lot of people have told us it is
important. Secondarily
we focus on communication skills. An
awful lot of the upper-level courses in
our program ask students to do a fair
bit of writing and everybody who gets a
political science degree at ECU has to
take a course called writing for
political science. It's not the easiest
course
you'll ever take. In fact it's right up
there with the research methods and
statistics for political science class
in terms of many people just don't like
it. It's a little bit hard. It's certainly
demanding. We asked you to write write
write and then write some more and we
look at it and then we write some more
and we look at it we write some more. The
point is that when it's all over
students have told us unsolicited it's
not like we're asking about this
unsolicited students come back to us and
say man am I glad you had us take that
course. I am a much better writer as the
result of that. That's important
in the workplace right. It doesn't
matter how much I know unless I can
communicate what I know to somebody else
it's kind of worthless, it's kind of
pointless right. So whether it's writing
memos to my employees or writing reports
for my clients or whether it's writing
sort of information for potential
customers whatever it might be my
co-workers my team workers whatever it
is we want to call those things
communication skills matter absolutely.
Written and verbal and we focus a lot on
that. So again the careers that one
can think about
I had a friend I always tell this
anecdote and I realized this slides
going a little bit long I had a friend
who worked at Nielson TV ratings the TV
ratings people and he was a political
science graduate from Syracuse
University. The question has come up over
the years well what how in the world
does political science relate to
television ratings and the simple answer
is it didn't, it didn't at all. What
Nielsen valued was the fact that my
friend had an ability to look at a lot
of information and make some sense out
of it and then communicate what he had
distilled from it to other
people to his employees to his superiors
and so forth. So you know whether it's
newspaper or jobs in the media whether
it's teaching any number of career
choices can be open particularly with
these two skill sets. Finally with
respect to careers I would be remiss if
I didn't put a plug in for the two or
three depending on how you want to think
about it the various graduate programs
that we have in our department. One is a
master's in public administration, one is
a master's in security studies. We also
offer graduate certificates which is
kind of like a master's degree light or
something. It's more than a bachelor's
degree but it's less than a master's
degree in economic development public
management and leadership as well as
security studies. So these are things
that are obviously not today's problem
but things that maybe one can think
about in terms of future directions.
Alright well the good news is this short
presentation this short movie is almost
over, we're coming to the end of it. If
your intention is to major in political
science or if you're a little bit
interested in majoring in political
science the first thing you'd probably
want to do would be to declare political
science as your intended major. You can't
actually declare a major quite yet, but
you declare political science as your
intended major and then when you
register for classes make sure you're
registered for political science POLS 1010
POLS 1010 national government that's
our basic American politics course. It's
called national government but it's
actually American politics, and this
is our only introductory
class. Not only would you learn about
American politics but you'll also learn
some concepts and some terms and
some theories and some ways of thinking
about things that are peculiar to
political science. So it sort of doubles
as an introductory
to put it int reduction to
political science class.
If you already have credit for AP credit
for national government for American
politics then you can consider taking
some other courses as well. If you do
have AP credit for American government
you can consider taking
POLS  2010 twenty ten
which is comparative government or
comparative politics depending on how
you want to think about it, or POLS
2020 international relations or
international politics.
I wouldn't recommend taking both of
those in your in your first semester.
Just because I wouldn't recommend it.
You might as well there's no need for it
first of all. You know there's plenty
of time to space this stuff out and
it would be better to even if you
have American government credit already
you may not necessarily be as familiar
with the political concepts and so forth
that are taught at the university
level. So just just take one there's no
need to go further than that. Moving
forward after that you know you will
have an advisor in the advising center
of the College of Arts and Sciences if
you're an intended political science
major. Once you can officially declare
yourself as a political science major
which I of course hope you all do
then you will get one of the faculty
members in the Department of Political
Science as your adviser. That's one of
the one of the strengths of our
department I think is the fact that we
the professor's we the permanent tenured
professors are the advisors and so we're
able to give our own students a lot of
personal attention and we kind of take
pride in the fact that we do that.
Alright so just to wrap this thing up,
we are going to have a
couple of videos that asked and answers
short videos that ask and answer common
questions a couple of them anyways but
if you have any questions beyond those
please feel free to contact me
personally. My name is Jody Baumgartner
I'm the director of undergraduate
studies, my email is right there
politicalscience@ecu.edu or you can
or you
can email me at my actual email address
which is baumgartnerjo@ecu.edu. My
office telephone number is there you're
also free to call me. If you have any
questions about the security studies
program there is a short presentation
about the security studies program
elsewhere on this website and or you can
contact Dr. Armand Krishnan he's the
head of the security studies prograM. His
contact information is right there on
the screen krishnana @ecu.edu. If you
have any questions about the
multidisciplinary International Studies
program Dr. Marie Olson Mounds Barry
also has a short video which you can
watch in addition to that you can also
reach out to her directly it's
olsonlounsbury@ecu.edu. In conclusion let
me just say thanks for taking
a few minutes of your time to to watch
this thing. I sure look forward to
seeing you in the fall. Absolutely stop
by and say hi to me in my office. Finally if you like this video
please make sure to hit the like button
and consider subscribing. I'm just
kidding about that there's none of that
here...thanks a lot
and we'll see you soon!
