- Congratulations on being
admitted to Macalester.
I wish I were meeting you right now,
and March and April, it's often
an exciting time around here
when we get to meet incoming students.
But these are crazy
times, surreal, harrowing.
I hope you're well.
But let me take an opportunity
to tell you a little bit about Macalester,
and in the hopes that we
are gonna see each other
and everything's back
to normal in September.
Fingers crossed.
There's a lotta great reasons
to think about Macalester
and political science at Macalester.
Among the many strong
programs at Macalester,
political science is one of the oldest,
great history and tradition.
And I think one of the
things that means the most,
is that we always attract
wonderful students like yourself,
so that the classroom
is filled with students
who have so many varied
interests and so many abilities.
But one of the most important
things is they're all,
so many committed to civic engagement.
To being in a community.
To working with one another.
To being cooperative.
It's a great place to
study political science,
first and foremost, because
the students are wonderful.
And that tradition that's
gone on for so many decades
at Macalester also leaves us
with an incredible base of alumni.
Now, wherever you look, whether
it's in the Twin Cities,
Washington D.C., New York,
San Francisco, Portland,
Seattle, London, Buenos Aires.
Wherever you go, you can find
Macalester political science graduates
who are really out there doing great work
and looking to help the next generation
make it in the world as well.
I think Macalester has a lot of advantages
for political science, in part,
because we are in a
great metropolitan area.
Minneapolis-Saint Paul
is one of the top 20
by population in the United States,
but really one of the top five
by the strength if its community.
The civic organizations,
the social justice programs,
the non-profit organizations,
the political parties,
the involvement of people in volunteering,
the strength of its government,
which Minnesota state
government has a tradition
of being a good government state.
All these give so many
opportunities to Macalester students
to engage in internships
and volunteer work
and civic engagement of all varieties.
It's sort of funny, when
I look at the resumes
of Macalester students, not
only have they done great work
in the classroom, but
between their first year
and senior year, typically
have built up a resume
of organizations that
they first interned with,
maybe as a late first year
or sophomore or summer,
and then have continued to work with,
for two or three years,
maybe other organizations.
We have incredible organizations
from the domestic politic
side, U.S. politics,
to organizations like the
Center for Victims of Torture
and Advocates for Human Rights,
internationally well-known organizations
based here in Minnesota.
20 minutes on a bus can get
you to the state capital.
My colleague, Professor Julie Dolan,
teaches a class every year
of legislative politics.
And like a legislative
politics class you might take
at any school, you're gonna
study congress and the like,
but every student in that
class is also interning
in the spring at the State Capitol.
So the discussion's completely different.
They're talking about, well,
hey, is your member voting for that bill?
And did you see what that interest group
was doing the other day?
It's a different kind
of legislative politics
when you're in the Twin Cities,
here in Minneapolis-Saint Paul.
I can tell you all about
the strength of our students
and the strength of community,
but my colleagues would probly want me
to at least mention the
strength of our faculty.
We have a wonderful group
of long-standing faculty
who are really interested in
engaging with you one-to-one.
You'll be over at their houses for dinner.
You might be engaging in research projects
or writing with them.
We're really there for the students
and would love to see you here
as part of this community.
I know it's a difficult time,
and it's gonna be a much harder choice
for everybody this year
to decide for a college
when you maybe haven't had the chance
to step foot on campus.
But we can try and close
that gap a little bit
if you would like to email us or Skype
or Zoom, we'll find a way
to get in touch with you.
Go to our website and any of my colleagues
will be happy to field questions from you
if you see somebody
who's work interests you.
Please email or give us a call
and we'll try and connect with you.
In the meantime,
best of luck making a
very important decision
under what is certainly
a difficult situation.
Please stay well and we look forward
to seeing you soon, perhaps this fall.
Thank you, bye-bye.
