Nov 23, 2024  
2009-2010 Undergraduate Catalog 
    
2009-2010 Undergraduate Catalog [Archived Catalog]

Political Science


Stephen Rosow, Chair
435 Mahar Hall
315-312-2350
www.oswego.edu/polisci

Professors: Bruce Altschuler, Walter Opello, Stephen Rosow

Associate Professors: Lorrie Clemo, Craig Warkentin

Assistant Professor: Lisa Glidden, Helen Knowles

The curriculum of the Department of Political Science is designed to support and contribute to the overall liberal arts mission of the College and to help students enhance their understanding of political life and political science as an academic discipline. Courses offered by the department in the fields of the discipline listed below are designed to impart to students the substantive content of that field as well as to develop their analytical and writing skills.

The department offers courses in five fields of political science: (1) American government and politics, which concerns the political processes and institutions used in the United States to make collective decisions for the society; (2) comparative government and politics, which studies political processes and institutions within nation-states such as can be found in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East and Europe; (3) international politics, which analyzes the interaction among nation-states and the operation of international organizations; (4) political philosophy, which considers the fundamental choices of political life by examining critically the ideas advanced by history’s greatest political thinkers, such as Plato, Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Marx; and (5) public policy and administration, which analyzes the government’s policy choices and the results they produce.

The department has an active chapter of Pi Sigma Alpha, the national political science honor society, which inducts students based on their academic performance: a political science club which all students are encouraged to join: an honors program for students of superior intellectual promise: and an internship program through which students can earn up to nine credit hours outside their concentration working as assistants in local government and citizens’ organizations, state agencies, the state legislature in Albany, and the US Congress in Washington, DC.

American Studies–B.A. 

The Department of Political Science cosponsors a program leading to the Bachelor of Arts degree in American Studies.