Political Science
2024-2025 Program Review

Government and politics profoundly impact us every day, from the laws that govern our behavior, to the quality of the water we drink, to the decision of whether to go to war. Political Science encourages critical thinking about how government works at the local, state, national, and international levels, and how we—as democratic participants—can make government work better. Political Science students may pursue a wide range of careers, at home or abroad, in fields such as law, advocacy, diplomacy, and public administration.

Political science, as a unit, serves two different groups of students. Close to one thousand students take our POLS 301 Introduction to Government: United States classes each semester as a general education requirement, and most of these students are majoring in fields other than political science. We also serve about 150 Political Science and Global Studies majors, offering a range of "specialty" political science courses covering topics such as Comparative Politics, International Studies and Global Studies, Political Theory, California Politics, Constitutional Law, and Women and Politics.

Within our POL S301 classes, African American students and Low Income students are flagged as disproportionately impacted based on statistically significant differences in rates of completion, success, and mastery (receiving A-B). Hispanic/Latino students and Foster Youth students have comparatively lower rates of mastery and success, Pacific Islanders have lower rates of mastery, and Veterans have lower rates of success.

Within our "specialty" classes for political science majors, the data is varied. In some classes, Female students and Low Income students are flagged as disproportionately impacted based on rates of mastery, completion, and success. Within specialty classes the only students flagged as disproportionately impacted based on race/ethnicity are White students in our Women and Politics course.

Within political science, we think of equity work as occurring within three concentric circles: our classrooms (including online) are the inner ring, our institution is the middle ring, and the broader context of our students' lives is the outer ring. We are engaging in the following actions to advance equity in these three spheres (Note - all of these actions are ongoing unless marked as "completed"):

Advancing equity within our classrooms:

• Implementation of UDL teaching approaches, including ensuring accessibility of all learning materials and using authentic assessments
• Revision of course materials to ensure anti-racist, decolonized content delivery, center underrepresented voices as sources of expertise, and recognize students' diverse "lived experiences" of government and politics
• Innovation and implementation of "active learning" teaching strategies shown to improve experiences and outcomes for DI populations
• Creation and use of low/no-cost resources for students, including developing OER, ZTC, and "textbook agnostic" materials for our POLS 301, POLS 302, POLS 304, POLS 320, and POLS 330 classes
• Development of a department-wide Canvas "repository" of content delivery materials, effective teaching strategies, and other resources to cultivate sharing of best practices among full- and part-time faculty
• Efforts to identify and meet student modality needs, including maximizing in-person offerings and design/implementation of a survey, with more than 1,000 student responses, to understand what shapes student modality choices
• Data collection and analysis to deepen our understanding of DI student progress, including design/implementation of a pre- and post- "basics of government" assessment to evaluate change from students' baselines over the semester, and work with the Office of Institutional Research to analyze results from 8 classes

Advancing equity within our institution:

• Advocacy to access appropriate learning spaces and classroom materials, including ongoing efforts to document and communicate to campus leadership what is needed and the impact on student experiences
• Advocacy for improved functioning of Homebases, including design/implementation of student assignment to initiate and asses experiences seeking Homebase support, work to clarify/promote their role as a resource "hub," and collaboration with PCS Homebase to organize events for political science majors
• Assessing student experiences with campus services intended to provide support, including referring students to programs/services and following up to determine whether the service/program met their needs
• Advocacy for improved guidance for students regarding modality selection, including sharing results of our survey (see above) with campus leadership
• Advocacy for appropriate classes sizes and instructor/student ratios, including helping draft an Academic Senate resolution and participation in a class size task force
• Active work to contribute to updating student academic conduct guidelines and respond to use of AI online
• Active work to sustain Honors program, including continued offering of Honors courses within political science
• Actively contributed to designing the template for the new C1000 (formerly POLS301) and CH1000 (formerly POLS480) curriculum outline as part of the Common Course Numbering (CCN) initiative (completed)

Advancing equity within the broader context of our student's lives:

• Cultivation of award-winning Model UN club that offers students real-world simulation of international cooperation to advance peace and development
• Creation and implementation of teaching approach focused on developing students' independent capacity for informed civic engagement, developing skills to understand and influence government actions, which received national recognition as a model from the American Political Science Association
• Advocacy to retain American Institutions as a local graduation requirement to ensure that all Los Rios students have the skills and knowledge to understand the government institutions that profoundly shape their lives and to influence them for the benefit of their communities

The work outlined above is ongoing (other than items marked "completed"), so our strategy for eliminating disproportionate impact will be to advance the efforts described in the previous question. We are continually stretching as we identify and implement best practices in our classrooms, advocate for improved services and resources on campus, and build students' civic capacity to influence government in ways that improve their lives and communities. For example:

• As the content matter of our field changes on a daily basis, we are continuously revising our collection of accessible learning materials, finding and creating new print, media, and other resources to share with students to help them understand state, national, and international politics through an equity-oriented lens that centers underrepresented voices.
• As we experiment with active learning, authentic assessment, and opportunities for civic engagement, we are constantly building on lessons learned and refining our approach in response to feedback from our students and in collaboration with colleagues

As noted above, we are engaged in ongoing efforts within the second concentric circle - our institution - to advocate for improvements to advance equity. The single most important change to address disproportionate impact would be reduced class sizes and lower instructor to student ratios. Class sizes and ratios have remained the same even as our mission as an institution has changed and our understanding of what is needed to advance this mission has evolved. When the role of the political science "professor" was to deliver lectures and grade student assignments and exams in a "one-size-fits-all" model of education, a 1:225 instructor to student ratio with 45 adults packed into a classroom perhaps made sense. But we know that model does not eliminate disproportionate impact, and we have committed ourselves to advancing equity.

Offering more individualized learning and assessment opportunities, implementing effective strategies for promoting engagement and understanding, providing more holistic support for our students as human beings, and various other components of equity-oriented education simply require more time per student. Imagine the time it takes to evaluate an authentic assessment in which students have choice in topic and mode of communication as compared to grading a multiple choice exam. Imagine the space it takes for students to engage in an interactive simulation of Congressional lawmaking as compared to sitting in rows to listen to a lecture. Imagine the energy it takes to invite students to share their struggles and connect them to appropriate support services with "warm hand-offs" as compared to ignoring their lives outside of our classes.

When it comes to online learning, an exemplary, accessible, learning environment that supports and engages students in a course delivered asynchronously using features in Canvas and various online tools requires technical expertise. Beyond the one-time demonstrations, online DIY tutorials, and regularly offered drop-in support, we need focused, individualized support from an instructional assistant who has technical expertise in using all the features in Canvas and other tools for "hands-on", on-going collaboration to make progress toward implementing UDL approaches, using culturally responsive content and delivery methods, recognizing students' diverse "lived experiences" of government and politics, and remaining committed to using OER materials and offering ZTC class sections.

Even with appropriate class sizes and ratios there were still be many things outside of the inner "classroom" circle that we do not control, but we will feel supported in implementing approaches that have the best chance of eliminating disproportionate impact where we can.

Unprecedented events have shaped our unit since the last Program Review and will continue to impact us into the foreseeable future. The content matter of our subject - government and politics - is changing rapidly and dramatically. Within the US and beyond we are witnessing democratic erosion (2021 marked the first time in US history that Americans attacked the US Capitol to try to alter the outcome of an election) but also emergent forms of activism and change. We are operating in a revolutionized information environment, where expertise is discredited and mis/disinformation circulates faster than facts, cultivating distrust and extreme polarization, but new voices are also breaking through to challenge established power structures. Many recent political changes, at both the national and international level, directly threaten our ARC students - particularly our DI populations - and we are active participants in efforts to overcome these policies and protect the most vulnerable.

Within our institution, we have also experienced unprecedented changes in recent years. COVID and its aftermath resulted in an unplanned shift to predominantly online learning, with the majority of our students now exclusively interacting with us through screens. The advent of AI opens new potential frontiers but also adds additional challenges for ensuring academic integrity in an online environment. We lost our offices and classrooms overnight with the closure of Davies Hall, and the direct and indirect effects of that decision continue to have a daily impact on our work.

Given this broader context, doing good work often feels like simply holding our ground - we have to run to stay in place.