Mission

The Political Science Department is part of the College of Social Science and, with the other units in the College, shares in its broad mission of being global leaders in top-tier research while advancing engaged learning and societal well-being. At its best, our science transforms the human experience and inspires leaders.

The Political Science Department seeks to achieve this goal by being at the forefront of using social science practices to evaluate current political institutions and phenomena by broadening our understanding of them, innovate them by introducing and applying new approaches or practices, and invigorate them by encouraging our students, citizens, and leaders to engage them with greater purpose and understanding. The Political Science Department has three broad types of missions: research, teaching, and service. In addition, as part of a land grant university, we are concerned with the application of scientific knowledge to practical problems and issues.

In terms of the research mission, the faculty of the Department of Political Science of Michigan State University seeks to develop, test, and apply theories of politics and to disseminate the results of this research by communicating it to the discipline, our students, and the world. Our research seeks to contribute to the development of basic knowledge within the discipline or to help to address applied problems in a larger social context.

Our educational mission at the undergraduate level is to equip students to be effective global citizens who can evaluate, innovate, and invigorate political institutions both here and abroad. Within the professional MPP Program we seek to train future policy practitioners with a specific focus on evaluation and innovation. Within the PhD program our objective is to produce professional political scientists who represent and extend our mission through their own employment in academic, research, and applied organizations.

We embrace the land grant mission of Michigan State University: it is critical to our research and educational mission to engage our responsibilities to serve our fellow citizens, locally, nationally, and throughout the world.

As a general principle, the faculty are expected to contribute, to varying degrees, to the entire mission of the department.