Perspectives on the Liberal Arts and Sciences
Course Proposal
General Education Advisory Committee
Queens College, City University of New York
I. Course Information
Course Title:
Credits:
Introduction to Political Science
3
Prerequisites:
None
PS101
X Existing course, course number:
New course
Department:
Department Contact:
Political Science
Joe Rollins
Area of Knowledge and Inquiry
(select one)
Context of Experience
(select only if the course
emphasizes one of the
following)
Reading Literature (RL)
Appreciating and Participating
in the Arts (AP)
Extended Requirements
(select only if the course meets
one of the following)
Pre-Industrial Society (PI)
X United States (US)
European Traditions (ET)
Culture and Values (CV)
X Analyzing Social Structures (SS)
Abstract or Quantitative
Reasoning (QR)
World Cultures (WC)
Natural Science (NS)
The following information is useful to the subcommittee to estimate the college's progress toward the goal of
offering enough sections and seats in each Perspectives category. How often does the department anticipate the
course will be offered? Please also estimate the anticipated number of sections and number of seats per section.
X Every semester
Every Fall or
Other:
January 2008
number of sections:
Every Spring number of sections:
number of sections:
number of seats per section:
6
number of seats per section:
40
number of seats per section:
Page 1 of 5
Course Description
Please include a course description. If the course will include variable topics or be taught in various forms, please
provide as many descriptions of specific sections as possible.
Political Science 101 is designed to introduce students to the discipline itself and therefore
approaches its subject matter broadly. The discipline is traditionally subdivided into the
following categories: American Politics (AP), International Relations (IR), Comparative Politics
(CP), and Political Theory (PT). In most departments, each of these subfields is further divided to
focus on specific institutions and methods. For example, AP is normally comprised of the
following: The Presidency, Congress, Courts/Public Law, Public Administration and Public
Policy, State and Local Government; CP breaks down by region of the globe. Because the
discipline also splits between scholars with different methodological talents and interests (i.e.,
quantitative or qualitative), an introduction to the discipline, such as PS101, is, by necessity,
interdisciplinary, satisfies multiple PLAS goals, and will change emphasis depending upon the
instructor. All iterations of the course, however, will touch upon textual exegesis as well as
qualitative research, and introduce students to the building blocks of quantitative reasoning. This
latter element will, in most instances, be as basic as instructing students on the basic elements of
logic (e.g., the rhetorical strategy commonly used in legal opinions), or, in other instances,
students will be introduced to the fundamentals of research design (e.g., formulating research
questions, thinking about how to answer those questions, how to gather the information required,
and how to draw analytic conclusions from the material collected). These elements of the course
are intended to introduce students to the theoretical, abstract reasoning, and quantitative methods
of the discipline.
As the attached syllabus demonstrates, the course will be parsed into various sections including:
Theory (emphasizing power and ideology); History (which will focus on different periods and
geographic regions relative to the professor’s expertise); Methods (some faculty will emphasize
qualitative methods and textual analysis including literature, film, or popular culture, others will
be more concerned with empiricism and quantitative analyses; all sections will introduce students
to these ideas and variation will be a matter of emphasis); Institutions (here, again, different
faculty will focus on different levels of government ranging from the local to the international
levels of analysis); Processes (depending on the professor’s expertise this section will include
studies of elections, litigation, diplomacy, dispute resolution, war, etc.); Case Studies (possible
topics for this section will include specific wars, legal issues, electoral cycles, ongoing disputes in
various regions, or specific political problems such as the drug trade, terrorism, political
corruption, etc.). As with all courses in the field, our primary concern will be on politics and the
state. Although we will draw from other fields (both empirical and theoretical) from across the
social sciences, our emphasis on the state and governance distinguishes Political Science 101
from other potentially comparable courses in the social sciences.
January 2008
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II. Criteria for Perspectives Courses
Justification
Please describe how the course will address criteria for Perspectives on the Liberal Arts and Sciences courses.
Be sure to include an explanation of the course’s specific learning goals for students to make a connection
between these and the general criteria for Perspectives courses.
The focal question of PS 101 is basic to the discipline as a whole: Who gets what, when, where,
and why, and who gets left out?
Probing this deceptively simple question calls for a theoretical framework, a methodological
strategy, and empirical materials for analysis. Syllabi for this course will require students to
engage a critical reading of appropriate texts, essays, legal cases, and/or films. The
methodological section of the course will instruct them on ways to conduct research in the field.
Specifically, students will—both explicitly and implicitly—learn how the discipline frames
questions, states hypotheses, and tests their utility. By the end of the semester, students will have
been introduced to the multiple ways that Political Scientists—as a group—approach the subject
of their field. Applying the works of thinkers who span the range of political theory, e.g., Marx,
Weber, Locke, Hobbes, Foucault, Habermas, Fanon, de Tocqueville, Publius, to contemporary
problems represented in multiple “texts” the course will offer students a wide-ranging and broad
introduction to the discipline, will show how knowledge is created within the field, and how that
knowledge is then applied to contemporary socio-political issues. Because the work of these
theorists is also important in other disciplines, emphasis on their political (as opposed to social,
economic, or philosophical) influence will contextualize the knowledge formation practices of
Political Science within the liberal arts generally and will allow students to see how those
practices inform the political elements of their community and its place in a global society.
Criteria Checklist
Please be sure that your justification addresses all three criteria 1-3, below. For criteria 4-8, please check all that
apply and discuss these in your justification.
A Perspectives course must:
1. Be designed to introduce students to how a
particular discipline creates knowledge and
understanding.
2. Position the discipline(s) within the liberal
arts and the larger society.
3. Address the goals defined for the particular
Area(s) of Knowledge the course is designed to
fulfill.
In addition, a Perspectives course will, where
appropriate to its discipline(s) and subject matter:
X 4. Be global or comparative in approach.
X 5. Consider diversity and the nature and
construction of forms of difference.
X 6. Engage students in active inquiry.
X 7. Reveal the existence and importance of change
over time.
X 8. Use primary documents and materials.
January 2008
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III. Course Materials, Assignments, and Activities
Please provide an annotated list of course readings and descriptions of major assignments or exams for the course,
as well as distinctive student activities that will engage students in working toward the course goals discussed in
the course description and/or justification.
Please include the author and title for each reading or text, along with a short description providing information
about how the reading will contribute to course goals.
See attached example syllabus.
IV. Assessment
Perspectives courses must be recertified every five years, and we are seeking ideas for how to best carry out this
assessment. What forms of evidence that the course is meeting its goals as a Perspectives course would be
appropriate to collect for this course during the next five years? How would you prefer assessment to be
conducted? How might evidence of effective teaching and student learning be collected and evaluated?
Assessment is part of the Political Science Department’s overall strategy for measuring our
success. As part of our ongoing commitment to maintaining high teaching standards, we
regularly collect samples of written work from our students so that we may track their
development across not only the span of a student’s undergraduate education, but across student
cohorts by using a time-series sampling design. Findings from this project allow the department’s
Curriculum Committee to monitor the progress and development of our undergraduate majors, as
well as stay to stay abreast of our success as teachers. Papers assigned for this class will be part of
that overall program.
January 2008
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V. Administration
What process will your department develop to oversee this course, suggest and approve changes, and conduct
assessment? Who will be in charge of this process? Also indicate whether the course will be primarily taught by
full-time or adjunct faculty, or by a combination of the two types of instructor.
For a description of the processes already in place, please see above at IV.
Administration of the assessment project is overseen by the Department’s Curriculum Committee.
Syllabi for all courses taught in the Department are collected and made available for review by
new, incoming instructors. All new instructors will be required to meet with members of the
Curriculum Committee whose research and teaching are within their subfield in advance of the
semester when a PLAS course will be taught. At these meetings, the interdisciplinary, pedagogic,
and cultural goals of PLAS will be spelled out in detail so that new teachers may incorporate
those requirements into their syllabi. Before syllabi are sent to Reprogrpahics for mass
production several weeks in advance of the semester, new instructors will be asked to submit
them to the Department Curriculum Committee for vetting and approval.
The course is taught by a combination of full-time and adjunct faculty.
VI. Syllabus
Please attach a sample syllabus (or set of syllabi, for courses on variable topics or courses that will be taught in
variable formats).
Some resources to guide syllabus construction:

The Provost's page outlining guidelines for syllabi:
http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/provost/Cur_stud/Syllabus expectations.htm

Sample syllabi for W courses, from Writing Across the Curriculum:
http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/writing/wsyllabi.htm

Goals for Student Writing at Queens College:
http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/writing/Goals.htm

Harvard’s Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, suggestions for syllabus planning:
http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k1985&pageid=icb.page29695

Lehman College’s Gen Ed Syllabi Project:
http://www.lehman.edu/lehman/programs/generaledu/gened_syllabi_project.html
Submit this completed form and a sample syllabus (or set of syllabi) by email to Eva Fernández
(eva.fernandez@qc.cuny.edu), Director, Center for Teaching and Learning.
January 2008
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