About the Department of Political Science
The UT Department of Political Science provides a comprehensive program of instruction and research across the traditional areas of the discipline: Public Administration, American Government and Politics, Comparative Government and Politics, International Relations, Normative and Traditional Theory, and Empirical Theory and Methods.
Our Undergraduate and Graduate Programs
The Department strives to offer undergraduate students a balanced curriculum designed to lead to a broad understanding of politics with the flexibility to provide a foundation for careers in government, law, business, and education. Graduate programs provide advanced training that prepares graduates for careers in academia or the public service. The Department believes that it is essential to provide all students with a solid grounding in institutions, theory, and political processes. Students are equipped with the tools to analyze policy issues and to conduct and evaluate research.
The teaching and research of the faculty are unified by a concern for the development, maintenance, and dynamics of democracy as well as the policy problems facing democratic institutions. This policy focus is enhanced by teaching and research relationships with faculty in other departments and institutes across campus.
At the undergraduate level, the Department offers the BA in Political Science as well as a BA with a concentration in Public Administration. For undergraduates looking for an extra challenge, the Department offers an honors program that requires the completion of a thesis based on original research.
At the graduate level, the Department offers the MA and PhD in Political Science. The PhD program offers primary fields in American government, international relations and comparative politics and cross-field concentrations in public policy, political economy and research methods.
Vision
Our vision is to become a nationally recognized, top-tier political science department. We aspire to be a faculty in which every member has an active research agenda that leads to publications in the most highly regarded outlets in the discipline. We seek regularly to place our best doctoral students as faculty in peer research universities by providing individual mentoring, a methodologically rigorous program, and an academic community that fosters collaboration. We seek to provide a broad, theoretically focused undergraduate degree that will prepare students for graduate school in political science, professional school, and/or government and public service.
