Political Science and Legal Studies

Apply to be the 2013 Undergraduate Student Commencement Speaker and share your thoughts as a graduating senior!

Who is eligible:  Graduating Amherst campus senior, Class of 2013

Subject matter: Your proposed speech must be written by you as an individual, no group or collaborative submissions. It should be of general interest to graduating seniors as well as to parents and other guests.  It may address your impressions and experiences, both academic and extra-curricular. It may express your thoughts as your look to the future.

Format: Submit approximately two typed pages, double-spaced, or the equivalent of three to four minutes speaking time. Speeches exceeding this limit will not be considered.

Selection process: A non-voting staff person will delete the name of each author after which a committee of students (majority), staff, and faculty will review the proposals.  Three to five individuals will be invited to audition before the committee in March, after which the speaker will be selected.

Deadline: Tuesday, February 5, 2013 at 4:30 p.m.

More information is available here.

Do you think you are a good candidate for the 21st Century Leaders Award? Talk to your professors and ask to be nominated!

The award  recognizes the strong academic record and exemplary achievement of undergraduate students who further distinguished their intellectual accomplishments, and enhanced the reputation of the University by contributing to the campus community through their leadership skills, academic achievements, community service, and artistic or athletic accomplishments.

Nominees, who must be graduating seniors in 2013, will be characterized by their determination to fulfill their academic potential and achieve personal goals. They will be recognized for high academic performance and for the prestige and honor they bring to the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

The deadline for nominations is Friday, February 8, 2013 by 5:00 p.m.

More information is available here. 

The Writing Program will be administering the writing placement exam, which does not require registration:

– Tuesday, January 22nd, 2013, 6:00pm-7:00pm, Location: Tobin 204

This test is important, as students must take this course to be placed into College Writing (Englwrit 112), which, along with Basic Writing (Englwrit 111), must be satisfied to graduate. Students will take this test to determine which of the two is appropriate for them.

It consists in writing an essay in response to a short excerpt.

Placement essays should demonstrate clear organization, relevant support and examples, and an adequate understanding of sentence structure.

While you will mostly likely be placed into Basic Writing or College Writing, a few students may be waived from both based on their performance, but will not receive credit for this waiver.

For more information, contact Deirdre Vinyard, Placement Officer and Deputy Director of the Writing Program. For more information on the placement test, see this webpage.

Each year, the University of Massachusetts Amherst conducts an undergraduate research conference, with representation from an incredible amount of majors and students, many of which will be coming from other schools in Massachusetts. This year’s conference will happen on April 26, 2013, in the UMass Campus Center. In Spring 2012, there were 3 presentations from Political Science majors, and 1 from legal studies. The conference is a forum for the presentation many types of work, including:

- Thesis research
- Creative work in the visual and performing arts
- Independent study
- Community service
- Study abroad experiences

This conference is an opportunity to give you real experience in conducting research and presenting the results in a larger forum, which will help you to enhance the strength of your resume. In addition, the scope and area of your project has few limits, and can be presented in two different formats, which can be done individually or as a group: a poster presentation or an oral presentation.

Previously, there were 4 steps to apply to this conference. Exact details may be found here, when they update the exact steps:

1) Find a faculty sponsor– all projects must have a faculty member to work with you
2) Decide on the format, both in terms of poster/oral, and in terms of individual/group.
3) Register for the conference by February 13th. Registration will open in early January. This will require you to fill out an application, with the information you have collected about your faculty sponsor, the format of your presentation, and who is in your group.
4) By February 13th, the group leader or individual presenter will have to submit an abstract related to your topic.

Finally, all the information you could need related to this conference can be found on the Honors College’s website, which will soon be updated for the 2013 conference..

Phil A. Pig, an initiative started by the UMass Alumni Association, as well as other organizations who are interested in encouraging giving back to UMass, will be running the Final Piggy BankIt Roundup of the semester on Wednesday, December 5, 2012, from 10 AM to 2 PM, on the Campus Center Concourse.

This program is designed to help students by collecting change. They will have pig-shaped cookies, drawings for cool UMass stuff, and gift cards from local companies. All proceeds from the Piggy BankIt Roundup go towards the Piggy BankIt Scholarship, a scholarship for students.

Don’t forget that all donations from students will be matched, dollar for dollar, by the UMass Amherst Foundation Board.

As part of the University’s General Education Requirements, each student is required to fulfill a Basic Mathematics requirement. This requirement, more commonly known as your R1 requirement, can be fulfilled either by taking a course, or by getting a passing score on an R1 exemption exam. These exemption exams are given several times each semester.

The last exam for Fall 2012 will be held at 6:30pm in Marcus 131 on Monday, December 3. If you can’t make it, there will be 3 in the spring semester as well.

If you are interested in taking a course instead, you can search for a course which would fulfill the requirement by going to SPIRE, searching for classes normally, but then making sure to select the correct option within the drop down “Gen Ed Category”.

More information can be found here, for students having enrolled after Fall 2010, or here, for students who enrolled prior to Fall 2010. Finally, the General Education Program maintains a lot of frequently asked questions, which can be found here.

Have you logged into Spire recently?! If so, you may have noticed some changes. Basically, your menu bar is gone! The SPIRE Main Menu is now a dropdown menu at the top of your SPIRE pages, as shown above.

The Office of Information Technology explains how to navigate the new Spire here.

The Undergraduate Research Conference, which is organized by Commonwealth Honors College, will be held on Friday, April 27th this year. The Political Science Department has 4 undergraduates altogether, in both of our majors. The conference is divided into those presenting orally, and those presenting with posters. However, each of our 4 presenters will be using the oral presentation style.

Here’s a listing of those who are presenting, and what they’ll be presenting on:

-   Kara Clifford(Political Science), who is sponsored by Prof. Ray La Raja, will be presenting: “Why Don’t Women Run? Progressive Ambition Among Locally Elected Officials”

Her presentation will be examining the gender gap in higher offices, especially obstacles that may create this gender gap. To create this study, she surveyed and interviewed locally elected Massachusetts officials to understand their decisions to run for state legislature.

-   Ariel Geist(Political Science) will be presenting: “Regulating Electoral Finance in Chile: An Ongoing Fight Against Corruption”

Her presentation will be examining the laws passed in 2003 in Chile against corruption in elections. She will be using interviews gathered from experts and the analysis of electoral data to conclude that progress has been made, but problems still remain.

-   John Park(Legal Studies), who is sponsored by Prof. Diana Yoon, will be presenting: “North Korea: Storytelling and Human Rights”

His presentation will look at some of the narratives that emerged from North Korea under Kim Jong-Il. To understand these stories, the project employed literary analysis and several other methods as well.

- Sophia Zaman(Political Science) will be presenting: “Saving Our Students: the Funding Crisis in Public Higher Education”

Her presentation will be looking at how higher education has a soaring cost, and what may be done to reverse this.

Finally, to see all the abstracts and who will be presenting (there quite a few!) see this link for the .PDF, or, you can see the event page as well here.

UMass Amherst wants to hear from you. University relations currently has a page set up, wherein you can tell them about your UMass Amherst based story.

They want to hear about:

- Your cutting edge research
- Your national awards
- Your incredible professors
- Your green initiatives
- How UMass Amherst has made a difference in your life

Why do they want to hear about your story? From them:

UMass Amherst is a complex, dynamic, multidimensional community of learners, teachers, mentors, entrepreneurs, thinkers, doers, leaders, players and workers. Everyone has their own unique UMass experience, and collectively, our stories—successes, accomplishments, initiatives, and challenges—create the fabric that is UMass Amherst

After you submit this, your story may be featured on the UMass Amherst homepage, distributed to the media, or included in the next issue of UMass Magazine.

We’re halfway through April, and final exams are approaching quickly! If you’ve been paying attention to SPIRE, you may have noticed that your final exam schedule has been posted. If you need to see when your courses are, log into SPIRE, and under “Student Home” on the left bar, you should see “Final Exam Schedule,” which will give you the information related to your final exams.

Here are a few dates, in order to plan your schedule:

• Last Day of Classes – Tuesday, May 1st
• Reading Day 1 – Wednesday, May 2nd
• Final Exams begin – Thursday, May 3rd
• Reading Day 2 – Saturday, May 5th
• Final Exams Resume – Monday, May 7th
• Last Day of Final Exams/Semester Ends – Thursday, May 10th

If any student is scheduled to take three examinations on the same day, the faculty member running the chronologically middle examination is required to offer a make- up examination if the student notifies the instructor of the conflict at least two weeks prior to the time the examination is scheduled. The student must provide proof of the conflict. This may be obtained from the Registrar’s Office, 209 Whitmore.

Also, if two of your final exams are scheduled at the same time:

If a student is scheduled to take two final examinations at the same time, the faculty member teaching the course with the higher final digit (or digits) in its class number (the unique 5-digit number which represents a particular section in the Schedule of Classes) is required to offer a make-up examination. Proof of the conflict must be provided by the student (for final examinations, this may be obtained from the Registrar’s Office).

Good luck, and make sure to ace your finals!