The Department of Political Science offers a wide range of courses designed to equip undergraduate and graduate students with advanced understanding about political life in the United States and abroad. Students develop conceptual, communication, and methodological skills, examine normative and analytic theories with which to study contemporary and emerging public issues, and develop an awareness of how political science relates to the other social sciences and the humanities.

Students acquire strong research and analytical skills while exploring topics such as the philosophies on which governments have been founded, the ways in which citizens affect and are affected by their governments, and the relationships among territorial-states in the international community and the complex nexus of technology, politics, and government. Department programs cover the subfields of American government, international relations, comparative politics, political thought, and research methodology.