Georgetown Political Science Predoctoral Summer Institute and Washington-Area Political Science Predoctoral Summer Institute Consortium

The continued relevance of political science requires transforming the composition of the population of students pursuing doctorates in the discipline to include groups that are currently under-represented, thereby enabling the diversification of the professoriate. We will undertake two initiatives that will contribute to achieving those ends. First, we will launch a week-long “Georgetown University Political Science Predoctoral Summer Institute” (PS-PSI), to occur annually beginning in 2022. Each year, the PS-PSI will gather and train a diverse group of 20 rising juniors and seniors at area colleges and universities who aspire to pursue a doctorate in political science. Second, we will lay the groundwork for a Washington-Area Political Science Predoctoral Summer Institute Consortium (WAPS-PSIC), which will also support under-represented undergraduates who plan to pursue doctoral-level study. Nine universities in the Washington, DC area with doctoral programs in political science or closely related disciplines will serve as the anchor institutions for the consortium, working together to offer annually a coordinated set of PS-PSIs. By encouraging both the creation of new programs and coordination among them, our initiative will facilitate joint learning and complementary programming. More broadly, developing such a network holds the potential to empower generations of change agents who will ask new questions in new ways from different perspectives, and will inspire more under-represented students to pursue doctoral degrees themselves, accelerating disciplinary development and evolution.

Amount: $25,000