Courses Taught

American Federal Government, Concepts of Political Science, Introduction to Political Theory, Modern Political Thought, American Political Thought, Politics of Science and Technology, Contemporary Political Thought, Environmental Philosophy

Lectures

• What are Government and Politics?
• Classical Liberalism and the American Founding

Understanding the effective implementation of public policy demands understanding how legislatures exercise oversight over the agencies responsible for that implementation. This lecture uses the implementation of the Endangered Species Act by the Fish and Wildlife Service to show that oversight takes place through much more subtle techniques than is commonly understood. These techniques include bureaucratic anticipation in response to public statements, the development of administrative procedures bias toward those outcomes preferred by Congress, and the use of "fire alarm" hearings in response to specific concerns from constituents.

Assignments

One of the major concerns in urban planning since the 1990s has been environmental justice. This exercise is designed to teach students how to evaluate the environmental justice implications of planning projects. Students must propose a freight transportation corridors for the City of Lawton, Oklahoma chosen from among three possibilities. Using ArcGIS-developed maps of the routes and affected populations, the students must consider the effects of the corridor proposals on the community with reference to cost, pollution, and hazardous materials risk. Students evaluate distributive effects with respect to both disadvantaged groups and property rights.

This web-based simulation uses a simplified form of the Congressional legislative process, structured as an extensive-form game, to illustrate the major effects of multiple veto points on legislative strategy: the best way to pass a bill is through negotiation, cooperation, and compromise. Students are placed in the role of a Senator and assigned to pass a bill appropriating funds for a flood control project. They must take steps to get the bill through committee, the Senate floor, and the conference committee.

Educational Research

Simulations and web-based tools are becoming increasingly common techniques for teaching in undergraduate courses. This study examines one approach to building such tools. By combining the parallel structures of extensive-form games, experiential simulations, and the simple language behind the World Wide Web, it is possible to combine content, pedagogy, and presentation into an effective approach to learning. The online simulation of an extensive-form game is a form of active learning understood as activities that require the student to participate in using a body of knowledge to accomplish some practical task. To test the effectiveness of simulations, we surveyed students in a course that used a simulation of the legislative process in the United States Congress in an introductory American government course and compared student reported participation in and preparation for the simulation to both self-reported and direct measures of student performance. Results show that students perceive improvement in performance, but this is contradicted by the direct measures, which show no evidence that simulations are effective means of improving student performance on assignments. While several reasons for this may be present, this study concludes that simulations, and active learning in general, more likely improve students’ affective orientation toward the course material, especially their confidence in their ability to use the material, than their achievement of specific traditional learning objectives.

This paper argues that the standard approach to teaching the history of political thought does not serve the ultimate goals of political theory education, and that alternative approaches are needed to make the history of thought appropriate for undergraduates. A history of political thought for life ought to enhance a person’s capacity to act as a political animal in three ways: as a moral person, as a free person, and as a citizen. But the most common practices in teaching the history of political thought suffer from the same criticisms that have been leveled at contemporary research in political theory, thereby undermining the study of political theory for life. Teaching the history of political thought should be based on a model where classical texts serve as Socratic gadflies that provide alternative perspectives on the perennial questions posed by contemporary political practice. Two alternative models can integrate both traditional approaches to the history of political thought with contemporary political practice to produce a history of political thought for life that is appropriate to the purposes of undergraduate education in political theory.