One of the things that I recommend is for people to choose good parents and good genes, because then you will have a healthier life! My mom lived to 94 and she was very healthy until she had adult onset diabetes and didn't believe it. She did have a broken hip and a variety of things at the very end, but up until then she did fine. My husband's mother, my mother-in-law, went to 96; again, she was from a farm family and very active. Vincent [my husband] is 84 and he doesn't believe in retirement but at the time he hit 65 the rules were such that he had to go. So, some of us have options that colleagues who are a few years older did not. Vincent had no option but to retire. But Indiana University has been pretty good; they don't kick you out of your office. I am just flabbergasted with how one of my German colleagues hit 65 and, wham! he was retired and his office was closed up. He has been able to reestablish it but it took quite a bit of doing. We have a lot to be thankful for because we have a lot more choice: retirement was at 70 for awhile and now even that has changed.

Preparing for retirement is a multifaceted endeavor, varying according to individual and experience. In my particular case, I did not develop a specific retirement strategy which I can articulate today as the Prestage Plan for “how a female political science professor can fade into oblivion after 48 years in the profession.” Rather, What Was Planned—that is, the content of my remarks today—can best be described as What Happened. For me, what can be labeled as “Strategy” for the purposes of this roundtable is an ex post facto matter. That is, I must try to recall and reconstruct the retirement experience as it happened, and put some logical order to it, or try to.

One of the main goals of the Committee on the Status of Blacks (CSB) is to assess how well African-American political scientists are faring in the discipline. Given the nature of the academy, we believe an important element for success is effective mentoring. Our position is supported by the American Political Science Association (APSA) which established a Task Force on Mentoring in 2002 to address issues facing underrepresented groups within the profession. One of the initiatives is a Mentor Database designed to connect interested minority graduate students and minority faculty with political scientists who are willing to share their experiences and knowledge and give their advice and council to participants. The Committee is supportive of this initiative whose goal is to help underrepresented groups have satisfying professional careers.

Community engagement through service learning has become well institutionalized in American education, yet there has been considerable debate over its effectiveness, especially with regard to its impact on explicitly political engagement. While participation in community service and volunteerism clearly has a positive impact on the propensity of young people to dedicate themselves to further service, the evidence of the effects of service on political engagement is, at best, mixed.

Debates over methodology have long occupied a prominent role in political science and its various empirical sub-fields. Recently, these debates and occasional dialogues seem to have intensified. The Perestroika movement within APSA protested the perceived hegemony of rational choice and quantitative methods in journal publications and graduate training (Kasza 2001). Renewed attention has focused on the types of methodologies employed by studies published in the discipline's leading journals (Garand and Giles 2003; Bennett, Barth, and Rutherford 2003; Braumoeller 2003). The kinds of concerns over methodological diversity that motivate these studies also inform discussions about graduate training (Alvarez 1992; Dyer 1992; Schwartz-Shea 2003; Morrow 2003; Smith 2003).

It is often advised to “know your audience” before giving a lecture, and this is especially important when we lecture to students. Moreover, knowing your audience is critical in quantitative analysis courses, where it can be especially challenging to teach mostly math-phobic students. But it is in quantitative analysis courses where faculty may know their audience the least. While many subfields in the discipline have implemented pedagogical innovations such as seminar-style discussion, simulations, and even learning communities, quantitative methods courses seem to be the last hold-out for the traditional lecture format.

The use of active learning strategies can involve students with course material in ways that the traditional lecture can not. As described by Bonwell and Eison (1991), active learning requires that students engage in activity (other than listening) that emphasizes the development of cognitive skills through higher order thinking tasks such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. There are numerous ways to integrate active learning strategies in the classroom, including: collaborative or group exercises, experiential learning, guided discussion, computer-based instruction, peer-to-peer teaching, and participant demonstrations. Incorporating active learning exercises into course curriculum can have a powerful effect on the development of learning skills. The benefits of active learning for students include an increased motivation to learn, increased responsibility for learning, improved attitudes toward learning, better interpersonal skills, and an increased ability to appreciate and consider a variety of perspectives (Jacobs, Power, and Inn 2002).

The Internet and other electronic media have changed the way undergraduate students conduct research. The effects of this technological change on the role of the professor are still not well understood. This article reports on the findings of a recent study that evaluated the scholarly content of student citations in a political science course and tested two interventions designed to improve their quality. The study finds that these students' use of electronic sources was not as poor as some may have assumed, and that the quality of bibliographies improved when in-class instruction was combined with academic penalties. This article reflects on the study's findings, and offers suggestions for how instructors might encourage students to improve the quality of their research.

The scenario is as unpleasant for the teacher as it is for the student. After spending countless hours trudging through a stack of mind-numbingly repetitive bluebooks, the teacher has finally returned graded midterm exams to her class. With grading safely in the past, she gleefully returns to other teaching, publishing, and personal responsibilities. At least she tries to—until a concerned student appears at the office door asking her to explain the points she assigned to a given answer. She flips to the relevant page of the bluebook and discovers no comments in the margin. The teacher is now on the spot to rack her brain for the reasoning that justified the score she assigned several days or even weeks before and explain to the student clearly and accurately why he did not receive full credit. The student is in a likewise awkward position, wondering how much thought went into the grade the first time around.

James C. Garand, the Emogine Pliner Distinguished Professor of Political Science, recently completed his term as President of the Southern Political Science Association (SPSA). His presidential address, entitled “Fragmentation and Integration in Political Science: Exploring Patterns of Scholarly Communication in a Divided Dis ci pline,” given at the SPSA annual meeting in New Orleans, will be published in the November issue of the Journal of Politics.

A. Leroy Bennett, age 90, professor emeritus of political science and international relations at the University of Delaware, died from complications of pneumonia November 9, 2004. Lee taught at the University of Delaware from 1962 until his retirement in 1991 and continued his research and publication activity to the very end of his life, publishing the seventh edition of his widely used International Organizations: Principles and Issues in 2002.

Valerie A. Earle, professor emeritus at Georgetown University, died at the age of 85 on August 20, 2004. Her death came unexpectedly because of heart problems.

The 101st APSA Annual Meeting will be held in Washington, D.C., September 1–4, 2005. Over 730 panels will be organized at the Marriott Wardman Park, Omni Shoreham, and Washington Hilton, the meeting's co-headquarters hotels. As in years past, the meeting is expected to draw over 6,000 participants from every subfield of the discipline, and from the United States and abroad.

Here is a quick look at some of the short courses planned for the 2005 Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, August 31st. For full details and registration information, please visit APSAnet. A complete listing of courses will be printed in the July issue of PS and online at www.apsanet.org.

The inaugural issue of the American Political Science Review was published in November of 1906. To mark the centennial of the APSR, the November 2006 issue will feature a special section devoted to considerations of the evolution of political science. This special section will be an extra feature, above and beyond the regular complement of research articles. The APSR is actively soliciting submissions on the broad theme of the special section.

Planning a research trip to Washington, D.C. this summer? The Centennial Center may prove a valuable resource. The Center, which is housed in the APSA headquarters near Dupont Circle, provides a great base of operations for scholars researching in the D.C. metro area. The Center offers Visiting Scholars furnished work space, telephone, fax, computers, Internet access, conference space, a reference library, and access to George Washington University's Gelman Library.

Washington, D.C., overflows with organized interests and issue networks competing for the attention of lawmakers. A very few people manage to navigate the flotsam and jetsam of the policy currents to redefine an issue or put a new problem on the political agenda. Like their cousins in the private market, political scientists call these navigators “entrepreneurs.”

In recognition of their outstanding academic and personal achievements, APSA is pleased to announce the APSA Minority Fellows for the academic year 2005/06. Awards are based on the students' undergraduate course work, GPA, extracurricular activities, and recommendations from political science faculty. A selection committee designated six Fellows to receive financial support from the Association. Due to the high quality of applicants in this year's pool, the committee also selected three non-funded Fellows. Members of the selection committee for this year's Fellows included Ange-Marie Hancock, Yale University; Valerie J. Martinez-Ebers, Texas Christian University; and Rogers Smith, University of Pennsylvania.

November and December were a whirlwind for the Congressional Fellows as they attended back-to-back orientation sessions and interviewed for positions on the Hill. Now that they have secured full-time assignments as legislative aides, they have begun turning their attention to the yearly Canadian Parliamentary Exchange. Hardly had a description left Program Director Jeff Biggs' mouth before emails were flying on how best to plan the Canadians' visit to Washington. True to form, the political scientists established steering committees with names like “The Political Scientist Committee,” “The Federal Committee,” “The Journalist Committee,” “The Entertainment Committee,” and “The Miscellaneous Committee.” Meanwhile, the journalists began to brainstorm and sketch out a draft schedule—four months in advance. Clearly, they were enthused.

On December 6, 2004, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the Canadian Embassy to the United States inaugurated the Seymour Martin Lipset Lecture on Democracy in the World. The lecture, named for one of the great democratic scholars and public intellectuals of the 20th century, is an important new forum for discourse on democracy and its progress worldwide. The inaugural lecture was given by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former president of Brazil and one of Latin America's most distinguished social scientists and statesmen. His lecture will be published in the NED's Journal of Democracy.