This summer our department chair, Betsy Sinclair, and I took advantage of the break from the routines of the academic year to begin to think together about the direction of the department: where it’s been in the past decade or so and where it’s headed. We have grown in recent years, not just in size but also in intellectual range. We are broader than we were ten years ago and more pluralistic in the research questions we ask, the methods we use to answer them, and the kinds of scholarship that our faculty and graduate students produce. 

It seemed like a moment for the department to meet as a whole to reflect on our strengths and the areas in which we would like to grow. And so, as summer wrapped up and before the semester really took off, we spent a half day at the Missouri Botanical Gardens discussing who we are as a department and who we want to be. Our goal was not to arrive at any particular set of policies or decisions, so much as to take stock of ourselves and think collectively about our future. 

One thing that became especially clear over the course of that retreat is how much of our strength lies in the fact that our department contains many different kinds of excellence. We research and teach about politics from a wide range of perspectives, using a wide range of tools. We study elections and institutions, war and peace, democracy and authoritarianism, and political behavior and political ideas. Our intellectual diversity makes us better at thinking about the important problems in politics today and helps us develop and test our ideas and arguments. 

This summer also brought some news about a leadership transition. Dean Feng Sheng Hu asked me to serve as the department’s next chair, and I agreed. Betsy Sinclair—who has been a truly extraordinary chair, guiding us through three years of growth while helping us navigate challenging times in higher ed—will continue as chair through the end of the fall semester. I am glad that we will have this period of transition. 

And I am excited about what comes next! I look forward to continuing the work we began at our retreat, building on our department’s many different forms of scholarly and pedagogical excellence. 

Clarissa Rile Hayward
Professor of Political Science
Associate Chair & Incoming Chair