25/FA Exploring Power and Society in the National Capital Area-POL101-A

POL 101 - Fall 2025

Things to worry about now 

Summary

Professor Chad Rector

Fridays, 9:30 am to 12:15 pm
Ballston room 3010

Syllabus Download Syllabus

 

Course Assignments and Grades

Course grades will be based on:

  • Attendance and participation. 20 points. Students are expected to come to class prepared to contribute constructively to group projects and class discussions. 
    • Attendance 10 points: Students should plan to attend every class session. Students start with 10 points for attendance. However, I understand that life happens. You may miss up to two class sessions for any reason; at three or more absences students will lose 4 points per missed class unless you have an extremely good reason. (The total attendance grade can be negative for students who miss enough class meetings.)
    • Participation 5 points: Students should be prepared to participate actively in class discussions and group projects, and will get up to 5 points of credit for active engagement. 
    • Individual meeting 5 points: Each student needs to plan an individual meeting with me by September 5 and then actually hold the meeting by September 12. 
  • Two quizzes. 5 points each. 10 total. Each quiz covers a policy topic about the politics of representation and inclusion from the first part of the semester - one on the local politics of housing and one on the national politics of immigration. Each quiz will be drawn from specific readings. 
  • Arlington Project. 15 points. Students work in groups to complete an investigation related to local politics in Arlington. The project must have a component that involves some independent reading and meeting with and interviewing at least one person, outside of the class, engaged in local politics. (I can help with suggestions.) The work product is a presentation to the class, in which students address several themes.
  • Alum conference notes. 5 points. Report to the class on what you learned from at least one of the alums you met at the career pathways conference.  
  • November elections project. 15 points. Students work in groups to complete a project related to the election. The project must have a component that involves a presentation to the class, and a component that involves some sort of service to the community.
  • Study group. 5 points. Attend at least four sessions with a study group for an introductory course (typically POL 102 A) and give a brief oral report to the POL 101 class near the end of the semester about what kinds of study group activities were most and least effective both for getting a group organized and for studying effectively.  
  • Human Subjects Research Certification. 5 points. (And necessary for the final research project.) Pass an online course on scientific research involving human subjects. 
  • Research project. 25 points. Students work collaboratively as a class to design and implement a research project examining power and society. 
    • Early in the semester, the class will collaboratively decide on a research question in political science that can be investigated with a simple experiment. After reviewing the structure of scientific research and the process of experiment and evidence, the class will devise a research design (for example, a survey experiment that the class will then implement using students in other Marymount courses as test subjects).
    • The final work product will be a collaboratively-written slide deck that includes a research question, references scientific articles in a literature review, explains a theory, states a hypothesis, specifies a research design, presents results, and draws a conclusion. 

Assignments will be marked down for being late. Students will not be penalized for missing an in-class assignment for a recognized religious holiday. 

I may, at my discretion, check any written assignments for plagiarism at any time during or after the semester, using electronic or other means. Students found violating the Marymount principles of Academic Integrity will fail the course and be formally charged through the University’s Academic Integrity process. I have failed students in prior semesters for cheating. By enrolling in the course you acknowledge that you have reviewed the University’s standards of academic integrity.

 

Course Schedule

We will have several site visits and field trips exploring the politics of Arlington and the national capital. These will depend on the weather and on scheduling events with particular sites. At a minimum, we will have at least three site visits - one walk around the Ballston area, one walk in Washington DC, and a site visit to the Capitol. Depending on scheduling, we may have other site visits as well.   

The timing of assignments will not change depending on when site visits happen. I will keep the website updated as our plans evolve. 

 

August 29 - Marymount, political science, housing (Bolsonaro Links to an external site., intro, Links to an external site. housing Links to an external site.). Please wear sensible walking shoes and do not bring a lot of stuff since, weather permitting, we will walk for about an hour around the Ballston area to see several different housing zones. 

September 5 - Housing and localism. Quiz #1.
Assigned Reading:

September 12 - Discussion of research project and election projects, overview of immigration topic (slides Links to an external site.). Quiz #2. 
Assigned Reading:

September 19 - Site visit (TBA). Meet at the Ballston main entrance by 9:30 at the latest. Do not bring food, water, weapons, or bags bigger than a purse. Wear sensible walking shoes and have a metro card (or a phone ready to pay your metro fare). 

September 26 - Immigration policy discussion, research design. Reading: Gubitz, S. R., “Experiments,” in Empirical Methods in Political Science. Links to an external site.(slides Links to an external site.)

September 30 - Human subjects research certification due

October 3 - Political science research. Reading: TBA, based on student interest. Reading: The Moderate Abortion Politics of Christian Nationalism? Links to an external site. and How Christian Nationalist Rhetoric Can Influence Elections Across Race Links to an external site. and The chronic misperception of Americans’ abortion attitudes Links to an external site.. (Slides Links to an external site..)

October 10 - Literature review and (depending on the weather) National Mall. Meet at the Ballston main entrance by 9:30 at the latest. Wear sensible walking shoes and have a metro card (or a phone ready to pay your metro fare).  Reading: TBA, based on topic of research project discussion of topic and elections project. 

October 17 - Foreign policy topic chosen by class. Readings TBA. Project workshops. (Slides Links to an external site.)

October 24 - Foreign policy topic chosen by class. Readings TBA. Project workshops.  (slides: internships Links to an external site., survey Links to an external site.). Please read these three posts: (1) America’s Abortion Quandary Links to an external site., (2) Abortion Experiences, Knowledge, and Attitudes Among Women in the U.S. Links to an external site., and (3) Study: The More People Know About Pregnancy, the More Likely They Are to Support Access to Abortion. Links to an external site. The way to read these (in particular the last one) is to think of them as examples of the sorts of questions researchers ask and how they go about trying to answer their questions, rather than as the "one final correct answer" on anything.

October 31 - Career Paths Conference

November 7 -  Information, misinformation, and disinformation. Reading: Klein, Ezra. How Politics Makes us Stupid. Vox. April 6, 2014  Links to an external site.

November 14 - Election project briefings and research project workshop

November 21 - Research project workshop

December 5 - Research project wrap up

Week of December 13 - No full class session; individual one-on-one meetings this week, as scheduled (missing the meeting counts as an absence).