ITTA BENA, Miss.—The American Political Science Association (APSA) recently announced a total of $140,000 in Special Projects Fund grants awarded to six teams of political scientists made up of 33 established and early career scholars representing 29 academic institutions, including Mississippi Valley State University.
MVSU Provost/Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Dr. Kathie Stromile Golden is part of an eight-member team that has spearheaded the HBCU No Student Left Behind Initiative (NSLBI).
Golden joins the team with members from Middle Tennessee State University, University of California-Irvine, Virginia State University, Johnson C. Smith University, Clark Atlanta University, Fisk University and Spelman College.
“The idea is to reach faculty at HBCUs who are not already participating in the National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS) and APSA networks,” said Golden. “We want to encourage African American undergraduate students to pursue graduate studies in political science and assist graduate students with advancing their careers in the academy.”
Golden is the Executive Director of NCOBPS, president of the NCOBPS Graduate Assistantship Program, and holds membership in APSA.
Dr. Sekou Franklin, president of NCOBPS, spearheaded the proposal and led the project.
“This is an effort to address the need for African American professors in the discipline. Some HBCU Political Science departments seem to have little contact with the mainline political science associations, such as NCOBPS and APSA,” Golden added.
The grant allows the NSLBI to recruit ten undergraduate students to the NCOBPS conference ($500 each), ten graduate students to the NCOBPS conference ($500 each), and ten faculty to NCOBPS ($500 each).
“The Special Projects Fund recipients this year represent the broad array of institutions and scholars that are representative of the types of research that APSA members are pursuing,” said Paula McClain, APSA president, James. B Duke Distinguished Professor of Political Science and dean of the Graduate School at Duke University.
The awarded 2020 Special Project Fund grants are supporting projects focused on a wide variety of topics, including advancing the impact of political science research through public engagement, expanding professional development opportunities, scholarly collaboration around civically engaged research, mixed-methods research, world politics research, and advancing diversity and inclusion in the profession.
“Our Special Projects Fund recipients are tackling some of the greatest challenges and embracing some of the greatest opportunities facing our profession,” said Steven Rathgeb Smith, executive director of APSA. “I am confident that they will have a significant, positive impact on the quality of research our discipline produces, and equally importantly, that they will make each work to make our discipline more inclusive and equitable.”
To learn more about the American Political Science Association, visit www.politicalsciencenow.com.
For more information about the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, visit www.ncobps.org.