A HISTORY OF THE POLITICAL SCIENCE DEPARTMENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY
The University of Kentucky was established in 1865. It was first located where Woodland Park is today, but moved to the area near Euclid Avenue and Limestone Street in the early 1880s. There were no colleges; the faculty were organizationally undifferentiated except for the Agricultural Experiment Station. In 1909, several colleges were created, including Arts & Sciences. A&S did not divide into departments until 1919 and the political science department was formed in 1923.
THE EARLY YEARS: 1923-63
Dr. Amry Vandenbosch was the leading figure in the department’s early years. He focused on international relations (IR) and to some degree comparative government. He was on the American delegation that helped establish the United Nations and draw up its charter in 1944-45. Vandenbosch was Head of the department from 1933 to 1958. When the Patterson School of International Commerce and Diplomacy came into existence in 1958 (as a result of interest on an endowment established in 1908 by UK’s then President James K. Patterson), Vandenbosch became the first director. He retired in 1966 and died in 1990 at age 95.
There were several other long term faculty members in the department. Dr. Jasper Shannon published articles and books in comparative politics. He came in the mid-1930s, but left to be chair at Nebraska in 1958. While here, he served as president of the Southern Political Science Association. Dr. Gladys Kammerer taught public administration and American politics during the 1950s, leaving in 1958 for the University of Florida after getting on the wrong side of Governor Albert “Happy” Chandler. Dr. Ken Vanlandingham taught Municipal Government and Rural Local Government for many years, retiring 1986. Judge Ernest Trimble taught Constitutional Development from the 1940s until his retirement in 1966. (He had neither a Ph. D. nor a law degree, but served as an administrative law judge for the state in World War II.) Jack Reeves taught Kentucky Politics and dabbled in the same until his 1968 retirement. And Dr. Malcolm Jewell arrived in 1958, but his major contributions came in the next three decades.
In 1946, Kentucky along with the universities of Alabama and Tennessee embarked on the Southern Regional Training Program (SRTP). It awarded MPAs to ten or so students each year. The three states awarded them fellowships with the hope being that they would become administrators in state or local governments. Students would take two quarters of courses in Tuscaloosa and Knoxville and then finish in Lexington during the spring semester and do a summer internship. SRTP continued until 1977; by that time each university was capable of mounting its own MPA program.
From World War II through the early 1960s, UK was a somewhat sleepy southern state university, the home of championship basketball teams but not major academic research. The Political Science Department fit this description. The 1930s saw departmental M.A. and Ph. D. programs begin, but few doctoral students were turned out and fewer made any ripples in the profession.
EARLY YEARS NOTES:
Did he wear a cape?: An early 1960s issue of Esquire Magazine named Reeves as one of its “SuperProfs” of the Southeastern Conference complete with a drawing of him wearing a Superman shirt while teaching a class
The door to door restructuring salesman: After retirement, Vandenbosch would frequently show up in the department in the 1970s and 1980s going door to door to talk with the faculty. In these conversations, he often pushed two unlikely and somewhat contradictory causes: a parliamentary form of government for the U.S. and changing representation in the Senate so that it reflected state population differences.
MAJOR ADVANCES IN THE 1960s
In 1963 two persons came to UK who would make major changes. One was Dr. John Oswald. He left a position as Executive Vice President of the University of California System to assume the presidency of the University of Kentucky. He stayed only until 1968, but he pushed research as an important criterion for tenure and reorganized the university along the lines of other research schools. The other 1963 newcomer was Dr. Sidney Ulmer who was recruited from Michigan State to become chair of Political Science. He had a mandate to recruit a research-oriented faculty. And he had the funds to accomplish this. America was prosperous in the 1960s, higher education was expanding, and both federal and state money were plentiful.
Ulmer spent a lot of time recruiting good faculty with about 15 arriving during his six years as chair. Nine alone came in the fall of 1966. Those brought in who stayed for any length of time were Drs. Michael Baer, David Booth, Bradley Canon, Frederic Fleron, George Gadbois, Dean Jaros, Lloyd Jensen, Bill Lyons, Gene Mason, Robert Pranger, Herbert Reid and Sheldon Simon. It was a very young faculty; in 1968-69 there were only four members on the Graduate Faculty – those legally able to direct dissertations. Political Science at UK became a “publish or perish” department. And publications abounded in the most prestigious journals: American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Midwest Journal of Political Science (later the American Journal of Political Science), Public Opinion Quarterly and others. Ulmer also put much effort into attracting good graduate students and encouraging them to publish while they were in school. Micheal Giles, Richard Engstrom, Tom Walker, Herb Hirsch and Robert Darcy did exactly this, with Engstrom having five publications before taking his first position. And Jewell became editor of the Midwest Journal from 1965 to 1971, working hard to solicit better quality submissions and get the perennially late Journal out on time.
Departmental “digs” also improved. In the early 1960s, it was housed in what was universally called “Splinter Hall”, a rundown World War II barrack where the Fine Arts Library now stands. Word was that faculty members being recruited spent as little time as possible in Splinter Hall. In the late 1960s, the department shared Kastle Hall with Psychology. The experimental rats in the basement were air-conditioned, but the faculty and grad student offices were not. Indeed, many offices for new faculty were located in carrels in what was formerly a large classroom. They had no privacy, but they had windows. Teaching assistants’ carrels on the inside had no view. Finally in the fall of 1969, the department was moved to the 16th floor of the newly-built Patterson Office Tower.
Graduate students taking positions in the 1960s: Burt Atkins at Florida State, Robert Darcy at George Washington (later at Oklahoma State), Albert Eldridge at Duke; Herbert Hirsch at Virginia Commonwealth and Jack Soule at Maryland (later Australian National University.)
Lynn Human (later Rees) was the department’s administrative assistant from 1963 to 1976. She knew her way around the university and had good rapport with both faculty and grad students.
1960s NOTES
The ten minute sofa interview: Michael Baer, who later became department chair and then Dean of Arts & Sciences, came in 1968 without interviewing in Lexington. Perhaps this was because he was a grad student far across the country -- at Oregon. The closest he came to interviewing was when Jewell and Canon spotted him by his name tag in a hotel elevator at the 1967 APSA meeting in Chicago and then spent about ten minutes talking with him on a lobby sofa.
Beginning of the Happy Hour: In the late 1960s, faculty and grad students began having a Friday afternoon Happy Hour (sometimes two or three hours) at The Paddock, a now defunct bar at Rose and Euclid Streets. In the mid-1970s the locale shifted to the Upstart Crow (also gone) at Broadway and Angelina Ave. The Friday afternoon tradition continues to the present, led by the grad students who elect a Happy Hour Czar or Czarina, but the locales shift around now.
A NOTABLE RESEARCH DEPARTMENT IN THE 1970s
After six years as chair, Ulmer wanted more time for research. Malcolm Jewell was his successor as chair starting in the fall of 1969. He served four years. Then Canon was at the helm from 1973 to 1977. Baer followed him as chair from 1977 to 1981. The latter two were associate professors when selected, but were promoted to full during their terms. No associates subsequently served as chair of the department. Jewell continued the practice of serving as Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) as well as chair, but Canon believed being chair was a job in itself so the two positions were separated -- and have remained so ever since.
Recruitment continued apace. Departmental social life seemed centered on parties or dinners for candidates for our positions. We began the practice of having candidates give formal presentations about their dissertation or, for those with a Ph.D., a current research project. These talks were the most important criterion in the department’s hiring decisions. The department peaked in 1975 at 23 tenure track members. Compare this to the 16 we have today (2015)! And then compare the 300 majors we had at that time to the 600 we currently have.
New faculty arriving in the early 1970s and staying awhile were Drs. Frank Casale, Kenneth Coleman, Maurice “Mickey” East, Richard Elling, Larry Grant, Virginia Gray, Al Newman (not of Mad Magazine fame), John Patterson, John Wanat, and Ernie Yanarella. Later we recruited Drs. Bill Berry, Pam Conover, Don Gross, Kathleen Knight, David Lowery, Karen Mingst, Dan Nelson, Phil Roeder, and Lee Sigelman. Dr. Vince Davis, a political scientist, was also recruited as Director of the Patterson School with a joint appointment in the department. In the 1970s, however, UK’s department began suffering from a syndrome that haunts it even yet: young faculty who soon achieved visibility as researchers would attract offers from wealthier and more prestigious departments. Booth went to Massachusetts, Fleron to SUNY Buffalo, Jensen to Temple, Pranger to the Univ. of Washington, Simon to Arizona State as chair, Gray to Minnesota, and Wanat to the U. of Illinois at Chicago (his hometown). That wasn’t the only way to exit; a few contracts weren’t renewed, a few were not approved for tenure, and a few saw the handwriting on the wall and resigned. Some left for personal reasons, e.g., Knight to marry political scientist Bob Erickson then at Houston, and Richard Elling deciding he didn’t want to live below the Mason-Dixon line.
Three department members took part in the creation of the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government. From 1781 until 1973, the city and county were separate entities with the city boundaries resembling a hydra-headed snake. Public services varied considerably depending on where one lived. In the late 60s, Jack Reeves headed a group pushing for a merger. It generated enough steam to have the county judge and mayor appoint a commission to plan a merger. Lyons chaired the commission (he was termed, “my favorite Commie professor” by county judge Robert Stephens who later was Chief Justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court). Jewell also served on the commission. The Commission drafted a charter which voters approved in 1972. Lyons became known as the James Madison of Lexington. He later served on the Urban County Council, winning his first term by seven votes along with the nickname “Landslide Lyons.”
In the late 60s and early 1970s, the department divided along ideological lines which partly mirrored those in American politics at the time, especially over the Vietnam War. Some faculty and grad students aligned with the Caucus for a New Political Science. The Caucus wanted to overturn the APSA leadership who leaned liberal on domestic politics, but fiercely anti-Communist on foreign policy. More important, however, the Caucus wanted to change the fundamental nature of the discipline: political scientists, it argued, should abandon or downplay dispassionate research about political phenomena and devote their efforts to achieving racial and gender equality, empowering the poor, exposing the greed of the rich, and obtaining world peace.
At UK, faculty sympathetic to the Caucus proposed greater democratization in the department. Some of their suggestions were adopted in Jewell’s chairmanship. Graduate and undergraduate student elected two representatives apiece to department meetings and put members on standing and search committees. Undergrads also elected a Political Science Undergraduate Advisory Committee (PSUAC). There were even electoral campaigns among our majors for seats on PSUAC. By the early 1980s, undergrad enthusiasm for participation waned. PSUAC faded away as did undergrad representation in department affairs. Grad student participation remains to the present time. And by the 1980s the Caucus faded away. Some sympathizers (Fleron and Mason among others) left UK.
Department faculty and graduate students went full steam ahead in conducting and publishing research during the 1970s. A majority was focused on American politics or political behavior. And publication largely occurred in article form, often in the leading journals. Reputations tend to lag behind accomplishment, but by the end of the decade Kentucky was seen throughout the discipline as having a strong faculty and turning out top drawer graduate students. The National Council of Graduate Schools surveys ranked us in the top 35 departments and around 20th for state universities. In late 70s and late 80s surveys, Kentucky ranked in the top ten departments for publishing on a per capita basis.
In the early 1970s, the department created a forerunner of today’s “hybrid” TV and instruction course. Using outtakes from CBS News and other sources as well as comment and lecture by Jewell, Lyons, Baer and Canon, the introductory American Government offering was about 30-35 minutes of TV and 15-20 of discussion with a TA. By the mid-70s, the material was dated and campus TV stars returned to their podiums.
In the late 1970s, the Martin School of Public Administration was created. (Public Policy was added to its title later.) It included economists, psychologists and others as well as political scientists. Lyons, Roeder and Ed Jennings (a joint appointee in political science) served as its Director in later years.
The conference room (1645) served as a lunch table from the early 1970s to the current time. A core of half a dozen faculty joined by perhaps the same number of grad students would gather with brown bags or fast food and others would drop in occasionally. Discussions often centered on UK’s basketball fortunes during the winters. Football received less attention during the fall. Otherwise topics from gossip about political scientists at other institutions to state, local and university goings-on to the (dis)advantages of new statistical packages were fair game.
The 1970s produced some notable graduate students. Some along with their placements were: Mike Giles who went to Florida Atlantic and later Emory (he edited the Journal of Politics in the early 1980s and also served as president of the SPSA); Tom Walker to Emory; Richard Engstrom to Univ. of New Orleans; Mohindra Mohapatra to Old Dominion; Ken Kolson to Hiram College in Ohio (later with the Nat’l Endowment for Humanities); Steve Williams to Tennessee Tech; Bruce Bowen to Michigan; Charles Johnson to Texas A & M where he later served as Dean of Liberal Arts; John Shoemaker to Kansas State; Justin Green to Iowa; Marcia Whicker to Temple and then South Carolina (she published more books than any other UK Ph.D.); Mike Thomson to Northern Kentucky; Bob Roper to Southern Illinois; Gary Moncrief to Boise State; Charles Davis to Union College (Ohio); Paula Feltner to Luther College (Iowa); Larry Fuell to Shoreline College (WA); Kenyon Griffin to the University of Wyoming; and Charles Hartwig to Arkansas State University at Jonesboro.
Lynn Rees left the administrative assistant position and Bobbie Taulbee (later Smith) replaced her in 1976. Taulbee had been a staff assistant since 1968. Faculty and grad students got along with her famously.
1970s NOTES
Some faculty/grad students get religion: Faculty and grad students would often travel to conferences, particularly those in Atlanta and Chicago, in university station wagons because it was cheaper than flying. Returning from an Atlanta SPSA meeting in 1971 with eight in a wagon, the group stopped in a restaurant in Cleveland, TN for lunch. The waitress asked if this was a group of travelling ministers. The group immediately picked up on this and engaged in faux prayer and ministerial talk when within earshot of the restaurant staff.
Center of an “international incident”: We had a graduate student from Bangladesh during its war for independence from Pakistan in 1971. Gadbois, his mentor, wrote the Pakistani Ambassador protesting its army’s raping and massacring Bangladeshis. Rape victims included the student’s wife. The Ambassador responded, denying all such claims. Gadbois responded on with a hot letter on university stationery and signed it “May Allah strike you …… dead!” A week later Jewell, who was chair, was summoned to the VP for Academic Affairs’s office to discuss “an international incident.” The Ambassador was demanding that Gadbois be fired. He wasn’t, of course, and the university wrote the Ambassador to the effect that Gadbois’s views did not necessarily represent those of the University.
Gee, I don’t remember applying for that position: As he finished in 1970, Steve Williams was having no luck on the job market. So three fellow grad students sent his CV, filled out an application and forged his signature on a cover letter for an opening at Tennessee Tech. Shortly afterward, Williams got a call inviting him for an interview. Sure enough, he got the position and spent his career there.
Hit it to the girl: The department had a softball team in the 1970s that played in a league composed of other departments or university entities. One team member was Bobbie Taulbee, a staff assistant who often played shortstop. The Physical Plant team manager kept telling his players to “hit it to the girl.” Political Science didn’t fare too well in the league standings. But it was a lot of fun and the players would all go out for a beer or two after the games
Faculty wallops grad students (or was it the other way around?): Fall and spring picnics were a tradition in the department in the 70s and 80s. These included faculty v. grad student softball games. Faculty often won the games in the early years, but as their average age went up the grads racked up more victories.
The King Arthur room: PSUAC wanted a place to meet both formally and as a hang out. It eyed room 1673, controlled but seldom used by the Patterson School. It was called the “King Arthur” room because its chairs had high pointed backs and looked medieval (although the central table was oblong). After Henry Kissinger type negotiations between Vince Davis, PSUAC and Canon, who was chair, a “treaty” dividing the time was worked out.
16th floor paint wars: Jaros wasn’t fond of the pale green color of the 16th floor halls, so he painted the wall outside his office in 1641 bright orange. A few days later it had returned to pale green. Physical Plant had come by and repainted. So Jaros repainted it orange. Same Physical Plant response. So Canon who was chair met with Physical Plant’s chief honcho. He said “Great paint job. I wish our guys did it that well. But it’s not an authorized color.” Thus ended Jaros’s career as an artist.
Rushing into class: As Vanlandingham aged, his sight and hearing weakened. When he gave tests, students would rush into the room to sit in the back where he was not likely to see cheat sheets or hear whispers.
A GOLDEN AGE OF COLLABORATION IN THE 1980s
In 1981 Baer was named Dean of Arts & Sciences, serving for nine years before becoming Academic Vice President at Northeastern University in Boston. Sigelman then became chair. Jewell took a second term as chair in 1985. In 1988, Coleman became chair for one and a half years before leaving for North Carolina where his wife had become Dean of the Graduate School. Canon was acting chair for the semester and then became acting Dean of A& S after Baer left.
A number of new faculty came to the department, notably Drs. Charles Davis, Stanley Feldman, Cynthia Irvin, Chung-In Moon, and Mark Peffley and John Stempel (joint appointment with the Patterson School). Feldman. Peffley, Berry and Conover were all Minnesota Ph.D’s and became known as “the Minnesota Mafia”. While not a self-conscious bloc, they tended to have the same views about what constituted good research. Toward the end of the decade, Lowery and Conover left for North Carolina, Berry for Florida State, and Feldman for SUNY at Stony Brook. Jaros and Sigelman became administrators (Graduate Dean at Colorado State and Dean of Social Sciences at Arizona State, respectively). Vanlandingham retired in 1986 and died in 1995. Ulmer bowed out in 1988; he is 92, still resides in Lexington and keeps up with current events, especially the Supreme Court.
The faculty continued publishing research findings and being active in the profession. The 1980s was a golden age of major professional interaction among the faculty with ideas being constantly batted around. Collaboration abounded and produced research reports in all the discipline’s journals, some edited books and some books produced by faculty members. But ours was still an articles oriented program and again we scored very high on major journal articles per capita. Grad students were involved in some of these publications and some published research on their own.
Sigelman was the collaborator-in-chief. He coauthored articles or co-edited books with over half the faculty and a number of grad students. He also gave almost overnight critiques of faculty working papers where he was not a coauthor. As a master of secondary analyses of datasets, he turned out a lot of research across many political science subfields ranging from public policy impact to state politics to comparative government. His CV ran to many pages. In addition Sigelman was editor of the American Politics Quarterly for a three year term around 1980 and served a four year term as department chair starting in 1981. Afterward he was the rotating political scientist at the National Science Foundation. After leaving Arizona State, he went to George Washington as chair and helped build its department. While there, he served two terms as editor of the APSR. As he sometimes said, “Political science has been my life.” Sadly, he died of cancer in 2009.
Lowery published numerous pieces in mainstream journals which focused on tax policy, budgeting, bureaucratic administration and citizen satisfaction with urban services. Many were co-authored with Berry as their research interests overlapped considerably. Lowery and Lyons wrote a couple of articles on citizen satisfaction with municipal services. Berry and Canon published an article on the effect competitive general elections on primary divisiveness.
Conover and Feldman collaborated on a lot of research. They were both interested in political behavior and political psychology.
Jewell and Gross also did several research pieces together as they were both scholars of legislative behavior, especially state legislatures.
Coleman and C. Davis had similar interests in Mexico and Central America and coauthored several articles, some of it based on joint field research.
Of course, not all research was collaborative. Moon was also a prolific publisher writing about international relations and politics in East Asia. Mingst wrote numerous pieces on international trade relations, African politics and peacekeeping activity, one with Conover and Sigelman. Peffley became one of the leading researchers studying mass political behavior, political tolerance and racial attitudes in political behavior. He published a couple of books and numerous articles, including one with Sigelman and Feldman, but his main co-author was Jon Hurwitz of Pittsburgh. Peffley later edited the journal Political Behavior from 2003 to 2011. Ulmer kept up the steady drumbeat of research, mostly solo, about the Supreme Court and Canon explored the impact of judicial decisions. Nelson wrote about politics and international relations in the then Communist bloc nations of Eastern Europe.
Moon was a central figure in a network of Korean faculty and graduate students in American universities, sometimes “holding court” at professional conferences. He attracted a number of Korean students who got degrees at UK. The department and Martin School put on a workshop in state and local government administration in 1990 that brought 25 or 30 Korean administrators to Lexington for several days.
In the early 1980s the department began having an annual dinner honoring our distinguished undergraduate and graduate students. The Outstanding Political Science Senior was given the Vandenbosch Award, a check and gold medal. Runners-up also received cash awards. The best undergrad and grad papers also received prizes, some endowed by Ulmer and Jewell upon their retirements. The dinner, usually addressed by a speaker of some note, continues to this day.
Graduate students going out in the 80s include: Christine Sylvester who held many positions, the longest at Australian National University and is currently at Connecticut; David Breaux to Mississippi State and now at U of Louisiana – Lafayette; Jim Garand to LSU (he was president of the SPSA in the mid-2000s); Tom Konda to SUNY at Plattsburgh; Bob Bradley to Illinois State; Lauren Bowen to John Carroll (Ohio) where she is now associate vice president; Joel Thompson and William Cassie to Appalachian State Univ.; John Rothgeb to Miami of Ohio; Eric Lewis to Morehead State; and Mitzi Mahoney to U. of Texas at Huntsville.
Bobbie Smith left as an administrative assistant in 1980 and Kathy Stanwyx-Hay replaced her, staying until 1990.
1980s NOTES
Humor in publication: A couple of Sigelman’s articles were spoofs. He wrote one for Presidential Studies Quarterly (1982) using presidential horoscopes to predict successful administrations. It clearly demonstrated that Millard Fillmore was America’s best president. Earlier a 1977 PS article did a methodological take-off, looking at, among other things, what he termed “the N extender.” It explored how some researchers unable to obtain significant results using annual data would do so by dividing years into halves, quarters or even months.
PS-PSY Alliance: A political science-psychology alliance existed in the 1980s. Lowery and Feldman married psychologists Caryl Rusbault and Susan Belmore respectively. So some department faculty attended Psychology social events or parties and vice-versa. Perhaps the most visible result of this interaction was that we and Psych voted for each other’s members for the social science seats in the University Senate.
What? I’m paid to teach? One month Coleman unthinkingly slipped his paycheck envelope in his desk drawer. He ran across it several months later. Faculty members aren’t that well compensated and most would notice that they didn’t have as much in their bank account as they usually did. But Coleman’s wife was a professor in Biochemistry, so they had two incomes, hers perhaps more sizeable. Mary Sue Coleman was later elected as a faculty member on the Board of Trustees and went on to become President of the University of Iowa and then the University of Michigan.
Almost been there: Canon was a consultant in the summer of 1987 when a new Social Sciences College was established at the Univ. of South Sumatra in Palembang on that island. He was telling Ulmer about his forthcoming adventure. Ulmer, a tail gunner on a B-24 in the South Pacific during World War II, replied, “I’ve never been there, but I bombed it a couple of times.”
HOLDING THE LINE IN THE 1990s
Lyons became chair in the fall of 1990, staying two years and then becoming director of the Martin School. Once again Canon served as acting chair for a year. Then Mingst gave the office some stability by leading the department from 1993 to 1999.
Several new faculty came to the department: Drs. Horace Bartilow, Richard Fording, Matt Gabel, Greg Hager, Cynthia Irvin, Stuart Kaufman, Penny Miller, Patricia Pauly, Kirk Randazzo, Ellen Riggle, Jennifer Segal, and Steve Voss. Nelson left in 1991, moving to Old Dominion. Gadbois retired in 1992 (he still lives in the area) and Moon returned to Korea the same year. Lyons died of cancer in 1994. After a distinguished career, Jewell retired in 1994. His wife Margie died in 1990 and he married a fellow political scientist Sarah Morehouse (UConn) in 1992. They moved to Connecticut where he died in 2010. Patterson School Director Vincent Davis retired in 1998; he passed on in 2003.
Miller was brought aboard as more or less permanent Director of Undergraduate Studies. Previously, the position was occupied by various faculty members, sometimes reluctantly, and there was considerable turnover. Miller put considerable effort into the DUS position, coming to know many of our numerous undergrads and dispensing career advice. She filled a Special Title Series line, meaning that little research was expected. Nonetheless, she was quite active in research and wrote the most recent single-authored analysis of Kentucky politics.
With the departure of Conover and Feldman, faculty research about political behavior diminished, although Peffley was as active as always and Riggle did behavioral research. Likewise with Berry, Lowery and Sigleman gone, faculty attention to state fiscal affairs and public policy declined. Hager did some work in that area, but left to take an analytical position in Kentucky government in 2000. However, more research was published in comparative government and IR – historically a secondary focus in the department -- with Moon, Nelson, and Gabel and C. Davis writing about East Asia, Eastern Europe, Western Europe and Latin America, respectively.
Mingst’s IR work centers on international organizations, international law and peacekeeping. She wrote a widely used introductory textbook. Essentials of International Relations, now in its 5th edition. She often writes solo, but collaborates a lot with Margaret Karns of the Univ. of Dayton. Mingst did more travelling than any other faculty member, going to such non-glamorous places as Chile, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Vietnam, Albania and about 15 other countries. Kaufman studied security and ethnic violence in post-Soviet Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, very eventful areas in the 90s. Bartilow’s research delved into IMF and World Bank funding in Caribbean nations and policies relating to drug trafficking in Latin America.
Roeder began doing research as a consultant for the state about public health and corrections policies; he also wrote a well-regarded book on public opinion and state policies. Reid continued his writing on modern liberal to radical political philosophers and moved into studying Appalachian politics and economics. Yanarella wrote about energy and environmental macro-policies and began co-authoring with Richard Levine of Architecture about planning for sustainable cities. In 1998 Canon and his 1970s Ph.D. student Charles Johnson published what is still the leading work on the impact of judicial decisions. Gross published many articles and a couple of books about legislative behavior and campaign financing. More than anyone else on the faculty, he brought his graduate students in as co-authors. Riggle shifted her focus into women’s studies and GLBT politics.
The department continued to turn out graduate students in the 90s who became active in the profession. Laura Neack went to Miami of Ohio and is currently editor of International Studies Perspectives; Kathy Golden to the Univ. of Colorado at Colorado Springs; Todd Shields to Arkansas where he is currently Dean of Arts & Sciences; Yang Zhong to Tennessee; David Carwell to Eastern Illinois; John Euchner to Western Missouri; Kevin Snape to College of Wooster; Craig Warkentin to SUNY Oswego; Erik Lewis to Morehead State; Barry Tadlock to Ohio University; Vickie Williams to Alvernia College (PA), Jim Cauthen to John Jay College in the CUNY system; Kirby Goidel to LSU; J. D. Droddy, a retired USAF colonel, to Western Kentucky; Pia Knigge to Auburn, Chuck Smith to New Mexico State; Scott Peters to Northern Iowa; and Susan Blankenship to Murray State.
Holly Durkin became the administrative assistant in 1990, leaving in 1994. Renae Steinbach served from ‘94-’97. Beverly Clayborne then took the position and served 18 years (a record) until her retirement in July, 2015.
1990’s NOTES
Political scientist saves a life: A student began choking while Pauly was teaching her judicial process class. She immediately performed the Heimlich maneuver on him and then administered CPR. He recovered.
16th Floor Maze: Reid had the department’s largest collection of books in his office, probably well over a thousand. Stacked floor to ceiling, a visitor had to go through a maze of shelves to get from the door to Reid’s desk.
Social Event of the Decade: Fording and graduate student Dana Patton married in Sept., 1999, at St. Peter’s Catholic Church with a reception following at the Hunt-Morgan House downtown. Faculty and grad students had a rare opportunity to view one another in formal wear.
YOUTH RETURNS IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Mingst stepped down as chair after six years and her primary appointment was shifted to the Patterson School in 2002. Canon served from 1999 to 2001. He was followed by Jennings (from the Martin School) as acting chair for a year and then Waterman led the department from 2002-04. At this time the department was divided (see below) and the dean put it into “receivership”. For two years, two faculty members from other departments (Susan Carvalho, Hispanic Studies; David Leep, Math) administered political science. In 2007 Gross was named chair and served until 2011 after which Yanarella became chair and is serving as of this writing.
Dr. Rick Waterman, a respected scholar in public administration and policy, was recruited to the department in 2001. The other new members coming our way in the 21st century arrived directly from graduate school: Drs. Emily Beaulieu; Wonbin Cho, Daniel Morey; Justin Wedeking; Clayton Thyne; and Abby Cordova. Two couples also came: Geoff and Sophia Wallace, and Tiffany Barnes and husband Jesse Johnson. Two new hires, Mike Zillis in Judicial, and Jillian Haglund in IR, came in the fall of 2015.
There were several retirements. Miller’s husband died and she remarried and moved to Florida in 2005. Canon went on half time in 2003 and retired fully in 2008. C. Davis retired in 2007 and Reid in 2008. They live in Lexington with Canon coming down to campus to “pester” former colleagues from time to time. Roeder moved to the newly formed College of Public Health. Segal married a CIA analyst and now works for APSA in Washington. And several faculty departed for greener pastures: Randazzo to South Carolina, his alma mater; Cho returned to a Korean university, Gabel went to Washington Univ. in St. Louis; Fording became chair at Alabama; and the Wallaces went to Rutgers.
All in all, it was a somewhat younger and hungrier faculty than we had in the 1990s. Faculty research interests also changed a bit. Most notably, the comparative government subfield, long a secondary focus, found expansive new strength in C. Davis, Barnes, Bartilow, Cordova, Beaulieu, Gabel, and graduate student interest in it increased. Between the first four mentioned, the department has great strength in Latin America and Caribbean politics. IR continued to be a major attraction for grad students with Johnson, Morey, Thyne and G. Wallace joining Mingst. Strength in American politics fell. Judicial politics, long a mainstay of the department since Ulmer’s day, lost Segal, Randazzo and Canon with only Wedeking keeping that torch lit. Grad student interest in judicial fell off. Also coverage of legislative behavior declined. Waterman published regularly about the presidency and federal bureaucracy.
Epistemological differences split the department at the turn of the century. Basically the quantitative data analysts were pitted against those who were less oriented to mass data. There were some hard feelings and tense moments and this is what led the dean to put the department in receivership. Departures, additions and time pretty much healed the rift toward the end of the decade.
With Miller’s departure, the college hired two professional undergraduate advisors to help our majors. They were located on the 16th floor until recently, then moved down to the college, although they still handle our majors. This has worked pretty well and relieved the pressures on faculty time in mid-semester.
We continued to place graduate students mostly at main or regional state universities. Neal Wood went to South Carolina; Jeff Fine to Clemson; Kim Zagorski went to the Univ. of Wisconsin at Stout; Jerry Thomas to UW at Oshkosh; Dana Patton to Eastern Kentucky and then Alabama; Adam Butz to Marshall and then the Univ. of California at Long Beach; Marc Hutchinson to Rhode Island; Marybeth Bellar to Marshall Univ.; Lee Remington to Bellarmine College in Louisville; Mandi Bates to Valdosta State, Jonathan Powell to the Univ. of Central Florida[UM1] ; and Su Me Lee at the Univ. of Hawaii at Hilo. A number of foreign students took academic positions in their home countries, particularly South Korea, but others in Turkey, Mexico and Albania.
21st CENTURY NOTES
Paint War Redux: When Waterman became chair, he had his office painted “Smokey Pink”. When Gross was chair, the office paint décor was altered to “Deep Purple”. Apparently, the list of authorized colors had expanded since Jaros’s time.
16th floor remodeling: As chair, Gross remodeled the 16th floor somewhat. The conference room was half the size of the current one and the other half was a library-lounge. The wall between them was removed and the table turned to parallel the hall. [UM2] [BC3] Earlier Mingst had the table refurbished and glass topped.
MISCELLANEOUS RECOGNITIONS AND AWARDS
Yanarella was an elected faculty member on UK’s Board of Trustees.
Four department faculty have served as Chair of the Senate Council, the University Senate’s executive body: Jewell, Canon, Lyons and Yanarella. Reeves, Ulmer and Mingst also served on the Council.
A number of faculty became presidents of professional associations. Vandenbosch and Jewell headed both the Midwest Political Science Assn. and the Southern Political Science Assn., the only two persons to ever do so. Kammerer, Ulmer and Canon were also presidents of the SPSA and Shannon and Sigelman headed the MWPSA. V. Davis was president of the International Studies Assn. Jennings served as president of the American Society for Public Administration. Jewell, Canon, Roeder and Voss headed the Kentucky Political Science Assn.
APSA section awards for distinguished careers have gone to Ulmer and Jewell.
Six faculty have been named Distinguished Professors (an annual award) by the College of Arts and Sciences: Vandenbosch, Kammerer, Ulmer, Jewell, Mingst and Yanarella.
This history was composed by Bradley Canon in July, 2015. He has seen much of it, but his memory is not perfect. (pol140@uky.edu)