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What will my teaching opportunities be?
Duke typically offers the following opportunities to teach:
First year: no teaching (just five hours a week RA-ing) to allow
the student to focus on classes and adjusting to graduate school.
Second year: students TA in two sections, usually both in the same
semester, leaving the other free of teaching. Occasionally students
TA one section each semester.
Third year: two sections of a course each semester.
Fourth and Fifth years: a combination of TA-ing and teaching their
own course.
All students TA in their primary field (excluding methods) and
usually in a second field as well. Every effort is made to match
students’ specialties with their TA assignments, but, as departmental
needs vary, students will sometimes be asked to TA in fields that
are neither their primary nor secondary focus. While hours vary
somewhat across courses as well as week-to-week during a semester,
our best estimate at present is that each section taught averages
about 7 hours of work time a week.
The department and the University view teaching as a central part
of our program’s pedagogical and professional training. The
quantity and quality of teaching assignments are designed with this
first and foremost in mind. The department also offers a voluntary
and extra—curricular teaching politics certificate program
which many students elect to pursue. This program offers mentored
teaching with a faculty member, teaching workshops offered by the
center for teaching and learning, instruction in syllabus development,
regular teaching roundtables with fellow political science graduate
students.
What about other work opportunities?
· Students typically RA five hours/week during their first
two or three years.
· Additionally faculty members receiving research grants
often employ graduate students to do research.
· Workstudy funding is also available for students who qualify.
· Advanced students sometimes find employment teaching in
other departments/schools (e.g., Public Policy), the library, etc.
Suppose I need an external fellowship?
No guarantees, but over the last five years Duke students have been
extremely successful in getting external grants from foundations
such as the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Pew
Foundation, DAAD, and the Newcombe grants. These grants replace
the internal fellowships students are granted when they come into
the program.
Several students have also received Foreign Language and Area Studies
grants from the US government. Political Science students have also
done very well in the competition for internal Duke University grants:
the James B. Duke Fellowships, Duke Endowment Fellowships, the Earhart,
Alona Evans and European Studies Fellowhsips. We expect to do equally
well in some new fellowships Duke has recently introduced, notably
the John Hope Franklin Center Fellowships.
One important point is that external fellowships do not “top
up” internal fellowships: they replace smaller department awards.
How much is a Duke degree worth in the academic marketplace?
A lot, though as with any graduate program what you get out depends
on how much time and effort you put in. For students interested
in working in a large research university after graduation, Duke
offers one of the best placement records in the country (see tables
below). Recent Duke graduates have tenure-track jobs at schools
such as Stanford, Chicago, Harvard, Yale, Ohio State and Indiana.
Duke’s placement record is especially good when we consider
that many departments (e.g. Michigan, UCLA, Berkeley, Chicago) with
similar numbers of graduates teaching in “top 20” departments
graduate considerably more students each year than does Duke.
Many Duke graduates also teach in the best Liberal arts colleges:
Franklin and Marshall, Claremont McKenna, Colby, Dartmouth, Carleton,
Dickinson, and Bucknell.
It is also common for our students to find postdoctoral fellowships
or visiting positions immediately after graduation and before securing
a tenure-track position. Recent students have secured post docs
at the University of Chicago, Rutgers, William and Mary, Ohio State
(Mershon Center), Notre Dame and the University of Kentucky.
Data on Duke’s placement in “Top 20” departments
compared to other major graduate programs (as of June 2000)
Methodology: These data count the total number of assistant professors
in "Top 20" departments (US News definition) according
to the APSA handbook. To get a rough measure of yearly success in
placement we divided this total number of students in research placed
by each department by the total number of Ph.D. candidates in each
department in 1997 (the last year for which APSA had data). It's
only a partial measure, but it seems to show that Duke does as well
-controlling for department
size- as most peer depts. and better than depts. such as Berkeley,
Chicago, MIT and UCSD.
Steven Wilkinson has the whole Excel file from which he calculated
these figures if anyone is interested. Methodological bouquets and
brickbats welcomed.
Total Number of Asst. Profs in "Top 20" Programs who
received Ph.D.s from each school (N=158)
Harvard 26
Princeton 12
Chicago 12
Yale 11
Stanford 10
Duke 9
Berkeley 9
Michigan 8
MIT 7
Columbia 7
UCSD 4
Rochester 4
Northwestern 4
UCLA 3
Oxford 3
Minnesota 3
Caltech 3
UNC 2
SUNY 2
Ohio State 2
Indiana 2
Emory 2
Wisconsin 1
Vanderbilt 1
Rutgers 1
NYU 1
MSU 1
Illinois 1
Cornell 1
Colorado 1
Carnegie-Mellon 1
Brandeis 1
Placement in Research Universities Controlling for Department
Size
(Percentage of Graduates that are Asst. Profs. in Top 20 Programs
Compared to Total students in Ph.D. Program in 1997)
Princeton 21.4
Harvard 14.1
Rochester 12.9
Duke 12.3
Yale 11.8
Caltech 11.5
Stanford 10.8
Michigan 9.3
Chicago 6.5
MIT 6.4
UCSD 6.2
Northwestern 6.2
SUNY 5.4
Carnegie-Mellon 4.8
Berkeley 4.5
Minnesota 3.8
UNC 3.7
Vanderbilt 3.3
Emory 3.1
Columbia 2.6
Indiana 2.2
Brandeis 2.1
UCLA 2.0
UCLA 2.0
Colorado 2.0
Ohio State 1.9
MSU 1.6
NYU 1.2
Rutgers 1.0
Cornell 1.0
Wisconsin 0.8
What if I want to work outside of the academy after graduation?
Some of our graduates have done just that. Here are a few examples
of jobs held by our recent Ph.D.s: Financial analyst for Morningstar
Inc.; consultant for SAIC in Washington DC; Analyst at the World
Bank; on the staff of PBS’s “Frontline”; and last
but not least, Advisor to the Crown Prince of Jordan.
What about academic resources outside the department?
Within Duke, students take advantage of seminar series, joint working
groups and fellowships at the Center for International Studies,
the Sanford School of Public Policy, the Nicholas School of the
Environment, the Religion department, the Philosophy Department,
German studies, Classics, Women’s Studies, Comparative Area
Studies and History.
Students from Duke also take courses at UNC and there are several
seminar series and joint working groups that allow more sustained
interaction. There are also several Triangle-wide opportunities
for intellectual collaboration, such as the Triangle Institute for
Security Studies and the National Resource Center in South Asian
Studies.
How much contact do graduate students have with Professors?
Duke prides itself on being a department where there is a lot of
interaction between faculty and students. Many students choose Duke
over other schools because they value the opportunities for close
interaction with faculty in workshops, colloquia, research projects
and conferences.
What goes on in the department outside the classroom?
A bunch: happy hours, soccer, basketball, plenty of social gatherings,
and coming up this April, our annual department trip to see the
Durham Bulls baseball team.
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