In face of the ongoing discrepancy between the number of political science PhD graduates and the availability of permanent academic positions, in this article we consider attitudes of faculty members towards options to address this issue. Based on a survey of faculty members in PhD-granting political science programs at English-speaking Canadian universities, we find considerable support for both reducing the number of PhD students admitted and reforming curriculum to ensure graduates cultivate skills transferable to non-academic environments. At the same time, faculty members are inclined to believe that PhD students themselves should shoulder the greatest responsibility for career preparation.

The importance of slideware presentations at conferences remains underestimated. Although several articles in the profession focus on this topic, emphasis on aspects of design and aesthetics appears scant. Changing trends and advances in software, instructional design, and human–computer interactions demand political scientists adapt and pay greater attention to balance and harmony, learning to distinguish between design and decoration. Building on Salmond and Smith’s (2011) work, this article offers 10 tips for creating cleaner, more visually appealing, minimalist slideware presentations. In a world of smartphones and social media, audiences are accustomed to visual aids; therefore, clearly and succinctly conveying a presenter’s core argument and/or results is not only crucial but also paramount.

Anecdotally, there is growing concern among racialized women in political science: we are too few. More distressing, however, is the number of racialized women faculty who have fallen ill or passed away at a young age. On October 9, 2018, political scientist Dr. Malinda Smith (2018) drew attention to the unfortunate trend via a series of tweets, listing the names of women in political science who had recently passed away and compelling us to bear witness.

This article describes a variant of experiential course design—open inquiry—that has learning-how-to-learn (or metacognition about learning) as a primary course goal. In open-inquiry designs, students first choose the problems that they will study during the course. They then co-create each class period as the semester progresses. They recognize deficiencies in their own content knowledge, skills, and learning processes and take actions to remedy them. By reflecting on their successes and failures, students practice the skill of self-directed learning. This process of metacognitive reflection is a crucial skill that they will need when they face novel problems after graduation. In open-inquiry courses, students have produced high-quality work by learning about substantive policy areas that they choose to study, developing the policy skills that they deem important, and growing in their understanding about how they learn effectively.

The importance of replication has been a major matter of discussion among political scientists for decades. However, in the past five years, the issue has gained greater traction, with many major journals adopting official standards for Data Access and Research Transparency (DA-RT). At the same time, scholars suggest the pivotal role that replication might play in methods training for students. Unfortunately, these conversations have been limited in that they emphasize quantitative methods and training of graduate students. This article seeks to fill this gap by offering commentary on the author’s experience in introducing a qualitative replication project in an upper-division undergraduate course. The students in the course replicated Ross’s (2004) influential article on the “resource curse,” but the assignment framework can be adopted for various topics and contexts.