Graduate students and young scholars with a passion for making a difference in the real world through research are often advised to put those dreams to rest until after tenure. This contributes to the enduring frustration on both sides of the “theory–policy gap” but it is sound advice—as of right now tenure decisions tend not to take into account publications appearing in policy outlets. However, the job market—and some of the most important mechanisms used for making promotion decisions in academia—suggest good strategic reasons for trying to have your research influence policy as early in your career as possible.

As new academic journals have emerged in political science and existing journals experience increasing submission rates, editors are concerned that scholars experience “reviewer fatigue.” Editors often assume that an overload of requests to review makes scholars less willing to perform the anonymous yet time-consuming tasks associated with reviewing manuscripts. To date, there has not been a systematic investigation of the reasons why scholars decline to review. We empirically investigated the rate at which scholars accept or decline to review, as well as the reasons they gave for declining. We found that reviewer fatigue is only one of several reasons why scholars decline to review. The evidence suggests that scholars are willing to review but that they also lead busy professional and personal lives.

To conduct a policy analysis, students must master foundational concepts and apply them using critical and evaluative thinking. A film-based assignment allows students to practice the steps of policy analysis in a low-stakes setting that requires a limited investment of time. Ideally, the assignment is used as an initial practice exercise before engaging in applied projects later in the semester. The applied projects are enhanced because students already have used the steps of policy analysis and been given feedback in a sheltered setting. We suggest using animated films for this assignment because they force students to define problems, solutions, and criteria without reference to existing practices or dominant perspectives. Therefore, student time and instructor feedback is devoted to developing what Bardach termed “first-rate thinking.” Concentrating attention on logical thought processes builds a strong foundation for further training in policy analysis.

Much attention has been centered on the use of emerging technologies in higher education, including flipped classes. However, widespread admiration for and adoption of these innovations seems to be occurring at a much faster pace than the assessment and evaluation of them. Questions about student performance in and perception of flipped classes remain unanswered, so more research is needed. This study examines student perceptions of a partially flipped Introduction to American Politics course. In general, the results indicate that students preferred the partially flipped format, although (1) it is not clear that students would prefer a fully flipped course, and (2) some aspects of the flipped format worked better than others.