I am happy to report that Perspectives on Politics continues to thrive. In the roughly two and a half years since we assumed editorial control of the journal, in June 2009, I believe that we have succeeded in strengthening journal operations and procedures and in projecting a new excitement about Perspectives and the role it can play in contributing to the invigoration of the discipline. At the heart of this has been the quality of the scholarship we have published and the way we have worked to present this scholarship in each issue.

As noted in the October issue of PS, G. Bingham Powell, Jr., the Marie E .and Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester, became APSA's 108th president on September 4, 2011, at the close of the APSA Annual Meeting. Eight new members of the APSA council were elected fall 2011. The new members are Paul Gronke, Reed College; Ange-Marie Hancock, University of Southern California; David A. Lake, University of California, San Diego; Taeku Lee, University of California, Berkeley; Kenneth J. Meier, Texas A&M University; Kathleen Thelen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Stephen M. Walt, Harvard University; and Angelia R. Wilson, University of Manchester.

In recognition of their outstanding academic and personal achievements, APSA is pleased to announce the APSA Minority Fellows for the 2012–13 academic year. The APSA Minority Fellows Program (MFP) was established in 1969 as an effort to increase the number of minority scholars in the discipline and has designated more than 400 fellows and contributed to the successful completion of doctoral political science programs for more than 100 individuals. APSA has refocused and increased its efforts to assist minority students in completing their doctorates by concentrating not only on the recruitment of minorities, but also on the retention of these groups within the profession. The MFP designates up to 12 stipend minority fellows each year. Fellows with stipends receive a $4,000 fellowship that is disbursed in two $2,000 payments—one at the end of their first graduate year and one at the end of their second—provided that they remain in good academic standing. Awards are based on students' undergraduate course work, GPA, extracurricular activities, GRE scores, and recommendations from faculty. Members of the selection committee for this year's fellows included Irasema Coronado, University of Texas, El Paso, Committee on the Status of Latinos and Latinas in the Profession; Eric L. McDaniel, University of Texas, Austin, Committee on the Status of Blacks in the Profession; and Wendy K. Tam Cho, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Committee on Asian Pacific Americans in Political Science. Learn more about the program by visiting http://www.apsanet.org/content_3284.cfm. This year's APSA Minority Fellows are described here.

This article introduces the writing metaphor and examines why political scientists should consider developing one to describe their own writing process. Drawing on the author's experience with writing accountability groups, it defines the components of the writing metaphor, provides an example, and discusses its advantages and disadvantages. The article argues that the writing metaphor can clarify scholars' implicit assumptions about the act of writing and the writing product and reveal unexpected information about their work habits and thinking process. By doing so, the writing metaphor can increase scholars' productivity and may ultimately enhance their writing experience.

Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) will deliver a plenary address at APSA's 2012 Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Two organized sections are featuring new awards: a graduate mentoring award and a new best paper award.

APSA is pleased to announce that four former APSA Ralph Bunche Summer Institute (RBSI) Scholars recently attained their PhD.

Young adults have particularly low levels of civic engagement. Incorporating experiential learning activities as part of the political science curriculum shows promise to reverse this trend. We analyze the impact of a mock presidential election simulation on the civic engagement of college-aged students. Exit surveys of student participants and a one-year follow-up survey confirm that this experiential learning activity had a positive effect on participants' levels of political knowledge, their interest in public life, and their attitudes about government in general.

Given that students often express a desire for course content to be more “relevant” and applicable to their lives, I describe one method for effectively addressing this concern through the organization of the course syllabus. The content of empirically driven courses can be framed within the context of philosophically driven normative questions. In other words, instructors can explicitly construct course narratives that frame the empirically based course content as an attempt to answer (or, at least, shed new light on) important, relevant, and on-going questions raised by political philosophy. I offer examples from two of my own courses, Political Psychology and Local Politics, and discuss the various pedagogical and instructional advantages of such a method.

The APSA Centennial Center for Political Science and Public Affairs continues to assist APSA scholars in both their residential research and nonresidential field work. The following brief descriptions summarize the work of two recent, in-residence scholars in the fall of 2011 as well as grants offered in the late 2011 and early 2012. Combined, we hope this information encourages more applicants for Centennial Center funding. For more information about the Center, visit wwww.apsanet.org/centennialcenter or contact Veronica Jones at 202.483.2512; [email protected].

A preview of some of the articles in the October 2012 issue.

You could call it serendipity or a mutually felicitous target of opportunity, but the APSA Congressional Fellowship Program and the Centennial Center for Political Science & Public Affairs—now under my and Veronica Jones' direction—found productive common ground in November 2011 that will continue into the programs' future. In addition to physical proximity—the two programs share the same floor at APSA—the similar content areas and background shared by Centennial Scholars and Congressional Fellows Program has overlapped since the center's founding seven years ago. Centennial Center scholars have been routinely invited to participate in any segment of the fellowship's six-week orientation program that was of interest to them. And, over the years, several of the scholars later became congressional fellows.

On February 13, 2012, President Obama sent a proposed fiscal year (FY) 2013 budget request to Congress. In general, programs affecting historians, archivists and other National Coalition for History (NCH) stakeholders would receive funding levels comparable to those they received in the FY '12 budget.

From 2000 to 2010, the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program (DDRA) supported thesis research of 87 graduate students in political science. As a result of cuts in the FY 2011 federal budget, the Department of Education announced in May that this year's competition would be cancelled. DDRA was one of six programs that were cancelled in 2011 when Congress significantly reduced appropriations for Title VI and Fulbright-Hays programs that promote international education (the other competitions/programs are Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language; International Research and Studies; Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Fellowship; Business and International Education; and American Overseas Research Centers). The DDRA program had provided funding for graduate students to spend up to one year abroad in countries outside of Western Europe since it was first funded in 1964.

As America's doctor, The US Surgeon General provides Americans with the best scientific information available on how to improve their health and reduce the risk of illness and injury. As a scientist interested in translating evidence to improve the public's health, spending a year as a fellow in the Office of the US Surgeon General has been the opportunity of a lifetime.

Students in courses about the Middle East want to learn, and they crave discussion. Yet they enter the classroom with a set of beliefs about the region that interact with their fears of offending or contradicting their peers. Together, these can produce a classroom dynamic that ultimately stymies student learning. In this article, several strategies are described to ameliorate this concern. These range from short lessons that directly confront student biases about the Middle East, to close analysis of journal articles and empirical evidence, to structured debates and simulations, to specific classroom management techniques. Together, these strategies can promote engaged, lively debate; generate student self-awareness of their presuppositions; and enhance learning.

With the 2012 presidential elections approaching, student interest in (and frustration with) the US two-party system is likely to grow. Although many explanations exist for this phenomenon, their number and complexity often overwhelm students. This article describes an iterative game, designed for a single class session, that illustrates one of the major institutional explanations for the US two-party system—Duverger's Law. The game can also spur discussion of some of the major criticisms of the Law.

The APSA Centennial Center for Political Science and Public Affairs is an invaluable resource to political and social scientists. Since its opening in September 2003, the Center has housed more than 100 scholars in Washington, DC, as well as supported a host of APSA members conducting field work in the United States and abroad. Full details on the Center and the Visiting Scholars Program are online at http:www.apsanet.org/centennialcenter.

The Senate Budget Committee is a unique and potentially powerful institution in the US legislature. It was begun to help coordinate the federal budget making process in the US Senate. Long-term trends and short-term institutional dynamics have weakened the coordinating capacity of the committee to the point that the budget process was entirely ignored in 2011. This article explores these changes. It shows evidence for Democrats and Republicans on the committee moving further apart ideologically since the 1970s resulting in more partisanship and less deliberation on the committee. It also shows how a combination of a narrow Democratic majority on the committee along with a recent uptick in ideological heterogeneity among Democrats but without prospects for bipartisanship, resulted in no budget process in 2011.

Founded in 1953, the APSA Congressional Fellowship Program is the nation's oldest and most prestigious congressional fellowship. More than 50 years later, the program remains devoted to its original objective of expanding knowledge and awareness of Congress. For nine months, select political scientists, journalists, doctors, federal executives, and international scholars gain “hands on” understanding of the legislative process by serving on congressional staffs. Through this unique opportunity, APSA enhances public understanding of policy-making and improves the quality of scholarship, teaching, and reporting on American national politics. For more information visit https://www.apsanet.org/cfp. The assignments for 2011–12 are listed below.