Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science, UC Berkeley

The Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science has long been one of the world's finest. We pride ourselves on our deep commitment to intellectual excellence, and to supporting inquiry and teaching that combines rigor, relevance, and openness to a variety of methodological and analytical approaches. The size of our faculty, currently fifty-two, allows us to do justice to the study of a vast range of important issues in political life. We offer an unusual combination of depth and breadth in the major subject areas of political science, covering not only the traditional subfields of American politics, comparative politics, international relations, and political theory but supplementing those subfields with very substantial strength in areas such as formal theory, methods, organizations and public policy, political behavior, and public law, as well as the politics of every major region on the globe. Reflecting the department's broad understanding of our subject matter and enduring commitment to interdisciplinary inquiry, many members of the department have joint appointments in other schools (including business, information, law, and public policy) or departments (including economics and sociology), as well as strong connections to a variety of research centers around campus.

Each year, the Department serves approximately 1,000 declared and intended undergraduate majors, and graduates approximately 400 students with a B.A. degree. Outstanding undergraduate education is central to our mission. To reflect our commitment to undergraduates, we have made several major innovations in recent years, including a new set of requirements for graduation, a substantially enhanced Honors program, and a new seminar program to increase opportunities for undergraduates to work with faculty in small groups.

The Department has an outstanding Doctoral program, designed to prepare students for careers in university teaching and to conduct advanced research. Approximately 25 students enter our program each year and roughly 150 are enrolled at any given time. Our graduate students take courses that offer state-of-the-art training in the conduct of research, combined with a very wide-ranging curriculum addressing fundamental issues in politics. We also seek to integrate them rapidly into an intellectual community that prizes scholarly development through the exchange of ideas and the sharing of work in progress. After completing their work here, many will go on to take jobs at the country's leading colleges and universities.

On behalf of the Department, I welcome you to this website, which is designed to provide detailed and easily accessible information about our programs and the people who make this such an exciting place to study politics.