Political scientist David Rohde remembers 1994 as a pivotal time in his training of graduate students.
"Every academic who's involved in training graduate students thinks at some point in his career, 'I know how this should be done, if only I had the resources,'" Rohde said. "In 1994, someone gave me the resources."
That year, Rohde created a program for political science graduate students at Michigan State University that aimed to create a collaborative environment “ with senior researchers working alongside students, who design and lead research projects.
Michigan State's program was so successful that Rohde started the same program “ called "Political Institutions and Public Choice" “ at Duke when he arrived here in July as a professor of political science.
"I came to believe that it would be desirable to get students actively involved in research earlier in their training, but I recognized that one couldn't expect them to do it on their own," Rohde said. "I knew about the collaborative environment of natural science laboratories and thought that some aspects of that could be a good model for training in the social sciences, particularly housing students together so that they could learn from one another."
Duke's program is housed in the Old Chemistry building, in a suite that has room for up to 10 doctoral students as well as Rohde, professor John Aldrich, assistant professor Scott de Marchi and a post-doctoral student.
Students will be invited to participate in Political Institutions and Public Choice if their interests match the program's focus, which is American national politics. Those who participate will, from the beginning, meet regularly to discuss ongoing projects and develop new ones, review reading assignments, learn research methodology techniques and seek advice from faculty and more senior graduate students.
While much of Rohde's time will be mentoring and teaching graduate students, he is also teaching undergraduates in a "Congress and the President" course.
Rohde, whose expertise is in American national politics, developed an interest in politics long before he became interested in political science. He volunteered with several campaigns and joined the American Civil Liberties Union.
As an undergraduate at Canisius College in Buffalo, N.Y., he changed majors a number of times, but settled on political science because of his interest in legal politics and the U.S. Constitution.
His early research focused on the Supreme Court, political parties and presidential and congressional elections. In 1991, Rohde wrote Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House, a book that questioned conventional wisdom among political scientists that political parties were not important in Congress. Political scientists had long argued, Rohde said, that members of Congress didn't need parties to be successful. Rohde argued, however, that parties' influence was actually growing.
He has recently returned to some work on the Supreme Court, and with a colleague at Harvard University is developing a theoretical explanation of nominations in the past 30 years.
Rohde said that because of the collaborative nature of the graduate program he runs, most of his research projects are done with the students he mentors or with other faculty in the program. In fact, Rohde has long collaborated with Aldrich, since the two attended graduate school together at the University of Rochester.
Right now, a research team is gathering data to assess how the majority party in the Senate affects the legislation that passes. That project is related to a conference at Duke in April on the influence of political parties in the Senate.
Other research projects will be defined as the semester progresses.
"Part of the idea is that, very early on, the students are involved in preparing and presenting papers at professional conferences and then seeking publication," he said.
The students at Michigan State have impressive publication records, with every student presenting more than 12 papers and being published before beginning the job search. As a result, Rohde said 100 percent of the graduate students in the MichiganState program were placed in Ph.D.-granting political science departments. He said that, for most programs, the percentage is closer to 33 percent.
"It's extremely rewarding," Rohde said. "When we started this, no one knew for sure whether it would work. The evidence is it did. I hope and anticipate the same will be true here."