2
INTRODUCTION
Kent State University’s Department of Political Science sponsors two unique and
innovative semester-long, off-campus programs for junior and senior students. The
Washington Program in National Issues (WPNI) has been in continual existence for over
thirty years. A faculty member accompanies 20-25 students who spend the fifteen-week
spring semester in Washington, D.C., serving in internships, attending briefings, and
engaging in research. The overwhelming success of WPNI stimulated the Department to
develop a similar program for the fall semester in the state capital city of Columbus,
Ohio, the Columbus Program in Intergovernmental Issues (CPII), and the third class of
20-25 students just recently completed the program in Fall Semester 2004.
This paper provides a description and discussion of these programs. The first
section will consist of an administrative overview of the programs by Tom Hensley, who
was Chair of the Department from July 2000 to June 2004. This section will include a
discussion of curriculum issues, the financial structure of the programs, and the
recruitment of faculty directors. The second major section will be a description and
analysis of WPNI by Rick Robyn, who has served as the program’s faculty director for
the past three years. The third section will consist of a description and analysis of CPII by
Vernon Sykes, who has directed each of the programs in Columbus. We hope that this
paper will be of interest to political scientists whose schools already sponsor semester-
long, off-campus programs as well as faculty members from schools who might want to
consider developing such programs.
Convention