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faculty
Douglas Roscoe, PhD
Professor / Director of General Education
Political Science
Education
| 2000 | Loyola University Chicago | PhD |
Teaching
- American politics
Courses
Students will learn how to be an informed consumer of information and make more informed decisions. Topics include distinguishing good arguments from bad ones, interpreting the likelihood of outcomes, understanding the psychology underlying cognitive bias and error, recognizing our own biases and blind spots, and understanding how statistics and illustrations are used to sway opinion.
Investigation of important North American contributions to human civilization, from Jazz and the airplane, to nuclear weapons and Cheese Wiz, to individual rights, the written constitution and the democratic republic. Topics could include Coming Down with the Blues; building the car, or the plane, Hollywood and the Invention of mass cinema; from inalienable rights to human rights; the Long 1960s as Cultural Revolution. May be repeated with change of content.
Theory and practice of national government in Congress, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court, and the interaction of these institutions with interest groups, political parties, public opinion and the mass media.
Special topics course in the field of American Politics. May be repeated with change of content.
Students will learn how to study politics "scientifically" using theories, hypotheses, and concepts to explore the relationships among variables. Students will also learn how to define and critique concepts commonly used in professional journals. The course includes an overview of descriptive statistics using the SPSS software, exposure to some inferential statistics, and their application to data analysis in Political Science. Students learn how to present quantitative data in a manner consistent with the expectations of the discipline.
Available topics seminar in the field of American politics. Repeatable with change in content.
Online and Continuing Education Courses
The development and function of political parties and political interest groups in American politics. Strategies for lobbying and for creating interest groups also examined. Cross-listed as LST 332.
Register for this course.
Research
Research interests
- Political parties and interest groups
- Elections and political behavior
- Congress and the legislative process
Select publications
- Douglas D. Roscoe and Shannon Jenkins (2016).
Local Party Organizations in the 21st Century
Prof. Roscoe’s academic interests center upon American politics, with a focus on Congress, the president, interest groups, and political parties. He is especially interested in the dynamics of the electoral process and how interest groups and parties shape lawmaking and public policy through electoral politics. Prof. Roscoe is author of the book The Promise of Democratic Equality in the United States (Routledge Press) and co-author of the book Local Party Organizations in the 21st Century (SUNY Press). His work has been published in a number of journals, including the Journal of Politics, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly, and Publius. Prof. Roscoe has been a co-investigator in a long-running study of local political parties, and he is currently the Director of General Education for UMass Dartmouth. In 2011 Prof. Roscoe was a Fulbright Scholar at Lingnan University in Hong Kong, China.