For Students

 
 

Letters of Recommendation

I am happy to write letters of recommendation to support students’ applications for academic and professional opportunities.

If you think you would like to request a letter from me, first give some careful thought as to whether I am well-positioned to advocate for your best qualities. Letters from me will carry the most weight when you and I have known each other for awhile or worked together closely, such as through a research assistant relationship or thesis advising. I will also be able to write strong letters for students who have been especially motivated and engaged in my courses, especially smaller seminars.

I am happy to discuss all of this with you and, possibly, help you choose between possible recommenders. I will not be offended if you eventually decide to ask someone else.

Good letters take time to write. Please approach me about a recommendation letter at least 3 weeks before the scheduled due date. Once I have agreed to write for you, please e-mail me:

  1. The deadline and letter submission procedures

  2. The substantive materials you are submitting (e.g. cover letter, essay, research proposal, timeline, etc.) — drafts or outlines are fine, but for research-oriented applications, do remember that the more specifically I can discuss your planned research, the better off you will be!

  3. Anything you would like me specifically to comment on or emphasize — this can vary by application depending on the organization/program

  4. For high stakes applications (e.g. graduate school, competitive fellowships), I strongly encourage you to follow this advice from Dr. Arianna Long

Please also send me an e-mail reminder one week before the deadline and, if you haven’t heard by me, the day before. I’ll let you know when I’ve submitted. And keep me posted on both your triumphs and your losses — rejection is often a necessary part of success.

Government Honors Thesis Advising

If you think you would like to write an honors thesis in Government and that you would like me to advise it, I encourage you to think seriously about the prospective thesis no later than winter break of your junior year, and contact me early in the spring. This is so that you will have time to develop a sound, thoughtful proposal by the March deadlines for the honors thesis proposal and the Davenport Grant, which may be necessary to finance your research. The earlier you have a clear sense of your research question and research approach, the better the application you will submit. The application should be treated with the same seriousness with which you intend to approach your thesis.

As a junior faculty member, I can supervise at most two honors theses per year. It may be that when the Government Department meets to consider honors applications, you are assigned another advisor. As you are developing your topic, I encourage you to also meet with the other IR faculty members — Professor Foyle, Professor Gallarotti, and Professor Hanson — or other relevant faculty to discuss your project, in case one of them ends up being better suited to advise you. I’d be happy to provide some suggestions. Do keep in mind that, each year, some thesis applications are rejected due to the quality of the proposal or to not meeting the GPA cutoff.

In general, I am best positioned to advise theses utilizing research methods that I myself use. This includes: analysis of observational data, design and execution of an experiment, original survey research, and semi-structured interviews. I generally expect that thesis advisees will have prepared for thesis writing by taking Empirical Methods for Political Science, Experiments in International Development, and/or Applied Data Analysis, although these are not firm prerequisites.