reflection – Active Learning in Political Science ©

May 19, 2026May 19, 2026

Midwest Model EU 2026: A student’s perspective

As the semester winds down, I want to share a professional highlight from this past spring: I advised and accompanied Indiana State University’s first Model EU team to the Midwestern Model EU simulation at IU Bloomington, Indiana. I pitched it the team as part of my interview over a year ago, and I am appreciative of the administration, the department, and – most importantly – my students who supported and joined this adventure. All students were “recruited” from a concurrent Politics of the EU class I taught in Spring 2026, and I believe – biased as I am – that they did a fantastic job in terms of preparation and professional conduct at the event. Model EU is definitely a high-impact practice that requires students to think on their feet and immerse themselves in an environment that is largely unfamiliar to them (especially those who do it for the first time). In terms of experiential learning, this was certainly one of the most intense experiences I have administered for a student group so far. In true pedagogical fashion, I debriefed with the team in the aftermath (with apple pie), and I am excited to improve and build a new team for next year’s iteration.

Image: Indiana State University’s first model EU team, representing Slovakia, at MMEU 2026 (Credit: JO)

Below I am sharing something perhaps different for ALPS: One of my students, Princes Habal (sophomore, Political Science) reflected on her experience, being part of her team. She shares in the post below challenges and success she experienced in participating.

June 14, 2024June 12, 2024

Reflections on my Spring 2024 Podcasting Project

In Spring 2024, I conducted a semester-long podcasting project with my students in my “International Relations and Popular Culture” class. I wrote about this idea last December if you want to get a broader overview of what I did. I want to use this post to provide some reflections on how it went, and what sort of changes I will be making in the Fall 2024 semester in two sections of the same course. I think podcasting projects are a fantastic way to have students conduct traditional research. But then they get to write podcast scripts and record episodes which ask them to translate more academic based research into forward-facing publicly engaging content.

December 7, 2023December 7, 2023

Scholars are Practitioners…in the classroom.

In many academic spaces, but particularly in the politic and professional military education worlds, there is a noted divide between ‘scholar’ and ‘practitioner’. Scholars have terminal degrees, or are in the progress of getting them, and rely on their academic background and research to provide them with their expertise. Practitioners may lack that formal academic background, but bring a wealth of experience from their professional experience in the military, policy world, or activist space. The divide between the two can be tense, with academics accused of living inside the Ivory Tower with no practical experience, and practitioners being told they over-rely on their own personal experience to the expense of a more representative or multi-perspective view.

To say ‘both have value’ is obvious, but not the point I want to make. Instead, I offer this: when it comes to the classroom, most of us scholars are actually practitioners.