Gateways to Democracy Essentials

Wendy Schiller (PhD, University of Rochester) is a professor of political science, international and public affairs at Brown University (Twitter account @profwschiller). She was legislative assistant for Senator Daniel P. Moynihan, a federal lobbyist for Governor Mario M. Cuomo, a guest scholar and PhD fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a post-doctoral fellow at Princeton University. She has published Electing the Senate: Indirect Democracy before the Seventeenth Amendment (2015) with Charles Stewart III, The Contemporary Congress (2003, 2005, 2015) with Burdett Loomis, and Partners and Rivals: Representation in U.S. Senate Delegations (2000), She teaches courses on a wide range of American politics topics, including Introduction to the American Political Process, The American Presidency, Congress and Public Policy, Parties and Interest Groups, and The Philosophy of the American Founding. Professor Schiller is a political analyst for local and national media outlets, including Bloomberg Radio, NPR, and WJAR10, the local NBC affiliate in Providence. Jeffrey A. Segal (PhD, Michigan State University) is SUNY Distinguished Professor and chair of the political science department at Stony Brook University. He has served as Senior Visiting Research Scholar at Princeton University and held a Guggenheim Fellowship. Segal is best known, with Harold Spaeth, as the leading proponent of the attitudinal model of Supreme Court decision-making. Segal has twice won the Wadsworth Award for a book (with Spaeth) or article 10 years or older with lasting influence on law and courts. He has also won the C. Herman Pritchett Award (again with Spaeth) for best book on law and courts. His work on the influence of strategic factors on Supreme Court decision-making won the Franklin Burdette Award from APSA. With Lee Epstein, Kevin Quinn, and Andrew Martin, he won Green Bag's award for exemplary legal writing. He has also won a national award sponsored by the American Bar Association for innovative teaching and instructional methods and materials in law and courts. John G. Geer (PhD, Princeton University) is vice provost for academic and strategic Affairs, the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of Political Science, and co-director of the Vanderbilt Poll. Geer has published widely, including In Defense of Negativity, which won the Goldsmith Prize from the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University. Geer has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University and Princeton University. Geer teaches Introduction to American Politics, as well as specialty courses on elections and campaigns. His teaching has won numerous teaching awards at both Arizona State University and Vanderbilt University. Geer is a frequent commentator in the press, with appearances on all the major networks (e.g., Fox News, CBS Evening News, CNN), and he has been quoted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the LA Times. He also has done interviews for major international outlets, such as BBC and Al Jazeera. Dana K. Glencross (M.A., Oklahoma State University) is Professor of Political Science at Oklahoma City Community College (OCCC), where she has served as Chair of the Department of History, Political Science, Geography, and Medical Terminology and as President of the Faculty Association. Professor Glencross was a governor’s appointee to the Oklahoma Commission for Teacher Preparation and a member of the Faculty Advisory Council to the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education. She was elected by her peers as the national chairwoman of the Association of Chapter Advisors to Phi Theta Kappa, the two-year college honorary society. She coauthors a chapter on “Public Policy” in OKLAHOMA GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS: AN INTRODUCTION, (Fifth Edition, 2012). She teaches courses in American Government, State and Local Government, Comparative Politics, and Law. She is a frequently invited guest on local radio and television broadcasts, discussing elections and political events. Her awards include the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching at OCCC and the Oklahoma Political Science Association’s Two-Year College Teacher of the Year Award.

1. Gateways to American Democracy: Judging the Democratic Experiment.
2. The Constitution.
3. Federalism.
4. Civil Liberties.
5. Civil Rights.
6. Public Opinion.
7. The News Media and the Internet.
8. Interest Groups.
9. Political Parties.
10. Elections, Campaigns, and Voting.
11. Congress.
12. The Presidency.
13. The Bureaucracy.
14. The Judiciary.