Teaching Research and Researching Teaching: The Impactful Career of John Ishiyama

INTRODUCTION

John Ishiyama sees things differently. In an academic environment that often values research over teaching, he has always seen these two as inextricably linked. In his mind, teaching requires research and research requires teaching. Teaching depends on having something to say, which requires the acquisition of new knowledge. Research has little value if it is not shared, which requires the clear communication skills honed through teaching.

John’s refusal to take sides led him to endeavor to be both a productive scholar and an excellent teacher and mentor. He has succeeded at both, charting his own course through the profession. This assessment is underscored by Ryan Kennedy, now an associate professor of political science at the University of Houston, who notes that John’s career demonstrates that teaching and research can truly be two sides of the same coin. He first sought out John as a freshman at Truman State University, knowing only that this was the professor who had a poster on his office door for a study abroad opportunity in Russia, something that interested him. Ryan’s first conversation with John, he says, changed the course of his life. After talking over an hour, he walked away with a paper John had just written with another undergraduate student (Ishiyama and Velten 1998). Ryan was hooked, studied the paper intently, and still uses it in his research methods class as an example of how to structure a research paper.

Ryan’s story is not unusual. Holley Hansen, now a teaching assistant professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies at Oklahoma State University, found herself working as John’s research assistant during her sophomore year at Truman. As a first-generation college student, she found this experience transformative—not just because of the skills she acquired, but most importantly because she gained confidence in herself and her abilities.

John has always enjoyed talking with anyone interested in the things he cares about. His interests are broad and he has just as much fun talking with undergraduate students as with colleagues in the profession. He loves talking about Russian politics and history—the subjects that first got him interested in academia. He has studied communist and post-communist regimes globally. He has a well-developed research agenda in party politics, including the transformation of authoritarian governments and one-party systems into democracies and, more recently, the transformation of rebel groups into political parties after civil wars.

Less widely known is that John has been intrigued with North Korea since his undergraduate days, often calling that interest a “hobby” because the lack of data made it a difficult fit with his preference for systematic and quantitative analysis. Somehow, John has managed to figure out how to turn this interest into a productive research agenda as well.

In addition to the above interests, John has examined the value of student participation in undergraduate research. In doing so, he was one of the first to use the same research skills he used in the rest of his work to investigate systematically whether undergraduate research did indeed yield positive learning outcomes for students in political science (and the social sciences and humanities more broadly). Of course, once he embarked on the scholarship of teaching and learning, he found there were many topics besides undergraduate research that were worthy of examination.

Conversations with students and colleagues about all these research interests have led to many productive coauthorships over the years. But John is not all business. He is happy to talk about music, fishing, and sports. Depending on the season, he is happy to chat about baseball, basketball, or football and his favorite Cleveland teams that hardly ever win.

CLEVELAND’S SUBURBS SHAPE A RESEARCH AGENDA

Cleveland? Most people are surprised to find out that John was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. They simply do not expect an Asian American person to hail from such a quintessentially Midwestern city. But John is as proud of his Cleveland roots as he is of his Japanese American heritage.

More precisely, John grew up in Parma, one of the suburbs that experienced record population growth in the post-World War II era. His parents had ended up in the Midwest, because John’s dad did not want to return to his native California after the war. After all, that state’s government had facilitated the wartime “relocation.” ¹

Citizens and immigrants alike, anyone of Japanese descent was “relocated,” a euphemism for the forced transfer of an entire community to a series of internment camps spread across the south-western part of the US. John’s mom and her family went to Rower in Arkansas. John’s dad and his family to Topaz in Utah. Like so many other young men in the internment camps, John’s dad joined the military, serving as a medic in the US army in Italy and France. After the war, the GI bill enabled him to go to college—the first in his family.

His parents’ experiences with the internment were a powerful influence that shaped John’s identity. He grew up very proud of being Japanese American, a Sansei (third generation), and later as an Asian American scholar. He is a longtime member of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) and remains very much involved in the activities of the Asian Pacific American Caucus (APAC) of APSA.

Like many young families in the postwar era, by the late 1950s, John’s parents sought to move out to the suburbs and buy a house. Their choices were limited, as not all suburbs allowed Asian Americans to buy homes. Parma did. So, John’s parents and one other Japanese American couple—John’s dad had become friends with the husband in the internment camp during the war—moved in next-door to one another. They were the only Asian American families in a neighborhood filled with immigrant families from a variety of European backgrounds—there were Czechs and Slovaks, Italians, Poles, Serbs, Ukrainians, and so on. Many neighbors had experienced communism and authoritarian government first-hand, or had relatives back in the “old country” that did.

Both family history and exposure to the diverse cultures of his neighborhood shaped John’s interests. College enabled him to develop those interests into a research agenda. After winning the prestigious Truman Scholarship, he spent a year studying in South Korea – before it democratized and experienced remarkable economic growth. It was as close as he could get to the place that intrigued him—North Korea.

After returning to the US, he pursued his interests in authoritarian and communist governments (as well as ethnic politics) through graduate study. And like many comparative political scientists, John specialized in a geographic region that facilitated study of those interests—Russia and eastern Europe. He first earned a master’s degree in Russian and East European Studies at the University of Michigan and subsequently completed his PhD at Michigan State University, where he studied with Brian Silver.

Just as he was ready to embark on his dissertation, dramatic changes were under way in Russia and Eastern Europe. The outcome of these changes was by no means certain, making the choice of a dissertation topic a bit of a gamble. John took a chance, betting that the end of the cold war would give rise to something new. The gamble paid off. He was the first to publish on what became the study of communist (and later also authoritarian) successor parties—the transformation of organizations that had ruled as the only party organization in their country and now needed to adapt and field candidates in competitive elections (Ishiyama 1995). It was not his first published article, but it was impactful, got him noticed, and he followed it with a number of additional publications on communist successor parties.

THE TRUMAN YEARS: CONNECTING TEACHING AND RESEARCH

President Truman would make a second appearance in John’s career when he took a position at a public liberal arts university, although he did not know it at the time. A few years after his arrival, the university changed its name and became Truman State University. There, he joined a small group of political scientists who had built an extraordinarily strong undergraduate curriculum, consistent with the recommendations of the Wahlke report (Wahlke 1991; Breuning, Parker, and Ishiyama 2001).

At Truman, one of the courses John taught on a regular basis was the required undergraduate research methods course. Students were expected to enroll in their sophomore year. John gave careful thought to the structure and content of the course. He knew that students dreaded the course. He knew that many political science students had chosen the major in part because they did not like math very much. So, John came up with a plan that focused on discovery. He taught students to turn their curiosity into a research question, how to develop a literature review and frame hypotheses, helped them find data, and taught them how to run statistical analyses in SPSS. He did not focus on the proofs behind the statistical techniques, preferring to let students gain practical experience with the power of systematic analysis. Most students ended up with null results, showing themselves the world did not work the way they had thought. John encouraged them to look past their disappointment and ask themselves: if the explanation is not what I thought it was, then what else might explain this?

The approach yielded converts. Students who had been sure they would hate the required course concluded that quantitative analysis was a powerful tool. Some decided that research was so much fun that they abandoned their plan to pursue a law degree after completing their bachelor’s. Holley Hansen now teaches her own undergraduate methods course and models her syllabus after the course she once took with John. She has seen firsthand how this practical approach really connects with students across different research and learning levels. “John’s approach to teaching methods is about giving students the tools to ask questions and find good answers,” Holley concludes. “Those are valuable skills regardless of a student’s future career path.”

John did not just teach research methods in that one course. He helped his students develop their projects beyond what was required for a grade in the course, started taking them to regional conferences to present their work, and coauthored with them.

Ryan Kennedy says that John’s suggestion that he present a paper he had originally completed for a course at a conference made him “literally dance back to the dorms.” He and other students felt validated. And John made sure the students—who often presented alongside faculty members rather than on student-only panels—could hold their own. He helped them practice their presentations and taught them how to address comments and criticisms. He still does that.

Holley Hansen is convinced that she would not have pursued graduate education in political science had it not been for John suggesting that she do so and, in the same conversation, proceeding to list the specific PhD programs to which he thought she should apply. She credits John with helping her build not only the skills but also the confidence that she could succeed in the field. She says that, while she has been lucky to have many great mentors, it is John who had had “the most lasting impact on my career as a scholar and teacher.” Many years have passed since her days as an undergraduate student, but she still asks John for advice on teaching and they still bounce research ideas off one another at conferences. Mentorship is a long-term relationship, Holley concludes.

John’s impact on his students depended not only on his teaching and mentorship. He provided an example as well. During this period, he published extensively on communist successor parties, as well as on various topics related to teaching, learning, and curriculum. Students noticed. Ryan Kennedy judges that “John’s career provides a sterling example of how a research emphasis is an integral part of our role as teachers.” Holley Hansen agrees, saying that John’s example taught her that “research makes for better teaching, and teaching leads to better research.”

Emmanuel Nnadozie, an economist who served as director of the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program at Truman, noticed John’s teaching and mentorship as well. He invited John to join him as research coordinator. The federally funded McNair program prepares students from first-generation in college and under-represented groups in academia for success in graduate study. Later, in 2003, John became director of the program.

Jas Sullivan, now a professor of political science, psychology, and African-American studies at Louisiana State University, participated in the McNair program. He notes that in his role as research coordinator (and later as program director), John “has truly nurtured not just scholars of politics like me, but his impact on students has transcended disciplinary boundaries.” The students who were selected to participate in the McNair program majored in a wide variety of disciplines. John taught them all to think systematically about their research, prepared them for successful conference experiences, and launched them off to graduate programs.

At Truman, John’s approach to research and teaching was valued. It was understood as a successful approach to active learning. He received several university awards for his accomplishments, followed by the Carnegie Scholar Award (2003–2004), the Missouri Governor’s Award for Teaching Excellence (2003), and in 2004 he was named US Professor of the Year (Missouri) by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education.

A CONFERENCE AND A JOURNAL

In the political science profession, however, research and teaching continued to be viewed as separate endeavors. Michelle Deardorff remembers that in the mid-1990s the Undergraduate Education section of APSA counted very few active members. John likened the section to the “couch parties” he had encountered in Russia. There, he had talked to very small political parties, with memberships so tiny, they could fit on a living room couch.

The Undergraduate Education section consisted of a small group of people who were convinced that teaching mattered. Perhaps the section was not quite small enough to fit on one couch, but its active members did agonize over what could be done to grow the section and, crucially, persuade others of the importance of political science education and civic engagement. From the vantage point of today, as we enter the third decade of the twenty-first century, this group’s conviction seems prescient: the importance of a politically literate and civically engaged citizenry has become quite obvious.

The renewed focus on political science education and civic engagement grew out of conversations between a small committee of political scientists, which included John as one of the leaders of the Undergraduate Education section at the time. All of the political scientists involved were engaged in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). The group engaged in conversations with Michael Brintnall, then the Executive Director of APSA, which led to the first APSA-sponsored Teaching and Learning Conference—held in 2004 at American University in Washington, DC, with about 40 attendees.

This first meeting has grown into a regular feature: the APSA now sponsors a biannual Teaching and Learning Conference (TLC) and, on several occasions has also facilitated a day-long conference-within-a-conference at the annual meeting of the APSA. Thousands of faculty and graduate students have participated in—and benefited from—these conferences.

The APSA-TLC has not only served to grow the membership of the Undergraduate Education section, but has also attracted a new constituency to the association: community college faculty were drawn to this teaching-focused conference and the APSA responded by creating a Standing Committee on Community Colleges. The more numerous presence of community college faculty within APSA is beneficial for faculty at other types of institutions as well. As more students complete a two-year associate’s degree before enrolling elsewhere to continue toward a four-year bachelor’s degree, it has become increasingly important for faculty to understand the role and mission of one another’s educational institutions. John has worked to facilitate this dialogue, specifically through a small conference designed to rethink the undergraduate political science major (Ishiyama 2019; 2021).

Above: John Ishiyama at the 2020 Teaching & Learning Conference in Albuquerque, NM. Photo by Jason Collin

The Undergraduate Education section, which has been renamed the Political Science Education section to broaden the mission beyond undergraduate teaching, is now thriving. Michelle Deardorff notes that “John Ishiyama has been central to the deep and significant changes in APSA as teaching and learning has become part of the DNA of this disciplinary organization, and is now seen as a responsibility of all political science departments regardless of the nature of their institution.” This is evidenced in the edited volumes on pedagogical topics that the APSA has published. Among these is Assessment in Political Science, which John coedited with Michelle Deardorff and Kerstin Hamann (Deardorff et al. 2009). It remains the only disciplinary collection on departmental and course assessment.

Lastly, as chair of the Political Science Education section, John created a sub-committee to investigate whether the section might be able to sustain a peer-reviewed journal focused on the scholarship of teaching and learning. Although PS: Political Science & Politics published some work on teaching, the discipline did not have a journal dedicated to the systematic study of pedagogy until the debut, in 2005, of the Journal of Political Science Education. John served as the inaugural editor-in-chief of the journal, which was initially sponsored by the Political Science Education section but has since been adopted by APSA as one of the core journals received by all members of the organization.

A WHOLE OTHER CAREER IN TEXAS

After successfully initiating undergraduate students into the research process for almost two decades at Truman State University, John moved into a whole other career at the University of North Texas (UNT). Or perhaps it was not so different after all.

UNT provided the opportunity to teach graduate students. John quickly discovered that the work he had done with undergraduates at Truman prepared him well. Graduate students need help turning their raw curiosity into research questions as well. They also need guidance to produce professional literature reviews, develop theories, and frame hypotheses. They need help finding data or figuring out how to code variables from source materials. Graduate training provides students with a more extensive background in—and deeper understanding of—the state of the discipline in their area of interest, as well as a thorough grounding in statistical methods. That makes the starting point different but does not alter the role of an advisor and mentor.

John’s graduate students at UNT echo many of the same sentiments shared by his undergraduate students at Truman. Meredith Winn, a recent PhD who is currently working at Sciences Po in Paris, France, appreciates John’s “ability to always make time for his students, regardless of whatever other commitments he had at the time.”

It is not just his availability to his students that matters, however. Meredith credits John’s “optimism and encouragement” as “instrumental” in helping her take risks and gain the confidence to go beyond what she thought was possible. Christopher Williams, who was one of John’s early PhD students, concurs. With John’s encouragement, he built his credentials with postdoctoral positions in three different European countries before taking up his current position at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Amalia Pulido-Gómez, who is currently an assistant professor at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE), says John “basically changed my life.” She first met John when he gave an invited talk at the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico (UAEM), where she was a student. He encouraged her to apply to UNT’s graduate program. After arriving, Amalia felt that John “always cared about me and believed in me,” and that she could not have gotten as far as she has without his mentorship.

Anna Batta, another early PhD student who was recently promoted to Associate Professor at the US Air War College, jokes about how John told her to “just write it down,” each time they were working on a paper together. To her, discussing ideas with John never felt like work. He was always available to brainstorm. She still talks with John about her research projects and some of these conversations have led to coauthored work (Batta and Ishiyama 2020).

Brandon Stewart, who is currently an assistant professor at Troy University, recalls first meeting John in a hotel lobby during a conference. He had applied to UNT and was waiting on an acceptance letter when he nervously walked up to John to introduce himself. He says: “I was warmly greeted by a man who radiated a strong paternal presence coupled with a hearty laugh. I knew right away that UNT was the right place for me.” Looking back, Brandon remains convinced he made the right choice when he accepted admission to the PhD program at UNT. He says that John’s “mentorship and friendship have meant more to me than anything else.”

Michael Marshall, who is now an assistant professor at Prairie View A&M University, wholeheartedly agrees with Brandon’s sentiment. He says that John played a crucial role in his transformation into an educator and scholar. John is not just a mentor and co-author to him, but also a friend and father figure. He says that John’s “patience, perseverance, and commitment to the development of our craft continues to be inspirational.” Michael hopes to “one day become a mentor and political scientist of John Ishiyama’s caliber.”

John inspires his students to aspire to greater achievements than they sought possible. They see him as their academic father. In turn, these former students seek to emulate him as they pay it forward in their mentorship of their own students. There probably is not a better compliment than this desire to be “just like John.”

A quick look at John’s CV shows that his mentoring strategy did not detract from his own ability to publish. Especially after arriving at UNT, his coauthored work increasingly featured current and former PhD students. These partnerships shifted across time: in the earlier stages in the PhD program the student might function as a research assistant or junior partner, in the latter stages the student would take the lead on a project. John would take the lead on early student projects and limit his role as the student gained a footing in the profession. And coauthorships with students who have become colleagues in the profession are equal partnerships in which John and his former students pursue shared interests.

John has never imposed his own research agenda on the students he works with. Instead, he helps them craft viable research projects from their own interests. Often, the projects do have some connection to John’s own curiosities, but that is not surprising: the students who seek him out do so because they know his work.

That said, the move to UNT opened up new horizons in John’s research. Both student interests and conversations with colleagues led him into new directions that nevertheless related to his core research agenda. This new work included the transformation of rebel groups into political parties (e.g., Ishiyama and Batta 2011; Marshall and Ishiyama 2016), the intersection between civil wars and party systems (e.g., Ishiyama 2014a), party politics (Williams and Ishiyama 2018), a return to research on ethnic politics (e.g., Ishiyama 2012; Ishiyama and Stewart 2019), and a resurgence of his interest in North Korea (e.g., Ishiyama 2014b; Ishiyama and Kim 2020). Although some of the initial forays into these new areas were single-authored articles, John’s more recent work shows a distinct trend towards coauthorship.

For John, working with graduate students is a positive-sum endeavor. He is able to pursue a range of research interests, remain productive, and pay it forward simultaneously. He does not only seek to teach his students the craft of research, but also seeks to pass on mentoring skills. In 2010, he won a National Science Foundation sponsored Research Experiences for Undergraduates (NSF-REU) grant, initially with fellow political scientist Michael Greig as co-principal investigator and later with geographer Joseph Oppong. Including grant renewals, the program remained in place for a decade. The REU allowed John to bring about ten undergraduate students from across the US to campus for a six-week summer research experience.

Above: Ishiyama with track moderators and organizers of the 16th Teaching & Learning Conference in Albuquerque, NM. Photo by Jason Collin.

However, John did not simply reprise his experience with undergraduate research at Truman. At UNT, he used the REU to not only provide undergraduates with an amazing learning experience, he simultaneously provided training for graduate students. Every year, he assembled a team of UNT PhD students who taught workshops and mentored several students. Each undergraduate participant had access to a faculty member with similar research interests and received day-to-day guidance from a graduate student mentor. It worked out well: although the access to faculty expertise helped shape the projects, the PhD students provided low-threshold and comfortable working relationships. And the PhD students learned valuable skills as teachers and mentors.

Chase LaSpisa, who participated in the REU at UNT and is now a graduate student at the University of Iowa, says that the program was “super important for my academic journey.” He notes that for many participants, the experience helped determine whether academia was the right path for them. He credits John’s efforts as key to the success of the program in inspiring the next generation of political scientists, as well as teaching them invaluable skills in research methodology and ethics.

Melissa Martinez was an early participant in the REU. She subsequently obtained her PhD at UNT, and is now an assistant professor at the University of Mary Washington. While a graduate student at UNT, she had the opportunity to serve as a mentor to a later cohort of REU students. She continues to pay it forward in her current position. Melissa notes: “now that I find myself mentoring students, I think a lot about all the great mentorship that John gave me as an undergraduate and graduate student.”

EDITING THE APSR

The move to UNT had initiated a very prolific period in John’s already notable career. He added to his contributions in the area of post-communist politics, moving from a focus on Russia and Eastern Europe to a global one. He reinvented his research on the transformation of authoritarian and communist successor parties to investigate the transformation of rebel groups into parties. He returned to longstanding interests in ethnic politics and finally found a way to study North Korean politics in a systematic fashion. He also continued to produce work on SoTL. And then came the opportunity to edit the American Political Science Review (APSR).

It all started with a query by American politics colleague Valerie Martinez-Ebers, who talked to a few people in the department about their interest in editing the American Political Science Association’s premier journal. As such things go, it might have remained just a wild thought. But John does not like loose talk. So, he got to work on crafting a proposal that brought together four colleagues (including also political theorist Steven Forde and international relations scholar Marijke Breuning), each representing a different subfield of the profession.

Since John does not like doing things half-way, the proposal ended up being sufficiently competitive to bring the APSR to UNT. John became the lead editor of a team that also included a managing editor, Meagan Williams, a post-doctoral position held by Ramesh Sharma, and an annually rotating team of advanced graduate students who served as editorial assistants.

Graduate students found it highly valuable as well as eye-opening to work for the APSR. John worked hard to make the experience worthwhile for the editorial assistants—to structure it as one that provided insight into the publishing process to the benefit of their own efforts to get published. Periodic lunches with the team were an opportunity to talk about some of the lessons derived from the experience.

The period of John’s editorship also coincided with the debate about data access and research transparency (DA-RT). Realizing the importance of the debate, John made sure to connect to a variety of constituencies and to discuss the issue with the editorial board. Differences of opinion emerged between scholars using quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Some favored moving ahead with requiring quantitative scholars to make replication files available. John thought that this would create a double standard. He worried that demanding transparency from those using quantitative analysis but not from those employing qualitative approaches, would affect perceptions of credibility. However, qualitative analysis takes many forms and setting standards for research transparency was resisted by those who feared having to divulge confidential information or the identities of informants. Despite efforts to reassure scholars that the editors would not ask for field notes or confidential information, and that a more limited description of their research efforts would suffice (Breuning and Ishiyama 2016), research transparency remains a problematic issue for some qualitative scholars. The debate was difficult and prolonged. It took until the final year of the team’s editorship to arrive at DA-RT principles for the APSR—and the team’s successors would not be bound by them.

John’s leadership of the APSR did result in broader access for a wider range of political scientists. Much has changed since, but the UNT team did attract more submissions by women scholars, which lead to more women being published in the APSR. The team also attracted a more international authorship, although mostly from global north countries. Substantively, the team’s focus was on interesting and new ideas—what John called the “wow factor.”

TEACHING AND RESEARCH WITHOUT BORDERS

Teaching research skills has been a thread that runs through the various stages of John’s career. It is what he did at Truman, does at UNT, and has taken abroad to Georgia and Ethiopia. Together with Michael Greig and Richard Nader, John received a subcontract from the US Department of State to help improve the education in research skills at a university in Georgia. Michael and John taught a course in research design and methods via an internet connection to several cohorts of advanced students and professionals. At the completion of each cohort, they traveled to Georgia to meet the students, attend their research presentations, and present them with certificates of completion.

After the completion of the contract, John wondered whether a similar effort might be undertaken elsewhere. He remembered meeting an energetic young academic from Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia at a conference. He contacted Bantayehu Shiferaw and applied for a Fulbright senior specialist grant. This led not just to one visit, but to several. Each time, John combined hands-on training in research design and statistical analysis during his visits with recorded introductory lectures prior and feedback on draft research papers after, providing training that was not otherwise available to the academics and professionals who enrolled in these courses.

Just like John had coauthored with his undergraduate students at Truman and his graduate students at UNT, he also coauthored with scholars he met in Georgia and in Ethiopia (Ishiyama, Mevrishvili, and Zhgenti 2018; Shiferaw and Ishiyama 2021). Once again, teaching research went beyond the classroom and yielded partnerships and publications. Once again, teaching and research were not simply two sides of the same coin, but completely interwoven.

CONCLUSION

In 1980, the Harry S. Truman Foundation invested in John Ishiyama’s future, hoping he would become a leader in public service. Just over 40 years later, he steps into the position of president of the APSA. The road he has traveled in between is likely somewhat different from that of most others who have held the position. John spent the first half of his career at a public liberal arts university and the second half at a PhD-granting public university. Along the way, he became the inaugural editor of the Journal of Political Science Education and the lead editor of the well-established American Political Science Review.

Throughout his career, John has made students the focus of his work. He has shared his passion for research through his teaching and his mentorship. What makes him effective in the latter role, as former student Holley Hansen says, is that he “has confidence in [his students] as scholars even before we find that confidence in ourselves.”

His CV is lengthy and counts a great many publications. But his legacy is the students he has taught and mentored, and who are now paying it forward as they teach and mentor their own students. Brandon Stewart speaks for a good number of John’s former students, saying: “I hope he knows the incredibly positive impact he has had on my life." ■