I'm happy to be the recipient of an award recognizing the work of scholars who deploy literary and experiential resources in pursuit of meaning. And I am delighted that there is a conference-related group institutionalizing this honor. On this auspicious occasion, I thought I would offer a few remarks about my current work.

A decade ago, we were among the scholars in political science who proudly associated ourselves with the Perestroika movement and its calls for greater respect for a range of productive methods, more substantively significant political research, and a more internally democratic profession. We retain those commitments. But Perestroikans have failed to focus on some broader trends in political science and the modern American academy that pose threats that are arguably still deeper, still more unjust, and still harder to overcome. In regard to what political scientists do that this society values most—teaching—we have a significant and growing equity deficit in the discipline.

Malcolm “Mac” Jewell was a mainstay of the Political Science Department at the University of Kentucky (UK) for 36 years. For that same period and even longer, he was one of the profession's leading researchers in explaining legislative behavior (particularly in the states) and how state political parties worked. Mac retired from UK in 1994 but continued being active in our profession. Around 2004, he began suffering from Alzheimer's disease. He died on February 24, 2010, in Fairfield, Connecticut.

This section lists upcoming book publications across the broad field of political science and is fully reader generated.

Bob was the Sidney W. Souers Professor Emeritus at Washington University, where he chaired the political science department both early and late in his career. He served as vice president of the APSA, president of the Midwest Political Science Association, and president of the Missouri Political Science Association, and he had been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Rockefeller Center scholar. He had been confined to his home by breathing problems in recent years, but he remained engaged and intellectually active. In his last months, Bob completed a new essay about interest groups, which is scheduled for publication soon. He died on April 9.

In 10 years, Perestroika has gone from a “raucous” forum discussing a wide range of issues to a largely moribund list that posts occasional jobs and attacks those who dare to bring up controversial topics. A good example of the decline of the list was illustrated by one participant's recent attempt to raise the issue of Glenn Beck's slander of Frances Fox Piven and the late Richard Cloward. The poster was attacked by some group members for “politicizing” Perestroika. These members claimed that the list was a no-politics zone for debating methodological issues. Since Glenn Beck did not hold a tenured position in the discipline, others felt that his ideas were not rational enough to warrant a response. Some on the list (perhaps with scant knowledge of left-wing media) proposed approaching Rachel Maddow, and while a few media outlets did take up this case, it never reached the main talkies. In the end, however, Perestroikans failed to stand up for the integrity of the free and wide-ranging discourse they claim to champion.

The many years Susanne Rudolph and I spent editing and interpreting Amar Singh's diary for our book, Reversing the Gaze, led us to reflect on the multiplicity of forms of knowledge, starting with Amar Singh's first-person, subjective knowledge and extending to the situational truths of Gandhi's satyagrahas.

Stan Anderson died unexpectedly while out for an afternoon walk on May 26, 2009. If I set out to design a model civil society, Stan would be my model citizen. At every nexus in the life of a community—family, friends, workplace, and civic institutions—Stan's instincts were to care and to contribute. For 30 years a member of the political science faculty at the Santa Barbara campus of the University of California, he was a leading authority on, and advocate for, American applications of the (Scandinavian) office of ombudsman. If that term for an official who handles citizens' complaints is no longer foreign in the United States, it is largely because of Stan Anderson.

Following a period of declining health, Alex Dragnich died of pneumonia on August 10, 2009, at the age of 97. His mind remained sharp and his pen vigorous until almost his death.

While there is nothing new about academic dishonesty, how it is committed, prevented, and detected has been dramatically transformed by the advent of online technologies. This article briefly describes the concurrent emergence of online writing assistance services and Web-based plagiarism detection tools and examines the implications of both for student-faculty relations, faculty workload, and student learning. Finally, we provide three alternative strategies for deterring, detecting, and documenting all forms of plagiarism.

On September 27, 2007, Lee Sigelman sent an e-mail message to a large number of coauthors, friends, and colleagues. The message began: “Friends: I'm sorry to burden you with the news that follows …” What followed was Lee's report that earlier in the day, he had received a diagnosis of stage IV colon cancer, that it had spread beyond the colon, and that he had six to twelve months (soon revised upward to almost two years) to live. For the next 27 months, Lee taught his colleagues and friends about how to approach both life and death.

Robert W. Jackman, Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis, died peacefully in San Francisco on October 8, 2009, after a long, courageous struggle with pancreatic cancer.

J. David Singer, a globally recognized scholar of international politics, died Monday, December 28, 2009, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was involved in an auto accident on September 22 and had been hospitalized since. At the time of his death, Singer was Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, where he'd been on the faculty from 1958 until retiring in 2002. He was 84 years old.

This section lists upcoming book publications across the broad field of political science. If your first-edition book is scheduled for publication in the three months before the next issue of PS, enter the details of publication in the box found at the PS Web site: http://www.apsanet.org/section_223.cfm. We hope that spreading word of upcoming work will help keep our members even more attuned to new scholarship within the discipline.

Information and communication technology (ICT) programs like Microsoft PowerPoint and Apple Keynote have become the norm for large university lecture classes, but their record in terms of student engagement and active learning is mixed at best. Here, the author presents the merits of a “populist” lecture style that takes full advantage of the variety of features available from the latest generation of ICT programs. Based on visual variety, audio and visual sound bites, and the incorporation of humor and pop-cultural references, this populist approach not only facilitates greater student attention and engagement with the class materials, but also offers unmatched opportunities for extending student learning beyond the confines of the large lecture hall.

Dr. Alice Fleetwood Bartee served on the faculty of the Department of Political Science at Missouri State University from 1973 until her retirement in 2008. During her 35 years of service, she compiled an outstanding record in the areas of teaching, research, and service. I was privileged to be her colleague for almost 20 years. A year and half ago, faculty, administrators, students, and members of the community gathered to celebrate her legacy at a touching retirement dinner. A few weeks ago, many of those same people came together again to celebrate her life, a life that was truly remarkable.

Dr. Loran B. Smith passed away in Topeka, Kansas, on July 24, 2009. He was born on July 23, 1946. He was the son of Gordon T and Edith A (Hibbard) Smith of Medford, Massachusetts. Loran received his bachelors degree at Salem State College (Massachusetts) in 1968, a masters from Oklahoma State in 1971, and then taught at Black Hills State (Spearfish, South Dakota) from 1971–1974 and Augustana College in Souix Falls from 1974–1977. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1980 and taught at Missouri Southern State College in Joplin until 1982. He then came to Washburn University of Topeka, where he taught until his death. While “Doc” Smith (as the students referred to him) published sufficiently enough to be awarded tenure and promotion to professor, that was not his forte. Loran was a gifted teacher. His CV lists 23 teaching awards, including Washburn's Faculty Certificate of Merit, a university-wide teaching honor based on student elections, from 1985–1998. Loran was also extremely active in faculty governance and other service to the university and the Topeka community. He was on the university's faculty governing body from 1996–2006, serving as its vice president in 2002 and president from 2003–2005. He was the chairman of the Social Science Division almost all of the 1990s and he also served as the chairman of the college's curriculum committee during that same time span. As Washburn is an open-admission university, we have retention problems not experienced by most universities. Loran researched, organized, and ran a college experience program for at-risk students. He was very active in ASPA, serving as the Kansas chapter president from 1987–1988, indeed, his auto license plate read “KS ASPA” and was purchased for him by students he had recruited into ASPA. Loran's main area of academic interest was state and local government and he was the election night expert for one of the local TV stations here in the capital of Kansas from 1984–1992. What occupied most of his time and energy outside of his official academic duties was serving as the faculty advisor for a local chapter of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. Doc Smith took what was a typical college fraternity and turned it into a modern association of men that consistently had the highest average GPA of all the fraternities and sororities on campus. It was not unusual for Loran to pay for a student's tuition and fraternity house bill, buy students books, and lend money to a needy student. Loran had a reputation for frugality (his apartment had a TV but no cable, a rotary phone, and he rented all of his furniture and appliances). Loran's tightness with money turned out to be a big benefit for the fraternity. One chapter official put it this way, “Through his notorious tight-fisted watch over finances, the Chapter was able to wipe out a significant debt to the National Housing Corporation ahead of schedule and helped the chapter build a significant savings by 2000.” People who knew Loran thought that he was not married but Loran was married to his job. Not only was Loran in his office nearly every evening until 10:00 p.m., but he was there all day Saturday and Sunday too, and, more often than not, there was a student in that office talking with him.

This article uses a case study to illustrate how science fair projects—which traditionally focus on “hard science” topics—can contribute to political science education. One of the authors, a high school student, conducted an experimental study of politics for her science fair project. The other author, a faculty member, was asked to advise the student on the project to allay initial skepticism about its focus on a “soft science” topic. The results of the experiment indicated that exposure to a televised comedy sketch about the 2008 presidential campaign yielded learning effects and fostered political interest among high school students. The authors recommend political science fair projects as tools for introducing precollegiate students to the political science research process and offering political scientists opportunities to educate students beyond the university setting.

Truman David Wood graduated from Delevan (Minnesota) High School in 1950. He earned his bachelor's degree in political science from Mankato State Teachers' College (later Minnesota State University, Mankato). He worked as a teacher in several high schools in Iowa and Minnesota. He earned a master's and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. He was a professor in the political science/law enforcement department of Mankato State University (now known as Minnesota State University, Mankato) from 1961 to 1991. He taught a variety of courses, but primarily focused on American political thought. Wood demonstrated great care for his students and understood quality teaching and careful advising to be the top priorities of his academic career. He was a leader in his department and the university for many years. He was particularly active in community service. He was a member of the Mankato Housing and Redevelopment Authority, the Mankato Planning Commission for 22 years, and chair of his church administrative council for 14 years. He frequently served as a public speaker for high school commencements and service clubs, and as an election analyst. He was active in Republican party politics until the 1980s, serving as a delegate to the National Convention in 1964. When he retired, he and his wife Reta established the Wood Scholarship for political science majors who demonstrate a record of community involvement and academic excellence. Truman Wood was an inspiring teacher, a caring advisor, and a model citizen. He shaped and touched many lives.