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The Department of Political Science at the University of Iowa offers a rich program of graduate study that has as its foundation a group of faculty members who are committed to first-rate research and teaching. The University of Iowa Political Science Department ranks among the best in the country in terms of scholarly quality as measured by faculty publications in the leading professional journals.

Students receive graduate training through seminars, through collaborative work with other faculty, and through daily interaction with other students. The result is that graduates from the University of Iowa frequently enter the job market with publications in hand. According to our past experience, after obtaining the doctoral degree, graduates can expect to find employment in high-quality colleges and universities.

Five fields of study are available: American politics, comparative politics, international relations, formal theory, and research methods. Each student chooses three fields of study for qualifying examinations. The Department of Political Science at the University of Iowa offers comprehensive study in each of these fields, provides training in a variety of methodological and theoretical approaches, and provides opportunities for individualized programs of learning. After having completed a sequence of study, each graduate student can expect to be prepared to teach and to conduct research in three fields. Because of the importance of statistical methods for the conduct of political science research, the first-year course curriculum includes a compulsory sequence in quantitative methods. Advanced graduate students have a wide array of seminars from which they can select and build a general program of study. The Department of Political Science at the University of Iowa focuses on training skilled researchers. Graduate students can expect to receive rigorous training and complete professional preparation.

Department rules and procedures described in the Guide to Doctoral Study together with the general University rules set forth in the University of Iowa Bulletin and the rules of the Graduate College set forth in the Manual of Rules and Regulations of the Graduate College constitute the body of regulations which govern students pursuing a Ph.D. degree in Political Science.