Office Hours

Starting this afternoon, I will conduct office hours each Wednesday on the main campus as I indicated on the syllabus. Today, and in general, I will be in the open study area on the 4th floor of Evans Library. However, I will make an announcement on this website each week about the location of main campus office hours.

Textbook Update

The publisher of our textbook informs me that the books will arrive at the university bookstore tomorrow. I don't know how long it will take them to stock their shelves, but you all should be able to purchase copies before the week is out.

Syllabus Date Corrections

I have posted a very lightly revised version of the syllabus correcting a couple of problems with exam dates. If you downloaded your syllabus before 5:30 this afternoon, you should get the update.

Join Twitter

What do Texas A&M University, Rick Perry, The New York Times, Barack Obama, and Joe Ura all have in common? We are all on Twitter.

Twitter is a social networking website. Users may post updates or "tweets" of up to 140 characters, which are delivered to followers and included in a web-searchable index of all tweets. As a user, you can, of course, follow your friends and use the website to deliver messages to one another. More importantly, though, you can follow publications, public figures, and other interesting people and institutions, which will allow you to connect to a world of interesting ideas and information that is customized to your interests.

You can create an account here.

I should caution you, though, that anything you post on Twitter may be made available to others online. As with all other social networking websites, including Facebook, you should take some time to adjust your account's privacy settings to meet your own needs and exercise careful judgment about what you post online.

Additional Opportunities

One of the goals of this course is to help you all become more thoughtful and engaged citizens. As such, I will periodically provide links to opportunities and materials that will help you connect with information and ideas that are not necessarily tied directly to class. These additional opportunities are in no way required for class and, unless I explicitly note otherwise, will not earn extra credit. I will label these posts "additional opportunities." So, you may skip over these without missing any required course materials.

Welcome

Welcome to POLS 206, Introduction to American Politics.

Most everything you need for this course will be available through this blog. An electronic version of the course syllabus is available under the course documents tab in the top right corner of this website. I will add other documents, including lecture slides and exam review sheets, as the semester continues.

Try to make a habit of checking in with this website on a regular basis. It is required reading, and I use it to make important announcements about class (including extra credit opportunities, changes in assignments, etc.).

Good luck this semester.