Political Economy Major

SSH PEAK

35 credits (Total does not include prerequisite courses)

Major Requirements

Introductory Core

POE-100	Essentials of American Government	3 credits
-	or
POE-241	Introduction to Public Policy	3 credits
-
POE-120	International Politics	3 credits
-
POE-250	Introduction to Political Philosophy	3 credits
-	or
POE-255	Introduction to Political Philosophy Through Plato	3 credits
-
POE-263	Introduction to Political Economy	3 credits
POE-299	Evidence, Proof, and Knowledge	3 credits

Additional Requirements

POE-498	Senior Seminar: Political Economy	3 credits
POE ELEC -	Political Economy elective credits	17 credits

Students who have a cumulative GPA of at least 3.7 in POE courses taken at The College of Idaho are eligible to apply for departmental honors. Eligible students will meet individually with the professor leading the senior seminar to discuss departmental expectations regarding an honors paper to be written during the senior seminar. The standards for achieving honors are high. In addition to high-quality composition, papers must demonstrate intellectual rigor and creativity, excellent expression of the student's voice, and an exceptional literature review and bibliography appropriate to the paper. Students who seek honors will have the final draft of their senior papers evaluated by all faculty members of the Political Economy Department. Upon consensus by all departmental faculty that the student's paper is deserving of such recognition, the student will graduate with departmental honors.

Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this major, students will be able to:

1) Express in both written and oral formats a broad understanding of United States political economy through the study of its historical origins, its institutional architecture and methods of policymaking, and its evolution into the 21st century;
2) Apply major philosophies and established theories of domestic political economy sufficient to analyze U.S. issues of political economy in both written and oral formats;
3) Critically assess social science perspectives and analytical methods sufficient to research issues containing U.S. domestic economic and political content, and to interpret the research conducted by others in U.S. domestic political economy;
4) Express in both written and oral formats complex personal positions regarding public policies and normative questions central to U.S. political economy; and
5) Write a thesis-driven research paper making a reasoned argument positioned within U.S. political economy scholarship and formatted in Chicago/Turabian style.