When I was in college I had the chance to meet Ken Mattingly, the Apollo 13 astronaut who didn’t get to fly on the Saturn V rocket. He told me a story that characterizes my role as the department chair here at WashU. Mattingly relayed meeting with a launch technician who was working long & late into the night. The technician said, of his piece of the mission: “it won’t fail because of me.” Mattingly called that the spirit of Apollo: the idea that together -- through hard work, persistence and understanding that what we do matters -- we can accomplish great things.

As a department chair my goal for the department is to continue that spirit of Apollo within our faculty, students and staff. Our work matters more now than ever in the world – as we see a world ravaged by war, polarization, misinformation and climate change, we see an incredible need for more research on government, policy and politics.

Our department is producing that much-needed research & receiving incredible recognition. This semester we’ve had faculty win prestigious awards, including a Carnegie Corporation Grant given to Christopher Lucas, Jacob Montgomery & Margit Tavits for their project on populist rhetoric as well as National Science Foundation awards to Matt Gabel to study minority representation strategies and to Christopher Lucas to better understand police body camera data. We’ve hosted our first program to increase the accessibility of PhD education. We’ve promoted two faculty with tenure, Amy Pond and Timm Betz. We’ve expanded our program in International Relations (including hiring Christy Qiu) & hosted the prestigious Peace Science meeting. We’ve hired a new faculty member: Michael Strawbridge, who is an expert in racial & ethnic politics.  In June we congratulated our graduate student Ben Noble as he started his first job as an assistant professor at UCSD. We are continuing in our tradition of intellectual intensity and radical empathy. This is a department that is hungry to do rigorous political science with a profoundly kind culture. It is a privilege to work with such an incredible department.

Mattingly passed away this year, but I like to think he’d appreciate how much his message has continued to inspire. I hope it inspires you too – this year we are asking our newsletter readers to help with our mission and to contribute to support WUSTEPS, our onramp to increase the accessibility of graduate school for all. You can contribute HERE.

Here is a reference to the oral history of Ken Mattingly, in which he references the spirit of Apollo.

-Professor Betsy Sinclair, Chair of Political Science