Political Science professor returns from U.S. study tour

Political Science mentor returns from U.S. study tour

Prof. Jiah Sayson, the lone Filipino participant in the 2007 Study of American Politics and Political Thought, returned from the United States last July 30. She and 17 other political science academicians from other countries were hand-picked by the U.S. State Department from a long list of applicants to attend the annual program administered by the Donahue Institute at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst from June 15 to July 29, 2007.

The six-week academic program focused on the political development of the American nation---a historical, institutional, and qualitative approach to the study of American government and politics.

Sayson (seated first from left) with the other program participants.

Program participants went through a coursework that included topics such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as the founding principles and design of the nation’s governance and politics; liberalism and republicanism as the major public philosophies of the Enlightenment era; race, religion and citizenship as the centralizing themes of American life; and capitalism and the free market competition as organizing concepts of the nation’s economy.

The three-week academic residency program was accompanied by a study tour where lectures were held in various institutions such as Simmons College, Boston; City University of New York; Messiah College, Harrisburg; and University of Virginia.

Sessions with U.S. State Department officials, lobbyists and think-tanks in Washington D.C. were also organized.

Sayson also visited the JFK Presidential Library and Museum, National Civil War Museum, Gettysburg Battlefield, Jefferson’s Monticello, Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., Capitol Hill, among others. She is scheduled to deliver separate lectures to senior students and faculty members of the USC Department of Political Science in September to engage with them the knowledge and insights she gleaned from the program.

Author: J.E. Bersales
11 / August / 2007