Declaration of Major
Major Requirements
Majors in the Bachelor of Arts program are normally declared in the student's fourth semester. When the time for your declaration of major approaches, you will be notified by the Dean of Arts and Sciences. The departments and programs offering majors will have scheduled information sessions which you should attend if at all possible. A major is declared by conferring with the Chair of the department and getting the Chair's signature on the major declaration card issued to you by the Dean.
The Chair will review the department curriculum with you, discuss your interests and experience, and assign you to an advisor within the department. When the Dean's Office is notified of this assignment, it will ask your previous advisor to transfer your file to the new advisor in your major department. As soon as possible, and before the end of spring preregistration, you should confer with your new advisor about your major program.
The Political Science major is organized around four subfields. You are required to take a core course in each of the four. The core courses are:
140 American Politics and Policy
170 International Politics
205 Comparative Politics
210 Political Theory
As a Political Science major, you must take 140, 170, 205 and 210. The Department strongly recommends that you take these core courses early in your major program. In addition, you must elect at least four other courses in Political Science at the 200 and 300 levels, one of which must be a 300-level seminar or a capstone seminar which carries Political Science credit.
Thus, the minimum major would be:
4 core courses
3 electives in Political Science
1 300-level Political Science seminar
Under college rules, the maximum major would consist of twelve courses.
You are strongly encouraged to study off-campus or abroad, but please note that no more than two courses earned off-campus from non-Bucknell staff may count towards a Political Science major. Other courses in approved programs will of course count toward graduation.
On occasion, the Department will crosslist courses from other departments that have a strong component of political studies; courses cross-listed in the course schedule may be counted toward the major.
The Department strongly encourages its majors to acquire such auxiliary skills as foreign languages and statistical analysis.
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