Spring 2025 New Courses
POLS 270 Career Development in Political Science, with Professor Ning Zhang
The Political Science department is introducing a new course that aims to help POLS majors and minors gain knowledge, confidence, and skills to take on the professional world. By enrolling in this course, you will get first-hand advice in order to help you better envision your ideal career path. You will learn to assess your strengths and weaknesses as young professionals, how to build and write your resume, be better prepared for job interviews, conduct meaningful professional communication, grow a healthy professional network, and more. Consider taking this course to expand your already growing number of Cal Poly resources and get ready for launching your career!
POLS 429 Middle Eastern Politics, with Professor Şahane Sultan Bedenlier
The aim of this course is to provide a detailed and challenging introduction to the international relations of the Middle East by outlining how distortion of Islam combined with Western imperialist interests in the region has led to the contemporary climate in the Islamic world.
This course will also enable students to understand how the politics and security of the Middle East relate to global international relations as a whole, and vice-versa.
To develop further student’s critical and analytical skills through their engagement with a diverse and challenging theoretical and empirical literature.
To enable students to develop an understanding of the complexity of the above issues.
To provide the analytical and intellectual basis for academic research on the region or for careers that require a thorough understanding of the international relations of the Middle East.
For more information, email Professor Bedenlier (sbedenli@calpoly.edu)
POLS 470 Marriage and the Law, with Professor Ron Den Otter
The purpose of POLS 470 Marriage and the Law is to introduce you to the legal, constitutional, moral, historical, and empirical aspects of the institution of civil marriage in America. While that knowledge in itself is valuable, equally importantly, it will enable us to discuss in depth not only what marriage has been but what it is and what it could be, including consideration of radical marital possibilities, like the abolition of civil marriage and eliminating numerical restrictions for consenting adults. In this course, above all, you also will learn why you should never, under any circumstances, get married. I’m kidding, of course. After all, it is your personal decision, and perhaps one of the most consequential decisions you’ll ever make (whom to marry, whether to marry at all, whether to have an open marriage, and so on). At the very least, as unromantic as it may sound, you should be better informed about what you may be getting yourself into. Among other things, a civil marriage is a legal relationship.
Can be used as Pre-Law Concentration or Law and Society Minor elective.
POLS 470 Introduction to Social Network Analysis, with Professor Gunes Ertan
This course provides an introduction to the fundamentals of social network analysis, covering key topics such as designing relational research, collecting network data, and applying analytical techniques using specialized social network analysis software. Students will gain hands-on experience in practical aspects of analyzing social structures.
POLS 570 Public Policy Practicum, with Professor Chris Nelson
Despite overwhelming evidence that immigration is not connected to higher crime rates in the U.S., and that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than their native-born counterparts, immigrants and the act of immigration are continuously linked with criminality. How and when did this happen? Why do government officials, as well as the larger public, continue to associate immigrants with crime, disorder, and illegality? This course addresses these questions and more by examining the growing intersection between criminalization and immigration in the U.S. Engaging both historical and contemporary debates on immigration and crime, it investigates an ever-evolving assortment of laws, policies, and enforcement mechanisms aimed at governing, policing, and regulating immigrants over time.