Fall Semester 2024

About the instructor:

This class will take a look at the ways the worlds of science and public policy interact, using the “Farm Bill” as its central case study.  Although major areas of science funding lie in other bills (e.g. The National Science Foundation, NSF, is funded through the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS) Bill, and the National Institute for Health, NIH, is funded through the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (LHHS) Bill) the Farm Bill is particularly relevant to Land Grant Universities such as the University of California. Appropriations that support cooperative extension and Agriculture Experiment Stations are included in the Farm Bill, as are major programs of competitive research funded by the United States Department of Agriculture.  The course will look at the relationship between science and policy from both directions.  In the first half of the course we will look at how science gets funded through the Farm Bill, both in the annual appropriations process and the four to five year cycle of writing the authorization bill itself.  Students will have the chance to plan advocacy for a topic that could be supported by Farm Bill funds and to discuss advocacy with a science policy consultant. In the second half of the course we will flip things around and think about  how the methods of critical analysis used in science can be employed to analyze policy and to design approaches for evaluating policy success and failure.  Guest speakers during this half of the class will include science program managers from federal grant agencies.

About the instructor:

Dr. Neil McRoberts is a professor of the Plant Pathology Department at UC Davis and a plant disease epidemiologist and theoretical biologist. His research studies questions about the interaction between agricultural systems and the natural environment and human efforts to manage the interaction. Dr. McRoberts' work draws on a wide range of component disciplines from the natural and social sciences. He is the Executive Director of the National Plant Diagnostic Network.

Requirement for ALL semester students: 

About the instructor:

Requirement for ALL semester students:

About the instructor:

Requirement for ALL semester students:

Many Americans can name several presidents and even have opinions on “good” versus “bad” presidents. But what do presidents actually do, what resources and limitations do they have in their ability to act, and how do we measure their performance and our expectations for their leadership? With a divided Congress and record polarization, what can we expect during the next year and a half of a Biden/Harris administration? This course will put the modern presidency in historical and theoretical context, drawing on a variety of readings and approaches to determine which framework best explains presidential (in)action. At its core, this class is about the question of executive power in democratic government and how we understand what we see happening just down the street from the UC Washington Center. In addition to studying and reflecting on the theme of presidential power, we will also consider the limits to this power and how presidents achieve their goals. Ultimately, we aim to understand the work of the presidency and some of the different perspectives by which we might analyze or assess presidents and their administrations. 

About the instructor:

I am a Ph.D. of American government and politics with specializations in the American presidency, public policy, and polarization. My research focuses on presidential governance via executive orders and how political factors influence the ability of presidents to issue their most significant orders. I have taught UCDC’s presidency seminar since Fall 2017. While earning my degree at the University of Maryland, I taught classes about public policy and Congress to students who had internships related to those fields in a format similar to the UCDC program. Outside of the classroom, I work at Community Change & Community Change Action, non-profit organizations focused on building a movement led by everyday people to create change in their communities and across the country. As the Electoral Data Manager, I work with many different teams and partner organizations to identify target audiences and track the work we are doing in communities affected by injustice.

Requirement for ALL semester students: