Party of Seven
UMW’s political science majors dominate national writing contest
By Lisa Chinn
Six hundred eighty-seven Pi Sigma Alpha chapters.
Sixteen executive council members in the pool of judges who choose the winners of the political science honor society’s annual writing awards. One school that can claim more victories than any other.
When it comes to papers and honors theses listed as top-notch by Pi Sigma Alpha, the nation’s only political science honor society for college students, the University of Mary Washington has captured the vote. Vying against students from schools across the country, those at UMW have scored seven nods – as winners and runners-up – since the competition began in 1995.
“For such a small school, this is a remarkable
accomplishment,” said Pi Sigma Alpha administrator Nancy
McManus from the society’s national office in Washington,
D.C. “This is an unbelievable record for them.”
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| John Kramer |
From women’s rights to immigration laws, the essay topics run the gamut, but students say their winning entries have at least one thing in common: They were fueled by the passion and dedication of UMW’s devoted political science professors.
“I get a real kick out of taking good students...then working them through the project, seeing it evolve from just an idea to the final highly polished, first-class piece of work it usually becomes,” said John Kramer, professor of political science and international affairs and department chair. “At many – especially large – universities, faculty simply will not devote the time to working with these students the way we do.”
Perhaps the proof – at least where Pi Sigma Alpha is
concerned – is in the papers.
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LUKE SBARRA
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| Luke Sbarra with daughter Emilia |
The first time he visited Mary Washington, Luke Sbarra ’97 felt like he belonged.
“It was an October day in the South,” said Sbarra, who grew up in Port Jefferson, N.Y.
“I just felt at home right away.”
But the qualities that made Sbarra feel comfortable – a compact campus, small class sizes, and plenty of individual attention from professors – also put him on the spot.
“In an environment like that, you have no choice,”
said Sbarra, who lives in Charlotte, N.C. “You can’t not be
prepared for class.”
His winning paper, “Whither China: Marketization
Without Democratization,” is just one example of how doing
his homework has paid off for Sbarra, an attorney with
the law firm of Hedrick Gardner Kincheloe & Garofalo.
Sbarra wanted to determine if a free-market economy would
develop in China as the country began to move away from
communism.
The relentless revisions John Kramer made to Sbarra’s
paper were tough to take. But the skills Sbarra acquired in critical thinking and effective communication helped see
him through law school at Wake Forest and beyond.
These days, he spends his free time with his wife, Jennifer;
2-year-old daughter, Emilia; and their Labrador retriever,
Ella. The couple are expecting their second child this fall.
When a former job had Sbarra spending too many hours at his desk without feeling like he was practicing law, he knew he had to make a change. In his current position, which allows for more family time, he works with businesses and individuals involved in product liability and trademark disputes.
“I really identify with it because I like to vindicate the
rights of the client,” he said. “I’m the one who’s defending
the little guy someone has sued.”
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ANNE DAUGHERTY-LEITER
Power has always intrigued Anne Daugherty-Leiter ’98, especially political power and its relationship to women. In many ways, her life after college exists between the lines of her winning paper, “Feminists and Conservative Women: From the Time of ERA to the Present.” An attorney with the State Bar of Wisconsin, Daugherty-Leiter spends much of her time editing law books, but she still works to empower women by providing pro bono services for victims of domestic violence.
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| Anne Daugherty-Leiter |
Her essay project, which included an analysis of data from a survey of freshman English students,
led her to the door of former UMW professor and noted political expert Stephen Farnsworth, now an assistant professor of communication at George Mason University who teaches courses in political communication and journalism.
“I was always impressed with his taking a huge amount of
time to help this random girl who came into his office,” said
Daugherty-Leiter, who grew up on New York’s Long Island.
Her research was fueled by an interest in the apparent
disconnect between the bold, outspoken nature of women
such as Phyllis Schlafly, who helped lead the conservative
movement, and their anti-feminist views.
“It’s interesting to me to see the dynamics of that type of personality arguing what I would say is against their own interests,” Daugherty-Leiter said. She laughs when she recalls one survey respondent who defined “feminist” as “a woman with a picket sign and no man.”
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| Stephen Farnsworth |
However, Daugherty-Leiter has never taken the issue of equal rights lightly. After attending Georgetown University as a Public Interest Law Scholar and completing a yearlong fellowship that allowed her to focus on women’s employment rights, she moved to Madison, Wis., with her husband, Tristan Daugherty-Leiter ’98. They have a 2-year-old son, Griffin Russell.
Daugherty-Leiter also is writing a novel she hopes to finish
this year. But more than a decade after graduation, she still
is proud of a paper she wrote in college.
“It was a stepping stone,” she said, “that helped me do
some really interesting things later on.”
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ED EGEE
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| Ed Egee, right, on Capitol Hill |
Ed Egee ’99 admits to becoming “bizarrely
hooked on politics at a young age.”
Egee, who grew up in Fallston, Md., was in grade school when
a teacher introduced him to the importance of government. By the time he finished high school, he’d worked as a page in
the Maryland Senate. And, in college, he completed several
internships, including one for U.S. Rep. Herb Bateman (R-Va.) In fact, Egee, now a congressional staffer for Republican
Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia, was in Bateman’s office when
he got the idea for his winning paper, “Gaining Support
Through Casework: A Quantitative Study of Contractors
and the Support They Give Their Representative.”
As calls poured in from folks requesting the congressman’s
help, Egee wondered: Do the actions of elected officials, in
response to the concerns of their constituents, really affect
their chances of being voted back into office? His research
found that actions do matter, and it caught the attention of
the Pi Sigma Alpha judges – an honor Egee attributes to his
paper’s real-life relevance.
In ways, it even relates to the work he does today – monitoring labor negotiations, meeting with lobbyists, making speeches – as top aide to Isakson’s employment and workplace safety subcommittee. But Egee, who lives in Lake Ridge, Va., with his wife, Joy, and infant son, Wynn, hasn’t let his responsibilities go to his head.
“A lot of the stuff we do ends up on the 6 o’clock news,”
he said, but “at the end of the day, it’s just an office.”
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SARA BAROKAS SHALVA
Like so many, Sara Barokas Shalva ’00 was thrilled with voter turnout during the recent presidential election. But Shalva’s interest in how Americans exercise that important right began long before last year. Her winning paper, “Political Women: Participation, Orientation, and Party Identification,” examined women as voters, including the relationship between their party affiliations and the types of issues that motivate them to become politically involved.
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| Sara Barokas Shalva |
“We ran a lot of numbers,” said Shalva, who lives with her
husband, Benjamin, and two children, Lev, 3, and 8-month-old
Avital, in Northern Virginia. “Then, as now, I feel strongly
about women as a voting bloc and the importance of balancing
work and family decisions, and how those values play out in
the political sphere.”
Her introduction to the large-scale data analysis on which her project depended came in a class taught by Stephen Farnsworth, who became Shalva’s mentor at Mary Washington. That experience, she said, along with the writing skills she honed as an undergraduate, helped lay the groundwork for her success at New York University, where she earned master’s degrees in nonprofit management and Judaic studies.
Today, Shalva, who worked briefly as executive director
of a small New York nonprofit, mentors other women in
her role as director of a learning program for young Jewish
professionals. She also teaches two adult education classes. Of all the lessons she hopes to impart on others, though,
the importance of participating in the political process is
paramount.
“The more people who care, the more people who are
passionate about the issues,” she said, “the better America
will be.”
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RYAN BALIS
Talk radio can get your mind racing
and your blood boiling. But can it help you choose a college
major? That’s what happened for Ryan Balis ’02, who got
hooked on it in high school.
After that, “Choosing political science was a no-brainer,”
said Balis, who grew up in Fairfax, Va.
His winning paper, “Televised Presidential Debates and Exposure: Partisan, Ideological, and Demographic Characteristics,” explored which viewers were reached most by the 2000 presidential debates and why.
“For political junkies, debates are some of the most exciting moments of the campaign season,” said Balis, whose research relied on data from that year’s American National Elections Study. He also benefited from “untold hours” of help from his project supervisor, Stephen Farnsworth, and on plenty of time spent at Mary Washington’s Writing Center.
After earning a master’s degree in public policy and
administration from the London School of Economics,
Balis went to work as an analyst for the National Center for
Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C. There, he finds
and publishes free-market solutions to issues involving the
environment, health care, and sovereignty.
His policy studies and opinion pieces have been published
online and in newspapers in the United States and beyond. He also writes press releases, posts blogs, and – in a twist that
takes him back to his first fascination with political science
– fulfills media requests on television and radio.
And his past has powered his profession in yet another way.
“Work as a policy analyst for a Washington ‘think tank’
is similar to life as a college student,” Balis said, “except now
I’m paid to write!”
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ERIK JOHNSTON
Growing up in Southwest Virginia, Erik Johnston ’03 was considered a bit of a news nerd. “While my brother was watching ESPN, I was watching C-SPAN,” Johnston said. “They still make fun of me for that.”
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| Erik Johnston, far right, with county officials and Congressional representatives |
But the teasing didn’t dull his love of politics and its connection to social justice. In the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election, one of the country’s most publicized political conundrums caught his attention, inspiring his winning paper, “The Non-Voter Puzzle Solved: Weak Partisanship Explains Demographics That Do Not Match Candidate Preference.”
Johnston, who always has been troubled
by the high percentage of Americans who don’t go to the
polls, wondered if the participation of nonvoters could have
swayed election results.
He found that, in that group, partisanship is so weak
that participation would not have mattered in terms of
changing the outcome. But his research did matter to the
Pi Sigma Alpha judges, a recognition he attributes largely
to the guidance of Stephen Farnsworth.
“He really helped us learn how to write papers that are respected in political science circles,” said Johnston, who lives in Alexandria, Va., with his wife, Megan Highley Johnston ’03.
Now an associate legislative director for the National Association of Counties, Johnston uses the same political zeal that got him razzed as a young man to help rural communities compete in today’s world.
“I care about it deeply,” he said.
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JUSTIN SIMEONE
Life in London was bound to be an adjustment for a guy who grew up in Tolland, Mass. – population 400. But even from his small-town beginnings, Fulbright Scholar Justin Simeone ’08 studied in Israel, in part to research high-court intervention in terror-based detention policies for his essay concerning Israel, the U.K., and the U.S. He begins work on a doctoral degree at Princeton University in September.
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| Justin Simeone |
When he realized he would complete requirements for a history degree halfway through his junior year at Mary Washington, he added political science as a second major. His winning paper, "Crisis or Constitution? Rethinking Judicial Deference on Administrative Detention in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel,” examined high-court intervention in the terror-based detention policies of each country.
His research took him to Israel, where he crammed in all he could about Israeli legislation. He also worked at a Washington, D.C., law firm, studied for the LSAT, and served as chairperson for Students Helping Honduras, a nonprofit that promotes community development in the impoverished country. “I didn’t sleep much,” he said.
Simeone insists his essay project wouldn’t have done as
well without the help of UMW’s passionate political science
professors, including Associate Professor John Davidson. “[John] Kramer is famous for covering people’s papers in
red ink,” Simeone said. “When you get a paper back from
him, it can be a devastating experience, but it really just
shows how much he cares.”
“One day,” he said, “perhaps I can impact other students’
lives in the same way that so many UMW professors have
changed mine.”
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