Call for Proposals: Teaching Sports and Politics | Deadline: April 5, 2026 –

Call for Proposals: Teaching Sports and Politics

APSA Teaching & Learning Symposium
Dates: June 11-18, 2026 

Application Deadline: April 5, 2026

Start Your Application Here

The American Political Science Association’s (APSA) Teaching and Learning program is happy to announce a name for proposals for a small cohort of political scientists to take part in a digital instructing and studying symposium that may meet on Zoom between June 11-18, 2026. APSA’s instructing and studying symposia present a workshop setting the place scholar-educators with comparable targets can come collectively to share their very own practices and analysis associated to instructing and create new instructing sources for their programs. Led by Darrell Lovell (West Texas A&M University) and Andrea Benjamin (University of Oklahoma), the theme of this symposium is Teaching Sports and Politics.

Sports supply a singular expertise and connection for college students to study up to date matters in coverage, administrative, and political determination-making. Research suggests that there’s a connection between civic delight related to authorities connection and the presence and success of athletics. This symposium is geared in direction of instructors of political science, public administration, and associated fields who wish to train in regards to the intersection between sports activities and politics.   

Workshop Details 

• Date: June 11-28, 2026
• Location: Online
• Registration payment: $20 for APSA members and $35 for non-members
• Application Deadline: Sunday, April 5, 2026

Topics and Questions

This symposium is attention-grabbing in a broad vary of questions associated to instructing about sports activities in political science, public administration, and associated fields. These matters might embody, however should not restricted to, the next:  

• Using mega occasions such because the World Cup or Olympics to debate city planning and taxation 
• Discussing coverage clashes, authorized challenges, and overlaps by way of matters reminiscent of implementing NIL and Title IX concurrently 
• Examining activism and political participation by way of the lens of faculty and skilled athletes 
• Analyzing organizational missions and objective shifting utilizing the duality of educational and athletic success targets for universities 
• Managing the challenges of instructing about sports activities and race, gender, and politicization of upper training and athletics within the age of presidency overreach 
• Examining comparative insurance policies on human rights and finance and laws and implementation of mega occasions such because the World Cup and Olympics 

The targets of the symposium are 4-fold: 

1. To present an inclusive house the place individuals can construct supportive relationships with different scholar-educators who train programs on politics and associated matter areas. 
2. To current, focus on, and co-create revolutionary class actions, readings, analysis alternatives, or assignments for college students finding out political science and associated matter areas. 
3. To contribute instructing supplies to an APSA Educate useful resource assortment on fields in politics and associated fields. 
4. To produce concepts for potential analysis articles that look at how you can combine sport coverage into political science and public administration curriculum. 

Your instructing useful resource needn’t be publication prepared, solely one thing you may have discovered helpful within the introductory class and are desirous about growing and sharing. The last useful resource assortment will likely be shared on APSA Educate prematurely of the autumn 2026 semester for different college to browse and use in their very own courses.

Possible sources/strategies embody however should not restricted to: 

• Activities, assignments and rubrics, syllabi, studying lists, and different supplies associated to instructing the matters/themes listed above 
• simulations/video games/lively studying workout routines  
• readings and the way you incorporate them (readings can embody: open academic sources, multimedia sources, public scholarship, weblog posts, and so on.) 
• on-line instruments and actions 
• strategies/instruments that assist an inclusive classroom, encourage dialogue, and literacy

How to Apply

We encourage purposes from college from political science and associated fields (i.e. public administration and public coverage) which might be in any respect levels of their careers, from a variety of establishments, together with universities and two- and 4-12 months faculties. Advanced graduate college students are additionally inspired to use. Applicants ought to have expertise instructing and be lively APSA members on the time of the symposium.

Proposals ought to be submitted on-line and embody: 

• Recent CV, together with detailed info on instructing expertise 
• 250-phrase summary summarizing the useful resource or matter you propose to current on the symposium 
• 250-phrase description of your motivation and targets for collaborating within the symposium 
• Brief description of your establishment and how the course you train matches into your division’s curriculum. 

Successful candidates will likely be notified by April 15, 2026. Course registration charges ($20 for APSA members and $35 for non-members) could also be paid on-line prematurely of the symposium. For extra info, go to the Teaching and Learning Symposia website and/or contact [email protected]. 

Symposium Schedule

This workshop will meet just about for three classes and individuals ought to count on to work with their small teams exterior of those classes through the week of June 15-18, 2026. 

• Monday, June 11 and Tuesday, June 12 from 11 am ET- 5 pm ET: Participants current their very own pedagogical strategies associated to instructing the sports activities in politics and associated programs. Presentations are brief (actual time depending on registration), permitting for vital dialogue from the group, in a workshop-type environment. Presentations ought to mix a proof of the sports activities-associated matter and pedagogy approaches.  
• June 15-June 17: Participants will work independently, on their very own schedule, in small teams based mostly on curiosity by sport and pedagogy. Each group then decides what sort of useful resource(s) they wish to produce (e.g. in-class train, simulation, social media undertaking). The teams will collaborate to develop the specified sources with the objective of guiding how they’ll combine sports activities into curriculum for courses in politics or associated matters reminiscent of coverage or administration inside their shared matter areas. Teams will work collectively on their very own and decide when they may meet. 
• Thursday, June 18 from 11 am ET- 5 pm ET: Full symposium will meet once more to share group-based mostly collaborations, wrap-up dialogue, and focus on subsequent steps.  
• Monday, July 3: Due date for APSA Educate sources. The resultant instructing sources are disseminated by way of APSA Educate, political science’s digital instructing useful resource library. Symposium individuals come away from the occasion with new insights into instructing and analysis of their space, with concrete instructing sources that they’ll use in their very own programs. 

Meet the Co-Facilitators

Darrell Lovell serves because the MPA director at West Texas A&M University the place he’s an assistant professor. Dr. Lovell affords programs in public administration, evaluation of public coverage, administrative idea, and analysis strategies in addition to serving as an honors college member and mentor. He is the lead writer on the guide Name, picture, and likeness (NIL) insurance policies: Institutional influence and state responses from Routledge Publishing. His analysis facilities on making use of ideas of road-degree forms and public governance to greater training. His most up-to-date work has been printed in Administration & Society, Administrative Theory & Praxis, Public Integrity, and the Journal of Public and Non-Profit Affairs. He has been writer or co-writer on six publications on NIL coverage. 

Andrea Benjamin is an Associate Professor within the Clara Luper Department of African and African American Studies. She is initially from Northern California and accomplished her undergraduate diploma on the University of California, Davis. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2010. Her analysis pursuits embody Race and Politics, Local Elections and Voting conduct, and Public Opinion. Her first guide, Racial Coalition Building in Local Elections: Elite Cues and Cross-Ethnic Voting, explores the potential for Black and Latino Coalitions.  Using the Co-Ethnic Elite Cues Theory, the guide exhibits that Blacks and Latinos depend on endorsements from co-ethnic leaders when casting their ballots.  This is very true when race and ethnicity are salient within the marketing campaign.  This guide was printed by Cambridge University Press in 2017. Her analysis has appeared in the Journal of Politics, Urban Affairs Review, PS: Political Science, the National Review of Black Politics, and Urban Studies.  She has appeared on NPR’s 1A, written for the Washington Post, and has been interviewed by reporters from the New York Times, Governing, and the Connecticut Mirror. In April of 2024, Dr. Benjamin obtained the Provost’s Award for Outstanding Faculty Service on the University of Oklahoma

Visit APSA’s Teaching Symposia page for details about this program and to view previous occasions.