00;00;00;02 - 00;00;21;10
Chris Judge
Hello and welcome to the Providence College Podcast. This week we wanted to provide our audience with an episode of Beyond Your Newsfeed Understanding Contemporary Politics. This podcast from the political Science Department is hosted by Professor Emeritus Bill Hudson and covers current political events as well as what students and alumni are doing in the field. You can listen and subscribe to Beyond Your News Feed wherever you listen to podcasts.

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Chris Judge
This episode, celebrating 50 years of women at PC, features two political science alums who are now professional political scientists in higher education Please enjoy this episode of Beyond Your Newsfeed.

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Bill Hudson
Welcome to Beyond Your News Feed Understanding Contemporary Politics. A podcast of the Providence College Political Science My name is William Hudson, Professor Emeritus of political science and host of this podcast. This year, Providence College is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first class of women students at the college since 1971. When the college became coed. The political science department has had many terrific women students and our women graduates have gone on to distinguished careers in a wide variety of professions.

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Bill Hudson
Some have even pleased their political science professors immensely buying by going on to become political scientists themselves. Today in recognition of pieces year of the women, I thought listeners would be interested in learning something about two of our relatively recent graduates who have garnered PhDs in political science and are now political science teachers and researchers. So joining me to discuss their paths from political science department at Providence College to becoming professional political scientists are Professor Laura Boushey Providence College, class of 2010, and Professor Kelly Branham Smith, Providence College Class of 2012.

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Bill Hudson
Horiguchi is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia. She earned her Ph.D. in political science from Indiana University in 2017. Kelly Branham Smith is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida. She earned her Ph.D. in political science from Brown University in 2017. Professors Eugene Smith, welcome to Beyond Your News Feed.

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Kelly Smith
Thank you for having me.

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Laura Bucci
It's a pleasure.

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Bill Hudson
Laura. So, Kelly, you're joining us from Florida. I presume it's warm down there.

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Kelly Smith
Yes, it actually is a beautiful 80 degree day care for the.

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Laura Bucci
Tourists going here. So if that makes you feel, it shouldn't be. It is.

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Bill Hudson
Laura, you're getting the touch of winter in Philadelphia, like we are here in New England and suddenly turned cold overnight after kind of an early spring here. It was very nice for last week and we've come close to 70 degree temperatures. And then all of a sudden today we're back in winter. So anyway, well, thanks so much for joining us here today.

00;03;10;18 - 00;03;37;28
Bill Hudson
And we're going to talk about take I take a trip down memory lane for you to recollect your years at Providence College. And as an adult, I said I'd like to talk about how you went from Providence College studying political science to become political scientists. So let me start kind of at the very beginning. I'd be very interested in finding out when both of you first got interested in politics.

00;03;38;20 - 00;03;47;22
Bill Hudson
When did you start thinking about politics and saying, that's something interesting. Kelly, you want to start out with that? Sure.

00;03;48;01 - 00;04;19;09
Kelly Smith
I would say probably I don't think I even realize that yet. But probably in high school, I was interested in politics. I always liked my social science classes the most, and I think it was in high school and I started to pay a little bit more attention to what was going on in the political world. And I remember vividly my my brother graduated from Notre Dame, and that was the year that President Obama was a commencement speaker.

00;04;21;00 - 00;04;46;10
Kelly Smith
And I remember that kind of a really interesting moment where I became much more interested in politics, but I think really began with an interest in education and inequality. And I think that led me to focus on kind of the political side and the power side of how education operates in the United States. And I think that's how how it started.

00;04;46;18 - 00;05;10;08
Bill Hudson
Well, that's very interesting, Kelly, because you've gone on to study education and inequality as well. We'll talk about that about that later. So so I'm intrigued that then your your professional interest was sparked when you were a high school student. That doesn't often happen Laura, I presume that being a root islander originally, you just had to be interested in politics.

00;05;10;18 - 00;05;35;22
Laura Bucci
I mean, so my I have a I have a really big family. My immediate family is very small. But my my my extended family, my grandfather's one of 11 my my mom has close to ten siblings. Right. So it's a it's a it's a lot. So I think growing up in really big families, politics was was interesting really early on.

00;05;36;04 - 00;06;04;06
Laura Bucci
My parents or my mom especially is a tremendous like she's a better citizen than I am. And I say that all the time. Where, you know, she's she's on her phone with her local representatives very frequently in a way that I have never been and probably will never be. And so I think thinking about how politics works or how politics can work was something that was of interest to me really early on.

00;06;04;07 - 00;06;24;27
Laura Bucci
It's not what I went to college for originally because I don't know, I always felt like it was it was just kind of in the background, always. And so I was like, let's try something different. And I sort of came back to politics. I after my freshman year right? So I second semester of freshman year, I was like, time to go back to basics, right?

00;06;24;29 - 00;06;27;22
Laura Bucci
Let's go back to things I actually enjoy.

00;06;28;21 - 00;06;32;27
Bill Hudson
Yeah. There have been some bushes in Rhode Island who have held political office.

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Laura Bucci
Right? A lot of them family. Yeah. Not my family, but. But close enough. Right. So it's it's my my great grandfather was the head of the Democratic Party in North Providence. So this is this is a while ago, but so politics was always kind of close by, and it's always been of interest It's a it's a way to kind of create change or or to extract kind of good things out of a society.

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Laura Bucci
Right. It's it's a way to build a future in a place in Rhode Island is small enough that you can you can make a substantial difference with not that many people, which is an interesting political arrangement.

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Bill Hudson
Right. And so let's talk a little bit about your decision to attend Providence College. A lawyer I imagine for you. It was kind of the local school. You you must have been acquainted with PC from a very young age. So. So what what led you to to I didn't become a student here.

00;07;43;00 - 00;08;05;07
Laura Bucci
I mean, so I don't I think in applying to colleges, I was a local kid. I didn't have a ton of information in terms of where I wanted to go. My association with PCs or PC basketball. And I know that's not a great reason to pick a college but it definitely weighed in the calculation in a way that was really exciting.

00;08;05;07 - 00;08;20;14
Laura Bucci
I wanted somewhere smaller. I wanted somewhere that was close enough to home that I could be around family I didn't want to travel to Narragansett, so it was. So you're I sort of left left the picture for me.

00;08;22;04 - 00;08;24;09
Bill Hudson
That's something like a real Rhode Island or a.

00;08;24;24 - 00;08;24;28
Laura Bucci
Good.

00;08;25;04 - 00;08;29;28
Bill Hudson
Car. The 30 minute drive to you are a was too much.

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Laura Bucci
It's too much. But I well, I lived I so I mean, my parents house is under two miles. I could do that commute in like about 6 minutes. Right. I lived just up Smith Street. It's not far right. So that was like a real plus tip, you see for me.

00;08;48;06 - 00;08;58;27
Bill Hudson
Okay. But Kelly, you grew up in Florida, so that's it's like I remember when I first saw your neighborhood classless, I said, oh, a student from Florida. We don't have very many of those.

00;08;59;11 - 00;09;32;26
Kelly Smith
Yeah, I was the opposite of Lori or I went far away, actually, after a friend had mentioned it to me. I had been looking for a school that was about Providence this size in the Florida. 8000 range here in Florida. We have some big universities and then some really smaller schools. And so I wanted something more in the middle than that.

00;09;32;26 - 00;09;57;27
Kelly Smith
And so that made me look outside of Florida. So my decision came down between P.S. and then a school in Boston and I visited I visited both. And I found that the students at P.S. were just seemed a lot happier and a lot more excited to be at Providence College. And that really was the the deciding factor for me to choose because.

00;09;58;16 - 00;10;00;29
Bill Hudson
Super it was in our basketball.

00;10;01;01 - 00;10;10;09
Kelly Smith
You know, it wasn't because in Florida were all about college football. So now and now I've been converted as a full blown college basketball fan.

00;10;10;09 - 00;10;21;28
Bill Hudson
But a fixer for our listeners frustration to this to a PC grad. So I think you've been following the NCAA, a run of Providence, College.

00;10;22;19 - 00;10;24;00
Kelly Smith
We have. And yes.

00;10;24;16 - 00;10;50;29
Bill Hudson
And yet we're hoping that the college that's going to recruit a lot of good students could that we got some national attention so. Oh, okay. And you got to PC and you eventually decided to major in political science. So what was that about? How did you decide that you liked political science? Did you decide that right when you came or did you make the decision after taking some classes?

00;10;51;10 - 00;10;52;08
Bill Hudson
Kelly, what about you?

00;10;52;20 - 00;11;13;22
Kelly Smith
So I kind of accidentally became a political science major because I remember I was filling out the form online and I remember vividly and my mom was like, oh, you don't want to go into college undecided. You need to pick a major. And she said, Why don't you do political science? You've always liked your component class. And so I was like, Okay, that's fine.

00;11;14;04 - 00;11;45;25
Kelly Smith
So that's how I incidentally became a political science major. And I took my first class in the fall, and I liked it, but I was toying with the idea of becoming a history major or doing a history political science double major. I wasn't sure kind of which path I wanted to go down and that all changed in the spring when I took probably one or two, and I just thought it was the coolest thing that the question that I had about how the world works.

00;11;45;25 - 00;11;58;20
Kelly Smith
We could actually figure out whether I could find the answer to them and and that you could, you know, when people made statements you could go and collect data and figure out if those statements were accurate or not.

00;11;59;23 - 00;12;10;05
Bill Hudson
And that if I could interrupt policy one or two is was called then empirical political analysis. Right. And I presume that either Professor Hider Carlson was your professor.

00;12;10;13 - 00;12;12;16
Kelly Smith
Yeah, I was never a professor hired.

00;12;12;16 - 00;12;12;27
Bill Hudson
Okay.

00;12;12;29 - 00;12;42;09
Laura Bucci
I had I do. And I think that was like, for me, a foundational, right? Like, that was the I started in the natural sciences, which was I didn't I didn't enjoy it. It wasn't for me. But what changed coming into poli sci was I liked that there was some some substance to it, right? I liked that you could you could do rigorous work and and do it about ideas.

00;12;42;09 - 00;12;57;13
Laura Bucci
That were current and ongoing and sort of all around you. And I really I enjoyed that. That class was like really EYE-OPENING and like life changing for me in a in a very direct way.

00;12;58;01 - 00;13;05;08
Bill Hudson
Yeah. And or what? So so you initially were interested in natural sciences and what was your first poli sci class?

00;13;05;26 - 00;13;11;24
Laura Bucci
It was whatever, one, two, one or one or 100 with Dr. Cammarano draft.

00;13;12;01 - 00;13;12;21
Bill Hudson
Politics.

00;13;12;21 - 00;13;36;01
Laura Bucci
Right? Yeah, it was wonderful. And it, it let me kind of go out in the world and think about who I was politically and see politics in a way that was sort of very approachable. It's also a style of teaching that I respond really well to that. Like, everyone is smart enough to do this. You just have to want to do it right, which is, I think, how I've taken teaching going forward, right?

00;13;36;01 - 00;13;42;28
Laura Bucci
That that this is hard and rigorous and difficult. But you're capable and able to do things.

00;13;43;13 - 00;14;12;23
Bill Hudson
So both of you were very much affected by Professor IDE and his empirical political analysis of you know, where he really, you know, digs into that some data and you can really start analyzing data about politics. What were some other political science classes you found particularly influential in your own sort of development, particularly as you became as as you are now a professional political scientist?

00;14;13;18 - 00;14;44;15
Kelly Smith
Yeah, I would say two classes were particularly important to me. First, what was your public policy class? Because I had studied public policy now, so it gave me a really good foundation. And I think it helped helped me think of interesting research questions or just got me intrigued with public policy. Um, the other question really important was I took, I think what's called ancient and modern was after about a Sony.

00;14;45;01 - 00;15;19;13
Kelly Smith
And I don't think I'm not a political theorist but it seemed to me that the other students in that class, there was just something about the dynamic and the intellectual curiosity in that class. That I feel like everybody pushed each other to do better. And I felt really surrounded by top students when I took that class. And I think the, the writing and the thinking that that class made me do really helped me be a better student and ask questions and probably be a better writer as well.

00;15;20;01 - 00;15;20;16
Bill Hudson
Laura.

00;15;21;03 - 00;15;49;26
Laura Bucci
I think so. This is like very typical PC to answer this way. But second year Civ for me was was a really important sort of I think it gave me enough breath to really feel comfortable asking questions in a in a in an honest way. And I think it it sort of helps me get the frame of reference with the history to really think about bigger problems going forward.

00;15;50;16 - 00;16;17;18
Laura Bucci
In particular, I always link back to the idea that, like we were reading, I was an honor sit with you and and Dr. Morgan and Dr. Hogan. And I think that for me was just a lot of ideas, really big substantive ideas. That was the first time I read the novel German and all, which I think like hit a lot of what I needed it to in the moment.

00;16;17;18 - 00;16;30;11
Laura Bucci
And so like I said in labor now, and it's this kind of a story of, of just struggle in a way that really humanized and motivated a lot of what I work on going forward.

00;16;31;13 - 00;16;49;28
Bill Hudson
Well, I'm glad to hear that, Laura, because I remember discussing with my colleagues, Hogan and Morgan at the time about whether or not to assign Germany. And I, I was very interested in, in actually teaching that. So I'm glad that that had an impact in terms of going into a labor scholar.

00;16;50;22 - 00;17;06;12
Laura Bucci
And so I think I wrote a whole dissertation like unconnected to the idea of like Catholic social thought and then realized I wrote a deeply Catholic dissertation. Right? Like it was not a thing I thought of consciously. And then look back, I was like, Oh, that's exactly what you did.

00;17;07;08 - 00;17;24;14
Bill Hudson
It's okay. Well, I'd like to hear more about that in a minute. So, so you mentioned so that's interesting. You mentioned that you've sort of played a role in you becoming a political scientist. Kelly, were there any courses outside the police department that that were especially influential for you?

00;17;25;04 - 00;17;55;22
Kelly Smith
I do think Civ I mean, there's just no way getting around how important this is. I mean, I think actually studying political science to have, as were mentioned have that breadth and that background moving forward and to have some awareness of where big ideas are and where they came from and how we still see them today in society.

00;17;55;22 - 00;18;20;25
Kelly Smith
I think just having that background knowledge is just so important. And I saw that many times since I graduated, how I would love to just go back and retake this all over again. And especially because depending on Professor Wright, you read as you read some different books and certainly other Civ classes, and I said I sit back and I go, Oh, I would just love to read again and again.

00;18;20;25 - 00;18;27;23
Kelly Smith
Probably there's just so much there is so much content there that's so relevant today. It would be wonderful.

00;18;28;20 - 00;19;03;11
Bill Hudson
Well, Kelly, you should start a science program at Stetson. You could then teach Western Civ that's why as a political scientist, because I just loved reading stuff outside of, you know, my disappointment, interacting with faculty in other departments and the like. So that's one of the nice things about a smaller college you can do do that Actually, I was going to get to this later, but but both of you teach at predominantly liberal arts colleges, right?

00;19;03;26 - 00;19;09;14
Bill Hudson
How big is Stetson Kelly, and what is your class size? They're like.

00;19;10;21 - 00;19;35;19
Kelly Smith
Yeah. So I'm just a little bit smaller than the We do have a law school and a music school, but where where I am is the undergrads are a little bit less than PC and our average class size is 20 to 25 or so depending on what you're teaching. So a similar, a similar size to Providence.

00;19;36;26 - 00;19;39;28
Bill Hudson
And St Thomas, LA. Is that.

00;19;39;28 - 00;19;41;01
Laura Bucci
Bigger than Joe's.

00;19;41;06 - 00;19;42;01
Bill Hudson
T Joe's. I'm sorry.

00;19;43;10 - 00;20;09;23
Laura Bucci
Right. So no, it's we're pretty comparable, right? So it's, you know, it's about 4000 or so my classes usually were capped at about 20. I teach Intro to American Government so that's probably of the major one of the biggest classes. And so it's about 30. I have a capstone right now. So it's, it's interesting to have a senior seminar for the first time and that's, that has 13.

00;20;10;15 - 00;20;13;28
Laura Bucci
So it's, it's much smaller yeah.

00;20;13;29 - 00;20;23;29
Bill Hudson
So when you were on the drum circle you actually both of you seeking institutions like the ones you're at or, or it was just the luck of the job search.

00;20;24;25 - 00;20;51;24
Laura Bucci
It'd be nice to say that I, you know that that the market was wide open and we had our but that doesn't seem to be what the job market looks like. But I am happy to end up at the kind of school I'm at. I think it's an opportunity to genuinely get to know your students and just see them grow and improve in a way that I don't think would have been possible if I was teaching, you know, 400 kids a semester where it would be much harder.

00;20;52;16 - 00;21;18;05
Kelly Smith
Yeah, I think I knew I wanted to be at a small place similar to Providence College. I just I knew that my experience there was so important and formative going through my graduate education and, and then trying to get a job. So it was definitely where I wanted to land. But as you know, you, you don't necessarily have as many options in the job market these days.

00;21;18;05 - 00;21;52;05
Kelly Smith
But I do remember vividly when I was going on the market, I think I went to lunch with you and Dr. Hyde and you both you both thought I was crazy wanting to be at a small school and go back to Florida all in one go. And it did happen. Surprise surprisingly. Um, but yeah, I did. I think I, I knew that my, my ability to have relationships with my professors and how that was so important, informing me professionally, I wanted to be able to do that in my career.

00;21;52;05 - 00;22;04;09
Kelly Smith
And so I knew going to a huge school I wouldn't be able or it would just be more difficult probably to, to, to engage in that kind of mentorship I was interested in.

00;22;04;26 - 00;22;25;13
Bill Hudson
Right. So, so that brings me back to the question I was going to ask before about how both of you decided to go to grad school. In political science, like Kelley, you mentioned interaction with the professors. I presume that was part of your decision interacting with those of us in the public side of part.

00;22;26;00 - 00;22;55;13
Kelly Smith
Yeah, it was. So I after empirical political analysis, Dr. Hyde asked me to be his research assistant. So then I was I was his research assistant for the next three years. And I got to I got to work on a number of really cool projects with him. And so I think that allowed me a have quite a breadth of experiences working on research projects that I think students might not typically have.

00;22;56;05 - 00;23;26;10
Kelly Smith
And then I kind of got to see, okay, this is what a professor kind of does in their professional life. And that kind of convinced me that I wanted to continue studying political science but I really, again, loved the fact that you could ask questions and go out and find find the answers about political life. And, and that's what really led me down the path to going to graduate school.

00;23;26;24 - 00;23;29;00
Bill Hudson
And Laura, what about you? What would lead you to.

00;23;29;21 - 00;23;50;21
Laura Bucci
Yeah, so originally I had I had the kind of motivation that I think a lot of poli sci students had. And I thought I was going to go to law school. I thought that was sort of the next logical step for me after after Polis, I went on to I think it was I think it was you and Dr. Hyde together that both of you were like, do you want to be a lawyer?

00;23;50;27 - 00;24;09;08
Laura Bucci
And I think it was that that was the question. It was like, do you want to be a lawyer? And I was like, Well, like, maybe I don't know. And they were like, well, that's a no that right? That this is this was the kind of conversation. I think being a professor wasn't something that I had in my cards until someone told me that I could do it right.

00;24;09;08 - 00;24;37;03
Laura Bucci
And so I had written my paper in in 102 was on same sex marriage bans in the state of Ohio. And I think that became an independent study. I presented it later at Northeastern Political Science Association. And so it kind of like grew into the a thing I was doing in in other courses. And it was always something that was like fun, right?

00;24;37;03 - 00;24;57;25
Laura Bucci
It was a lot of like playing around and trying to figure out a puzzle in a way that was hard but just exciting. And so for me, that was always the push forward of like, okay, well, this is if this is something you like doing, then do this. And that led me to grad school.

00;24;58;15 - 00;25;12;23
Bill Hudson
Could you say a little something about your grad school experiences and, and how your work at PC was connected there? How prepared were you? What were some challenges that you you might have faced in graduate school?

00;25;13;08 - 00;25;35;05
Laura Bucci
I don't know, Kelly, if you had a similar experience, but I think going straight from undergrad, I took a year in between. But I think going straight, it puts a little bit of a chip on your shoulder in that you're like, everyone here is older and has a masters and like has a life, right? Like they have like a you know, they have like a long term partner and they have like stuff.

00;25;36;03 - 00;26;00;03
Laura Bucci
And at the point where I left, I was like, I'm still a college kid. I'm like, I'm going to it's undergrad, take two. And I think getting kind of settled into graduate school for me took a second just to feel confident and to feel comfortable. I think I was prepared. I was writing very well. I was arguing consistently and concisely.

00;26;00;13 - 00;26;09;26
Laura Bucci
It just it was a moment for me of recognizing that and sort of seeing that, that I was ready and I think.

00;26;10;24 - 00;26;21;29
Bill Hudson
You're at Indiana University, which is still both both Indiana and Brown are prestigious institutions, but I'm sure there were lots of other very, very good graduate students there.

00;26;22;11 - 00;26;46;25
Laura Bucci
Definitely. And just sort of recognizing that you could hold your own and that you were more comfortable, I think in writing in particular. Like I could write a paper that was good and and strong pretty consistently, right, that I was used to writing longer papers than other people were used to writing. And I think that is a testament to the department.

00;26;46;25 - 00;27;11;27
Laura Bucci
And so sort of liberal arts training in general. But I think the transition for me was it was a lot of similar stuff to what I had been doing, right? To make sure I was reading widely, to make sure I was outlining, to make sure I was thinking, get my own questions and to come into class sort of prepared to engage in kind of seminar style.

00;27;13;05 - 00;27;14;26
Bill Hudson
Telling similar experience or.

00;27;15;17 - 00;27;49;27
Kelly Smith
Yeah, I, I agree with what I think. I think adjusting the, the confidence in graduate school, I, I went straight, straight and from undergrad to graduate school and I agree it takes a second to get your feet under underneath you and, and, and realize that you are like, I should be there really. I felt, I felt very prepared methodologically because my professors at P.S. all worked together with me to make sure that I had a breadth of experiences going forward.

00;27;49;27 - 00;28;15;29
Kelly Smith
So when they knew that I wanted to go get my Ph.D., for example, you know, Dr. Hyde had me do my senior research with Dr. Bastoni and I did interviews because I had been working all quantitative data with Dr. Hyde. And so and I and I remember Dr. Cammarano, let me do kind of a weird project in his presidency class because it was something I was interested in and I would learn something new from graduate school.

00;28;15;29 - 00;28;41;26
Kelly Smith
So that kind of mentorship across the department really helped me get a wide breadth of experiences going into graduate school, which made me feel a lot more comfortable. And I remember vividly when I was first writing my personal statement for graduate school, you know, I did my first draft and I sent it to Dr. Hyde, and he had some comments and he sent it to you, Dr. Hudson.

00;28;42;17 - 00;28;53;01
Kelly Smith
And you came in and you said, you're going about this all the wrong way. Kelly, you have to you have to completely rewrite this because I guess and I don't remember what the version was like. You don't remember this?

00;28;53;04 - 00;28;53;25
Bill Hudson
I don't remember it.

00;28;54;18 - 00;29;33;23
Kelly Smith
Okay. You said my my personal statement read as if I was trying to, like, defend myself, that I was prepared for graduate school, even coming from a small liberal arts institution. And you challenged me to say, no, you have to find the things that this experience gave you that made you the most prepared for graduate school. And it made me completely flip my personal statement talking about how these these experiences that are really only available at a school like Providence College in the smaller school was made me a much better prepared graduate student than students at other universities.

00;29;33;23 - 00;30;01;29
Kelly Smith
And so I do think that that actually helped me going into graduate school with more confidence because it totally changed my mindset especially going to Brown and thinking, Oh, should I really be here? You know, from that kind of change of perspective and writing my personal statement, it was like, Oh, yeah, I've had a lot of experiences that many of our students haven't had that that made me really well prepared and ready to go and graduate school that's good.

00;30;03;01 - 00;30;26;16
Bill Hudson
And so and in graduate school, I suppose both of you had some good mentorship there as well, a chance to work in Pratt's other research projects. I know, Laura, one of the things you did was you were an editorial assistant for Perspectives on Politics, a leading journal and political science editor at that time by Jeff Isaacs. Right.

00;30;27;24 - 00;30;57;09
Laura Bucci
So I was my claim to I was the American Book Review assistant for a long time. I worked on the article side for a while as well. I'm still very proud of the the issue that gets it gets called the Princeton study all the time with Marty Jones and Ben Page on economic inequality and representation that I was working at Perspectives when that issue came out.

00;30;58;12 - 00;31;22;16
Laura Bucci
And it sort of became an all-American issue in part because I had extra book reviews and we had sort of a lot of stuff in hand in thematically, it all sort of works, but I think mentorship and Indiana. Indiana was wonderful for me in a lot of ways. It's it's far away from Providence, which is unfortunate, but I think getting away and sort of being in a different place in a new environment was really helpful for me.

00;31;24;03 - 00;31;53;07
Laura Bucci
It's a small enough program, so my cohort, I believe was 11 which there were two Americanness. And so it was nice to sort of be around a relatively small group of people that we could consistently see over time and just sort of kind of grow in and knowledge like with a group, my advisor, my current, my, my graduate school advisor is retiring this year.

00;31;53;25 - 00;32;04;08
Laura Bucci
So we're headed back to Indiana in mid April in what is set to be a very nostalgic moment. But I'm looking forward to it.

00;32;04;26 - 00;32;05;26
Bill Hudson
And that's Gerald right?

00;32;06;10 - 00;32;27;25
Laura Bucci
Yeah. So Jerry is retiring. So all of the the request was that all of the kids would come home. So so there's a there's a lot of us. And so the idea would be that that all of the former grad students, I think the earliest is sort of like early nineties until I was the second to last in 2017.

00;32;27;25 - 00;32;29;18
Laura Bucci
So we're all going to kind of come back.

00;32;29;25 - 00;32;32;15
Bill Hudson
Kelly, you want to add anything about your experience and.

00;32;32;28 - 00;32;56;26
Kelly Smith
Yeah we also Brown was a smaller program as well and I liked that environment a lot. And I remember when I was trying to decide where to go, it was Dr. Boustani who told me, he said, you know, the grad students don't have to get along for you to do well in graduate school. But he said it makes graduate school a lot easier said the graduate students, to each other.

00;32;56;26 - 00;33;26;09
Kelly Smith
And he was right. It was an environment where the students above me were giving me notes and helping me through the process, and I think that made it a lot easier. I also had a wonderful mentor in graduate school, Susan Moffitt and Wendy Schiller, who worked really closely with me. And I think I think my experience as a research assistant, PC really helped me because I was ready to be a research assistant in graduate school as well.

00;33;26;09 - 00;33;35;16
Kelly Smith
And I and I think that allowed me to develop good relationships with my mentors, you know, early on. And then throughout my graduate education.

00;33;36;02 - 00;34;00;04
Bill Hudson
You both are political scientists. That means you do research on politics. So I want to make sure we spend some time here hearing about your research and what why you decided to study what you study. Laura, you already said it's because I signed German up German. Now to you, my dad. I'm sure there were other factors, but if you can.

00;34;01;02 - 00;34;01;14
Laura Bucci
Just.

00;34;01;27 - 00;34;23;07
Bill Hudson
Tell us a little about your research, how you got interested in your your topic and and what contributions you think you've made so far, just starting out in your careers. You already made some contributions to our understanding of politics. So or you want to follow up on your specialist in state policy and labor Yeah.

00;34;23;07 - 00;34;51;13
Laura Bucci
So I most of my work is on the consequences of declining unionization in the states. So the basic argument of most of what I work on is that states have varying history of of labor organizing or labor strength, and that has consequences for the types of policies that are present in states and also has consequences for the degree to which people feel more or less connected to civic institutions.

00;34;51;13 - 00;35;34;00
Laura Bucci
Right. So the the book manuscript is is arguing essentially that a declining labor union membership is bad for democracy because it moves people away from governmental institutions and economic security. Right. But this is a real problem for society because it takes people out of a secure life and it moves them towards more precarious, sort of isolated existence. Most of what my work has been on right now is dealing with questions of inequality, but also dealing with organized labor as a as an interest group more generally.

00;35;34;00 - 00;36;15;20
Laura Bucci
So most recently, I have a paper on party networks and sort of how Labor donates to individual party networks and whether or not it sort of grants them greater influence within those parties. It doesn't always it basically can only work for Democrats and it doesn't work particularly well. So that's sort of where my my research has tended to go in terms of how I got to here I went to grad school thinking I wanted to study gender policy at the state level, and I've always been sort of interested in questions of when policy changes, what happens to people, what do people do?

00;36;15;21 - 00;36;31;29
Laura Bucci
How is there life different than it was before? And in 2012, that's when action happens. That's where all of the sort of Midwestern labor protests started taking place. And I was in a class on economic inequality at that point in time.

00;36;34;00 - 00;36;56;11
Laura Bucci
And I sort of was just like, maybe people don't like labor and like it's not a question. And all of the answers I came up with were now they seem to like them just as much as they ever did, which leads to some other like something else is taking place here that is not related to public opinion. And not related to general support.

00;36;56;14 - 00;37;07;00
Laura Bucci
So that's sort of that like outside event shifted kind of my trajectory away from gender politics more specifically and into labor policy.

00;37;07;23 - 00;37;19;15
Bill Hudson
Yeah. So so the the decline in labor, some people attribute to say, well, we just don't like they don't think they need labor unions, they don't like labor unions. And you're saying that's not really true. There's there's other factors at work.

00;37;19;26 - 00;37;42;19
Laura Bucci
And I mean, as far as I can tell, I collected all of the public opinion data I could get my hands on from the seventies forward. And the trend line is pretty flat regardless of how you cut it. And it's it's positive for for middle and low income folks. It's, it's less positive but still higher than you would expect for higher income folks.

00;37;43;18 - 00;37;57;08
Laura Bucci
So I, I created estimates for states over time by income group and it's, it's pretty consistent. There's not this steep trend down that you would suspect given the degree that policy has shifted.

00;37;58;14 - 00;38;05;03
Bill Hudson
Yeah. And so it's really public policies are largely responsible. Is that your argument?

00;38;05;27 - 00;38;30;05
Laura Bucci
My argument is that some there's some elite influence happening here. Right. It's either a party goal or it's an outside interest group goal. It's not it's not the general public pressuring for for change. And even like you would maybe suspect that public opinion might follow policy and that doesn't seem to really happen either. So it's kind of this thing that is happening absent public interaction.

00;38;30;06 - 00;38;35;12
Bill Hudson
And Kelley you said you you got fascinated by education policy when you were in high school.

00;38;35;27 - 00;39;05;06
Kelly Smith
I mean, uh, yeah, one of my big decisions was whether to study education policy from a policy perspective or a political science perspective. And I obviously went the political science route. And I think my interest has broadened, I think since then in that I, I'm, I'm really interested in how policies communicate to citizens and, and what citizens can take away from from the policies that they have available to them.

00;39;05;15 - 00;39;27;16
Kelly Smith
But rather than take the kind of political behavior approach, I'm, I'm really interested that kind of interested in. Well, why do states have certain policies? Right. Why in the United States, if you live in one state, your four year old has free and pre-K education and you live just across the border and you don't have that that policy available to you.

00;39;27;28 - 00;39;51;07
Kelly Smith
So that got me really interested in just like why these states have different policies. And that kind of led me down the path of policy decisions and looking at how policies spread across state. And since then, I hope I've made some some additions to understanding not only why states adopt them, but even if they've adopted the same policy how does that look different?

00;39;51;13 - 00;40;20;06
Kelly Smith
And implementation that you can on paper have access to the same policy, but based on implementation, it can be a different experience for you as a citizen as to whether you have access to the benefits that these policies, you know, guarantee. And and from that I got interested and in policy learning and so I really look at the kinds of different ways that state officials learn from one another and how that's incorporated and to state policy.

00;40;20;27 - 00;40;58;27
Bill Hudson
I'm thinking about recent state policy actions around the instruction on things like race and gender. Florida, where you live, Kelly, it's sort of one place where where that's going on. Any insights from your research about what's happening as politicians are sort of mounting campaigns to to try to influence what's taught in schools right now is this this current policy debate that's going on in the country?

00;40;59;19 - 00;41;00;03
Bill Hudson
Yeah.

00;41;00;24 - 00;41;31;17
Kelly Smith
Yeah. The things have been interesting here in Florida, as they typically are actually for the politics aspect. And so it's always always interesting to you to feature that. We'll see how education policy has this is not the only time it's been contentious, right? School boards it's not the only time that school board meetings have been contentious. Of course, with the threats and things that are going on are very concerning.

00;41;31;17 - 00;42;05;07
Kelly Smith
But it's important to know and I'm actually teaching education policy in Florida politics class tomorrow. But it's important to note, right, that, you know, the way that policy and policy areas develop or institutions develop over time is really important. So education started at the local level and was built up over time. And so it shouldn't really surprise us that the real content in an education policy in politics happens at the local and state level because of that.

00;42;05;23 - 00;42;32;08
Bill Hudson
Kelly, I've also noticed in looking at your CV that you've been doing some other policy research. You're working on a paper on automatic voter registration, which also touches on kind of a hot button issue right now. The whole issue of voter suppression and access to the ballot of how did you get interested in that topic and what have you found so far in your work there?

00;42;32;19 - 00;43;09;05
Kelly Smith
Yeah, so so that paper is currently under review and I met with one of my colleagues here at Stetson and a former student, and my colleague is an expert in elections and election policy. And we became really interested because we realized the national conversation has been all the states are trying to restrict voting, right? All these policies were trends, voter ID policies, etc. But actually over the past few decades, states have taken a number of approaches to make voting and registration easier.

00;43;09;06 - 00;43;35;24
Kelly Smith
That's really been more of the trend, and states simultaneously have been adopting certain policies that make registration and voting easier at the same time as adopting policies that make it harder. So we were really interested and examining, well, why do certain states have these kinds of why are they taking these different approaches sometimes within their own state, to election policy?

00;43;36;28 - 00;44;07;03
Kelly Smith
So we decided to use a policy diffusion lens to do that. And most of the election policy research rightly so is really concerned about how these policies affect registration and turnout rates. But we were looking kind of more of, well, why do they have these policies? And what we found is kind of the the the the kind of propensity to innovate how states adopt more and more election policies.

00;44;07;03 - 00;44;55;08
Kelly Smith
So we kind of add these different policies together and with how it how it influences them surprisingly sometimes election policies that expand that make voting a registration easier. If their neighbors have those policies, they are actually less likely to adopt them. So it's a really interesting story. But we're trying to contribute both to, you know, this election literature to introduce this diffusion line, but also to kind of expand policy diffusion itself that typically focuses on more kind of social policies some anti-smoking policies, welfare policies, etc. by looking at policies that can actually reshape democracy determining who can vote or not.

00;44;55;10 - 00;44;55;21
Kelly Smith
So.

00;44;56;18 - 00;45;27;04
Bill Hudson
Laura, when it comes to labor policy, you know, we often don't think about, I think, state level policies in that regard. I know, you know, when I teach about, you know, labor policy, you think about the Wagner Act and federal policies and the impact of federal actions National Labor Relations Board on the ability of unions to organize and the like.

00;45;28;07 - 00;45;52;27
Bill Hudson
But but you've you've looked at the state level. So I'm a little curious. It it's interesting that both of you are sort of working at the state level, which is which is something that political scientists I think of neglected for a long time. So look at you since you think about that, how does all this affect the ability of people to join the labor unions?

00;45;53;11 - 00;46;20;14
Laura Bucci
I think so. I think a lot of people tend to focus on national labor law as a as a sort of pathway towards increasing or decreasing sort of the rights of workers. I'm looking mostly at the state level, primarily because there has been some legislation that can make it harder or easier to join a union. So collective bargaining, bargaining limitations in the public sector or sort of right to work in the private sector.

00;46;20;23 - 00;46;52;29
Laura Bucci
Right that that those types of pieces of legislation often go to state legislatures that are more or less amenable to hearing those types of bells. And so I think the strength of organized labor within a place also is met with the variation in sort of state legislative capacity or ideology that for me is an interesting way in which sort of group strength combines with the types of policies the legislature was going to produce anyway.

00;46;53;22 - 00;47;27;29
Laura Bucci
And produces something that may or may not be beneficial to workers in a place. So things things like minimum wage, preemption or other kind of preemption laws that take place at the state level and effect sort of local. This is what happens in Pennsylvania, right? That that Philadelphia would raise its minimum wage but can't because the because Pennsylvania has preempted the the minimum wage law or other sort of policies that can make it more or less easy to to organize.

00;47;29;16 - 00;47;50;02
Laura Bucci
They're not the most common most people are looking at the national level or across nationally. But I do think you get some really rich variety when you sort of dig down into the states. And I think this is what Kelly probably likes about it, too. But states are I always say state politics is really weird, right? That there's 50 different options.

00;47;50;02 - 00;48;02;14
Laura Bucci
You went with and they were all different or you picked a different way to do it everywhere. And so states are changing their actions and that has consequences for how people live.

00;48;03;09 - 00;48;26;13
Bill Hudson
Well, it sounds like for both of you, the state level is where the action is going to be for a while. You're both going to focus your research efforts there, so that's great. Well, I'm really glad to catch up with you on on what you're doing to kind of wine things up here today. I'd like your reflections on what it's like to be a college professor.

00;48;27;03 - 00;48;45;21
Bill Hudson
And so as a person, I'd like to learn a little bit about sort of how how that affects your your life as a human being. You both seem you both are smiling. So I think you're happy as college professors. So tell us something about that.

00;48;46;04 - 00;49;11;09
Laura Bucci
I think for me, I like the way my life looks honestly. Like I think I get to talk about big ideas, which is something that I've wanted to do. I like to see kind of light bulbs turn on for students thinking about things that are complicated or things that they've felt maybe a little uneasy about. And start thinking about that in a really systematic way.

00;49;11;09 - 00;49;40;15
Laura Bucci
This is for me. I've been at St Joseph's is my fourth year, so this graduate in class is the first class that I've seen from start to finish. And it's like a very emotional moment for me. Because people have come so far and there's been a lot of moments of people that didn't think they could do college or didn't think they knew how to write or didn't think they could produce assignments the way they wanted to.

00;49;41;14 - 00;50;08;10
Laura Bucci
And sort of seeing it hand out is really rewarding. We had a admitted Students Day yesterday, which was a very warm, fuzzy day for all of us, but I didn't realize quite how personally I took what I was doing. I like I think I always sort of knew that I cared about what I was doing, but I didn't realize quite how much until I was like, We're getting ready to say goodbye.

00;50;08;10 - 00;50;28;29
Laura Bucci
And I was like, Oh, no. And so it was a very heartfelt moment, but I like being able to do that. And I think going to graduate school for me was personally very rewarding and broke me out of my comfort zone. I met my spouse there. It was a a wonderful sort of life. It still is.

00;50;29;21 - 00;50;31;02
Bill Hudson
Super. Thanks, Kelly.

00;50;31;26 - 00;50;54;18
Kelly Smith
Yeah, I think I'm also in my fourth year and I feel like I don't know if Laura agrees that we've really had an atypical experience as a ten year professors because there's two years when we got hit with the pandemic and went to online learning for a little bit. I don't I don't know how things were at Saint Joe's, though.

00;50;55;02 - 00;50;55;28
Kelly Smith
Either. Incredible.

00;50;55;29 - 00;50;57;27
Laura Bucci
The ball is what I always say in my statement.

00;50;58;06 - 00;51;20;18
Kelly Smith
So nimble and maybe, you know, maybe it was a good thing that we were so soon out of graduate school because we were still trying to figure things out. What's what's trending things up really to us. We weren't really set in our ways maybe just yet, but I you know, I had a great experience so far with being a professor.

00;51;20;18 - 00;51;47;04
Kelly Smith
I think I teach our version of empirical political analysis here at Stetson, and it's just so great to get to teach the class that was so important for me that that really kind of turned a light bulb on for me. And so I hope I do that with at least some of my some of my students. And it's really wonderful to accept that all seniors have to do a senior research project.

00;51;47;04 - 00;52;10;12
Kelly Smith
So I'm teaching that class this year, too. So aforementioned, I'm I'm with the seniors who I had as freshmen and seeing the culmination of their work and their final research project is it's really rewarding. And and I also a little caught off guard you know, kind of how emotional it is having your first class graduate. But I think it's it's really rewarding.

00;52;10;12 - 00;52;30;20
Kelly Smith
I am so fortunate to be in a department that's incredibly collegial and supportive and the students are excited and ready to learn. And so I get to spend my days reading and then getting to ask super cool research questions. And I think it's a lot of fun.

00;52;31;13 - 00;53;00;24
Bill Hudson
Great. Well, thanks so much to both of you. I really enjoyed seeing your your bright faces once again here on Zoom and it's great to talk with with you. And I think your experience is very we'll be very enlightening to some of our listeners about how one sort of becomes a political scientist and and the like. So so I appreciate very much for being with us today.

00;53;00;24 - 00;53;28;23
Bill Hudson
And look forward to seeing you sometime when you're back here visiting it in Providence, Rhode Island. And thanks so much to Chris Judge of the Marketing Communications Department, the Providence College for editing this podcast. And thanks to all our listeners for listening. And please tell your friends about Beyond the News.

00;53;29;04 - 00;53;41;10
Chris Judge
Thanks for listening to this episode of Beyond Your Newsfeed. You can subscribe and listen to both be on your news feed and the PC podcast. Wherever you is in a podcast, be sure to rate and review the podcast and have a happy Easter from all of us here PC.