UCLA will host the sixth annual Summer Institute on EITM: Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models this summer, 24 June through 21 July 2007. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), this program seeks to leverage the complementarity between formal models and empirical methods. EITM is training a new generation of scholars to integrate theoretical models more closely, effectively, and productively with empirical evaluation of those models. The Summer Institutes are highly interactive training programs for advanced graduate students and junior faculty. They are led by teams of scholars from across the discipline who are working at the forefront of such empirical-theoretical integration..
This year's program includes John Aldrich, Arthur Lupia, Jeffrey Lewis, Ken Schultz, Scott de Marchi, and James Fowler in leading roles. Guests include Dan Posner.
Summer institutes generally accept 25 participants - advanced graduate students and junior faculty - through a competitive selection process. Tuition, dormitory lodging, meals, and domestic travel are covered for participants through a grant from the National Science Foundation.
Graduate students will benefit most from the program if they are committed to using both theoretical models and empirical data in their dissertations. They should have some training in both formal methodology and quantitative analysis, and advanced training in at least one of these areas. We also welcome applications from junior faculty looking to improve their defended dissertation in a direction that incorporates EITM, or who are embarking on an EITM-style post-dissertation project.
A new feature of this year's program is that the efforts of our regular Lecturing Faculty will be augmented by a team of Mentoring Faculty-in-Residence (MFR). We expect that MFRs will be drawn from the ranks of tenure-track or recently tenured political science faculty who use EITM methods in their research. Each MFR will have a mentoring group, consisting of a small number of EITM participants. MFRs will work closely with his/her mentees, helping them integrate ideas and methods from the Institute into their own projects. MFRs will also work closely with lecturing faculty to develop a set of teaching materials for a semester-length course reflecting EITM principles, and will give presentations of their own current research.
The 2007 EITM VI is hosted by the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles and led by Kathleen Bawn.
The Summer Institute is just one aspect of the EITM initiative in political science funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF also funds another, complementary, EITM summer program at Washington University in St. Louis. Participation in either program in no way debars students or faculty from future participation in the other program.