One Course: American Political Institutions

By Jill Hawk | November 15, 2023

Assistant Professor of American Politics Megan Goldberg and her students turn a critical eye to our country’s representative government and its elected officials during the course American Political Institutions.

What they learn

Assistant Professor of American Politics Megan Goldberg started teaching at Cornell College in 2019. Photo by Robyn Schwab Aaron ’07.

Students explore the major institutions of the U.S. federal government with a special focus on Congress.

“We learned about everything from the making and passing of laws to the ways in which candidates interact with their constituents in order to win elections,” said Luke Baldwin ’24.

Students think in depth about what it means to live in a representative democracy and leave with a better understanding of how people think about politics and what lawmakers can actually do.

“Many people, including students, have an idealistic view of politics—that they can vote for someone who has the views most like them and that those elected will go to Congress and vote for those things,” Goldberg said. “This class reveals all of the different Constitutional constraints on members. Representatives are faced with rules and procedures, and in a lot of ways they have to play by the rules to get access to things and to power.”

How they learn

Class is filled with discussions about assigned readings and what’s happening in real time during the congressional session. Students are also simultaneously working on a block-long research project about a congressional member of their choice.

“It’s really unique to do this research project on the block plan because it’s moving at a rapid-fire pace,” Goldberg said. “By the third day of class, they are looking up their candidate’s district on the census website, and by the fifth day of class, they are turning in their candidate’s electoral history. They are coming to class with information about their member that nobody else has, so they can contribute to the conversation in a different way than everybody else.”

They also hear from speakers who are invited to class.

“My favorite part of this class was the visit by former Cornell College professor and former Congressman Dave Loebsack,” said Benson Fang ’25. “Congressman Loebsack gave us a lot of interesting insider information about individual members of Congress, as well as Congress as a whole.”

Selected readings