Virtually half of today's professors will retire in the coming decade (Bowen and Sosa, 1989). This creates both an urgent need and a great opportunity for American colleges and universities to recruit a new generation of educators. Most of the future faculty are in graduate school today. How can this cohort best be prepared today to become effective classroom teachers?

Many universities now have teaching assistant training programs and others are establishing them. Most TA training programs, however, are prompted by short-term concerns about the quality of instruction given undergraduate students today rather than by long-term concerns about the quality of the professoriate tomorrow (Sell, 1987). Since TAs in doctoral granting institutions do a large share of the teaching of undergraduates, short-term concerns are important. Nevertheless, TA training can and should be designed to serve both short- and long-term goals. The TA training program that seeks to achieve long-term goals must deliberately plan its program so that important skills associated with the professor, but not commonly associated with the TA, are taught. Two of these important skills are employed before the first class: course planning and syllabus writing.

Course planning, an activity that occurs before the first class (Stark et al., 1989), improves the course significantly for both teacher and student by clarifying goals and determining ways of achieving them. The syllabus explains the course plan (as well as other information) to the student and, hence, communicates information crucial to the success in the course.

In writing of the seven deadly sins of college teaching, Eble (1983:3) observed that “Arrogance, Dullness, Rigidity, Insensitivity, Vanity, Self-Indulgence, and Hypocrisy” are sins as deadly to students' chances of learning “as the traditional deadly sins were to chances of salvation.” Focusing on “dullness,” Eble comments that though it is a seemingly benign sin, it competes for the “highest (or lowest) place.”

With this in mind, and on the assumption that instructors are the dominant influence in the classroom, the major focus for many researchers has been the analysis of teacher behavior. From their studies five characteristics of effective college teachers have been identified: scholarship (Mayhew, 1980); interest in subject (Beatty and Behnke, 1980); enthusiasm in presentation (Barr, 1981); keen wit (Bryant, et al., 1980); and the ability to dramatize a subject (Norton and Nussbaum, 1980). Consequently, the communication style of instructors has emerged as a prevailing factor in the teaching-learning process and has served as the basis of a growing body of research.

In the usual college classroom environment, communication is the central element in teaching. Norton's studies (1983) offered evidence showing perceived teacher effectiveness to be related to a teacher's perceived communication style, while Scott and Nussbaum (1981) found students' perceptions of teachers' communication styles to be associated significantly with student achievement. In the last instance, the findings showed that an instructor's perceived adeptness in communication was highly related to a student's evaluation of the overall performance of that instructor in the classroom.

This article discusses (1) the extent to which an introductory course in urban politics is currently offered by political science departments in American colleges and universities; and (2) the thrust or orientation of such a course as reflected in survey responses, syllabi, and textbooks. The discussion is based principally on the findings of a mail survey of the 485 political science departments listed in the 1987 Directory of Undergraduate Political Science Faculty and of the 246 departments listed in the 1986 Guide to Graduate Study in Political Science, both compilations published by the American Political Science Association. A total of 377 completed questionnaires were returned, for a response rate of 51 percent. Approximately one-fourth of the respondents also furnished copies of course outlines as requested.

The answer to the question of whether political science departments offer the introductory urban politics course recalls the old bromide of the “half full” or “half empty” water glass. Forty-nine percent of the respondents stated that they offer such a course while 51 % answered in the negative. A small minority questioned the importance of the offering, one respondent commenting, “An urban politics course is not of central importance to an undergraduate curriculum in the liberal arts.” Most non-offering departments, however, tended to be apologetic about the absence of the course from their curriculum, citing various reasons for its exclusion. The two factors most frequently mentioned are lack of resources (31 %) and the coverage of urban material in a state-local government offering (39%).

We are a nation of cities. The 1980 census reported that almost three out of every four Americans lived in urban areas, and estimates are that the 1990 census will show that the proportion of the population living in urban areas will increase further. Many of the nation's most pressing domestic problems deeply affect the well being of urban residents: welfare reform, homelessness, substance abuse, education, health care for the uninsured, quality of the work force, and the like, all have significant urban dimensions. And while we may never see “urban” regain the popularity it obtained during most of the 1960s, any policy response designed to address these pressing problems will have a major urban component; whether it is called urban policy is another matter. It was interesting to observe during the past presidential campaign how frightened the candidates were of using the word urban or city. While I have not yet seen a content analysis of the 1988 election campaign, the words urban and city were noticeably absent from the debates, speeches, and sound bites. We did, however, hear a lot about community in one of the debates.

The purpose of this essay is to highlight some of the prominent issues cities and their residents are likely to face in the 1990s, with emphasis on ways in which these issues can be structured into an undergraduate urban policies and urban policy curriculum through reference to the recent book literature.

I have developed and used the role playing simulation described here in discussion sections of a first-year course entitled “Introduction to the Study of Policy Problems.” The purpose of the game is to materialize concepts presented in a lecture entitled “Revitalizing Urban America: Values and Urban Policy,” which has been an organizing focus for the course. It introduces four views of the functions cities perform for those who live and work in or near them. These views include seeing the city as an engine of economic growth, a provider of services to residents, a locale for social communities, and a forum for democracy.

Before playing the game, students learn about the history of American urban development, current economic and fiscal problems in cities, and options for economic development and residential revitalization that have been suggested to make the transition from an industrial to a service-based economy. (A list of readings from the course syllabus follows.) The values to be represented by each group in the game are described as the goals of residents of a metropolitan area as well as their perceptions of themselves and their surroundings.

Students are put into four groups, each representing a distinct functional interest, or “vision” of the city. The groups represent the values identified in the lecture as answers to the question “What are cities for?” They include a “pro-growth coalition,” a “service bureaucracy,” a “social communities” and a “political officials” group.

Daunting challenges of teaching an introductory comparative politics course make it almost fanciful to urge over-burdened colleagues to take on one more task: to introduce undergraduates to standard reference sources in college and university libraries. And yet the task, I submit, needs to be done.

Like many others, I long took for granted that students would know or soon discover the treasures hidden in library reference sections. I assumed, for example, that students would know where to look for bibliographical sources for term papers. I reacted with scholarly indignation when they locked in orbit around Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report. I had trouble understanding why other students contended that topics involving recent political events could not be researched, because no books had yet been written on them. I was baffled by the frequent inability of students to obtain biographical information on major foreign leaders, to check the names of party candidates, to find election results, or to learn the composition of cabinets or politburos (admittedly a dicier problem these days).

One solution was to prevail upon the excellent reference librarian at our college to brief introductory students on the holdings of the college library. As informative as these briefings were, I came to fear that even the most receptive students were in a passive mode, lacked a sense of immediate relevance, and would soon forget what they were hearing unless they were asked to put it to early use.

Like many colleges and universities. Elizabethtown College has adopted a writing-across-the-curriculum program that attempts to establish writing as a principal means of communication and as a tool for the development of intellectual skills. Set to begin in Fall 1990 as part of a new core curriculum, the program requires that each core course provide writing assignments that “emphasize the process of writing or rewriting in response to critical evaluation by faculty and/or peers.” A major stimulus to the development of the program was an NEH Summer Seminar on Writing Across the Humanities, conducted on campus in 1985 by faculty in the College's Professional Writing Program.

The Department of Political Science, with four professors, has been an active promoter and participant in the campus writing program. Most of our own less formal conclusions about the role of writing in learning are congruent with those of the Harvard Assessment Seminars. We, too, find that close faculty-student interaction in assignments spread out sequentially provides the writer with directive and suggestive comments in a less threatening and more encouraging way. Such consultation leads to a higher quality final product and student mastery of more skills in style, organization, and analysis of substance. Two assignments that have worked particularly well for us at the introductory level are the foreign policy issue brief in the international relations course and the issue analysis project in American national government.