Letter from the Director

Dear EUPS alumni and friends,

Last fall I had noted that our program had filed a curricular reform proposal that was informed by the formal and informal feedback that we had received in the 2021 academic program review process. Those curricular reforms were approved by JMU in early 2024 for implementation beginning in the upcoming 2024-2025 academic year. The fall-semester research dynamics course has been revised to provide more support for additional data analysis and data visualization techniques. Bigger changes are in store for the spring-semester portion of the curriculum. Our program has eliminated the “track” system in which students either focused on domestic economic and social policy or on foreign policy and security concerns. Moving forward, all of our students will take advanced courses tied to each of those tracks. In turn, this curricular reform will also create space for our program to launch a new course on political communication and policy advocacy that will become the one course in our curriculum in which the U.S. experience is at the center of the discussion while European dynamics are the comparison case, rather than the other way around. We hope that these reforms will enable our program to increase its support for several career pathways of growing interest to our graduates while also retaining the existing strengths of our program.

On May 10, 2024, seven program graduates returned to Florence for our program’s second annual Alumni Day. Spanning the period from our initial cohort in 2008 through the Class of 2019, they came to the Palazzo Capponi in the afternoon to hold career panels for our current students on job seeking and on making the most of one’s first job upon the completion of this graduate program. Then, they gathered with program faculty, staff, internship providers, and current students for an aperitivo and dinner at Harry’s Bar and Garden. It was a wonderful day! Please mark your calendars for next year’s EUPS Alumni Day, which will take place on Friday May 16, 2025.

At the 2024 Alumni Day, our graduates looked back on their time in the program fondly. They talked about how they grew as people and as future professionals via their experiences in and beyond our classrooms in the Palazzo Capponi. They also discussed how our current students can build on their experiences in this program in job interviews and then as they transition into the workforce thereafter.

In this respect, their comments echoed the open-ended reflections of respondents to our 2023 biannual Alumni Survey late last year. 91% of survey respondents said that they would recommend this graduate program to others. The value of the training and life experiences can be seen not just in our graduates’ reflections, but also in their labor-market outcomes. The overwhelming majority of our graduates (92%) report working in a field that they desire. Large majorities report using their knowledge of political dynamics (88%) and their knowledge of public policymaking (94%) in their workplaces. The median salary across all graduation years (the Classes of 2008 through 2023) is $100,000. This median salary exceeds the national median salary for employees with master’s degrees even though most of our program’s graduates have not yet entered their peak earning years of their careers.

All these labor-market outcomes are particularly impressive when one considers that nearly 80% of our students come into this M.A. program with no prior professional work experience. That is, over three-quarters of our students arrive in Florence not long after the completion of their undergraduate studies. Their successes after graduating from this program speak both to the quality of the students we attract and to the several ways in which this graduate program helps our students grow – both as future professionals and as people.

Our alumni’s willingness to help each other, to help current students, and to talk about the program with prospective students has a cumulative, rising impact as our alumni community continues to grow. As I write these lines, the 18 members of the Class of 2024 are preparing to graduate with the traditional Italian laurel wreathes in the Palazzo Borghese in the coming days. They will be joining a vital program community that could be seen in all of its facets on Alumni Day last month – current students, program graduates, faculty & staff, allied practitioners, and internship providers.

The incoming Class of 2025 will fill the Sala Michelangelo with 20 students. They have already filed their visa applications, held initial meetings with program faculty and staff, and have begun thinking through their educational, professional, and personal objectives for the upcoming academic year. Frankly, one of the most sustaining aspects for those of us who work in higher education is that just as we are about to say “until we meet again” to the Class of 2024, we are able to shift our focus to supporting a new group of similarly motivated and talented students.

I know that I speak for all of my colleagues in noting that we welcome all of the ways that readers of this newsletter can contribute to our students’ and our graduates’ experiences. You can talk with them as a group in person or virtually about your career experiences. You can offer to speak one-on-one to help them think through a career decision. And you can also help to recruit the next group of EUPS students, by speaking with prospective students who are inquiring about our program. Please remember that your fellow graduates and our faculty and staff are all potential resources for you at any time. All you need to do is ask.

Cordiali saluti, 

Charles Blake

Charles Blake has been a political science professor at JMU since 1992. He began teaching in the EUPS program in 2016 and has served as the director since January 2020. His research focuses on the politics of policymaking and on the pursuit of transparency in public administration.