General Information About the Meeting

This summer Penn State is pleased to host the 24th annual Society for Political Methodology Summer Conference. Since 1984, the Society for Political Methodology has been generously supported primarily by the host institution and by the National Science Foundation. Recent meetings have been held at UC-Davis, FSU, Stanford, Minnesota, Washington, Emory, UCLA and Texas A&M. This year's meeting marks a turning point in the summer meetings. The success and popularity of past meetings have led the Society's membership to support the implementation of an alternative model for the meeting in order to accommodate increased demand. In an effort to extend participation, the meeting size is growing substantially. With increased size, however, come some inevitable changes. We will be maintaining the basic program format and the venerated graduate student poster session. The host institution will be providing breakfast and lunch for the participants throughout the conference and will host a dinner and a reception. All other expenses (notably, hotel accommodations and remaining dinners) will be covered by attendees. The NSF, in conjunction with Penn State University, will continue to support 35 graduate students through a competitive process.

The program will begin this year on Wednesday afternoon with workshops centering on topics likely to be of particular interest to graduate students. These workshops will feature speakers from both inside the political methodology community and the broader interdisciplinary community at Penn State. Thursday through Saturday the program will run all day and will feature paper presentations and guest speakers in both plenary and split session formats. Friday features the annual graduate student poster session.

For details not provided here or any other questions, contact Burt Monroe or Kyle Joyce (graduate student assistant).

A last minute set of instructions can be found here.

Dates of Importance

Attendees should make their travel plans to arrive on Wednesday, July 18 and depart Sunday, July 22.

Venues

A campus map with the relevant buildings highlighted can be found here along with a campus directory.

Wireless Access

In order to access Penn State's Wireless Network you will need to install PSU's VPN software (provided in your information packet on arrival). This requires you to 1) have administrative privileges on your machine and 2) uninstall any existing VPN client. You will need to present a photo ID at the conference site in order to obtain a user name and password. Complete instructions can be found here and will also be on the CD in the information packet.