Committee Members (Kristen Moore, Leonie Huddie, and Susan Clark) from the Task Force on Mentoring were instrumental in securing funding for a recent APSA workshop held on Friday March 5, 2004 to discuss the career advancement of women in political science. The attendees included 25 political scientists from around the country as well as National Science Foundation program officers. The workshop was funded in part by an NSF Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER).

APSA is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2004 Small Research Grant competition. This year, awards averaging $1,636 went to 11 scholars. The Small Research Grant Program supports research in all fields of political science. The intent of these grants is to support the research of political scientists who are not employed at Ph.D.-granting institutions. For more information on the program and application procedures, please visit the APSA web site <www.apsanet.org/opps/apsagrants.cfm>.

The Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center at the University of Oklahoma seeks applicants for its Visiting Scholars Program, which provides financial assistance to researchers working at the Center's archives. Awards of $500-$1,000 are granted for reimbursement of travel and lodging. The Center's collections are described at <www.ou.edu/special/albertctr/archives/>. The Visiting Scholars Program is open to all applicants, though emphasis is given to those pursing postdoctoral research in history, political science, or other fields. For more information, contact channeman@ou.edu.

The American Political Science Association and a consortium of scholarly organizations have developed Political Research Online (PROL), a new resource for political scientists. Made possible through generous funding by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, PROL is a comprehensive electronic archive of pre-published research in political science.

House and Senate Budgetary Committees are set to soon unveil allocations for 13 appropriations subcommittees for the discretionary portion of federal spending. In an election year, and with the national debt reaching previously unfathomed depths, experts do not expect much in the way of non-defense discretionary spending. In the House, presumably any proposed increases will have to be hashed out, perhaps leaving the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) out in the cold. Experts expect that if the NEA and NEH are left out that increases will be proposed on the floor for the agencies. Congress is looking for myriad solutions to quickly appropriate funds for FY2005. Among these are potential proposal is one to present an early, full omnibus bill and one to group the 13 appropriation bills into three or four “mini-omnibus” bills. Proposals akin to that offered this year for NEH funding would appear much more difficult to secure this year.

In a meeting of APSA's international committee in September 2003, APSA President Susanne Rudolph suggested the need for a “mutual de-parochialization” in our knowledge practices. She meant a closer interaction between American and non-American political scientists and a greater cross-fertilization of their substantive and methodological concerns. Margaret Levi, the President-elect of APSA, also emphasized the need for a greater internationalization of American political science, with special emphasis paid to the so-called international public realm.