May ‘25 GCPL newsletter
Our recruitment period for this year has now closed, and we want to welcome our new scholars to the program. We have also been discussing exciting programming possibilities for next year and are looking forward to seeing how these unfold with the help of our Garfield Policy Advisors.
GCPL Recruiting
We received many strong applications to the GCPL this year and were able to sustain our application number of last year, which was the largest pool for the GCPL in 10 years. Our acceptance ratio as it stands now is approximately 1/3, demonstrating the competitiveness of our program and the continued growth phase we are currently in.
We are looking further into how the program obligations work within differing sports teams, given that so many of Hiram students are athletes. In addition to this new effort, we are currently looking into various other options to increase recruitment, such as on-campus opportunities for interested students and strengthening our existing ties.
Garfield Policy Advisors Meeting
Last month we held a meeting of the Garfield Policy Advisors (GPA), which is a group of people with political experience, connections, and expertise who assist the GCPL in developing its D.C.-based programming. This meeting was also attended by current and former students of the GCPL.
The main point of this meeting was to strategize about next year’s D.C. programming. One idea that quickly emerged from this conversation would be to host a retired Supreme Court justice. At the same time, it was recommended that we also look into a meeting with a sitting Supreme Court Justice, at the Supreme Court, since such an experience would be of real value to the students. We are very grateful to those in this group for offering their highly relevant contact-base for us to use in order to arrange these meetings.
As part of the GPA meeting, we also invited Garfield biographer C.W. Goodyear to talk about the continuing relevance of Garfield’s legacy for contemporary US politics. The insights he was able to offer were truly valuable, and we want to extend our thanks to him for attending.
James Thompson, Ph.D.
Department of Political Science
ThompsonJA@Hiram.edu
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