MONROE, LA – Vincent Winston and Braxton Jackson, ULM political science students taking POLS 3001 (Research Methods), recently gave a presentation to Monroe Mayor Friday Ellis and his staff on three years of surveys collected from students in POLS 2002 (State and Local Government) on the quality of services in Monroe.
The students were able to use a combination of quantitative and qualitative data collected over the years to share trends in the perceptions of city services. This was useful information for the mayor to assess how students at ULM feel about the city, including what is going well and what needs to be improved. Some of this may be due to a lack of information indicating that more needs to be done to connect students with the city and all of the amazing things happening here in Monroe.
Dr. Daniel Hummel (POLS), who teaches both classes, discussed a valuable feedback loop with these kinds of projects where data collected by the city as well as on campus can be used to inform city leaders on resident satisfaction with city services. At the same time, political science students are learning how to collect and analyze data, an increasingly important aspect of governing and policymaking. Importantly, they are learning how to translate their analysis into something easily understood by decision-makers through these kinds of presentations, memos, and short reports.