Rogers Smith has been named as the American Political Science Association’s president-elect for the 2017-2018 term. He is the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Associate Dean for Social Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.

The first political scientist from the University of Pennsylvania to serve in the position, Smith will be on APSA’s Council and Executive Committee for three years. Smith will first serve as president-elect for a year, as APSA’s president in 2018-19 and as past president in 2019-20.Trained in the history of political thought and American constitutional law, Smith has long championed a discipline that uses multiple methods to address pressing political issues and plans to bring that expertise to APSA’s Executive Committee.

At Penn, Smith has received the Provost Award for Distinguished Ph.D. Mentoring, Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching and Dean’s Award for Mentoring Undergraduate Research. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Academy of Political and Social Science and American Philosophical Society.

In 2006, he founded the Penn Program on Democracy, Citizenship and Constitutionalism, now the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy. He co-founded the Teachers Institute of Philadelphia, a university-public school partnership.

The American Political Science Association is the leading professional organization for the study of political science. Founded in 1903, it serves more than 12,000 members in more than 80 countries and brings together political scientists from all fields of inquiry to deepen its members’ understanding of politics, democracy and citizenship throughout the world.