Release Date: November 2011
In Mike Wagner’s words, most people don’t wake up wondering how to hold their government accountable.
He’s not most people.
Such quandaries drive his work as a researcher as well as in the classroom, where he challenges his political science students to consider the same — not just so they can write an insightful paper or ace an exam, but so they can learn how to apply such knowledge to their own lives, well beyond their years at UNL.
“I want students to understand the conditions in which particular things are going to happen in our political system, that way they can develop expectations about what they can reasonably demand from their leaders, what they can’t, and how they can productively respond when things don’t go their way,” he said.
He has found his niche as a teacher-scholar, thanks in part to his professors during his own undergraduate years at UNL. Wagner studied broadcast journalismÂ
with minors in political science, communication studies, history and English and parlayed his education into a brief career as a political reporter before deciding to take his storytelling skills elsewhere.
“I just started to get tired of having to distill all of my stories into 30 and 40 seconds,” he said. “I just remember all of my professors in school saying, ‘You should really go to graduate school and you should really do research,’ and that sort of thing. I thought if I became a professor, I could tell longer stories about how the world works.”
He went on to earn a Ph.D. from Indiana University-Bloomington and by 2007 returned to UNL, this time as an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science.
Today, he juggles a dizzying list of research projects. The self-described “serial collaborator” co-authored a recently completed book on political polarization. He has teamed with a graduate student to study whether people connect religion to political beliefs. With another graduate student, he’s probing how politicians frame issues and whether that affects viewpoints. He also has a few smaller projects under way, including one on the consequences of redistricting.
His collaborative activities also spill over into the classroom where he has worked to develop new courses in partnership with other political science faculty members as well those in other fields.
“One thing that is great about our university, and our college especially, is that it really encourages collaboration across disciplines, within and across subfields within my own discipline, and between students and faculty,” he said.
Wagner has established a reputation as an engaging professor who is equally concerned about helping students master political science fundamentals and helping them develop the critical-thinking, communication and other skills in demand across many career fields.
Among his teaching philosophies, he believes that no class is too big for a discussion.
Research plays an integral role in his teaching and learning by doing is a recurrent theme. He supplements lessons on elections, political parties and special interests in his Political Science 230 class, for example, by assigning students to develop, conduct and analyze a survey of UNL students on issues ranging from political beliefs to opinions about campus services.
His efforts have attracted attention. In 2009, he received a UNL Outstanding Educator of the Year award.
Wagner also has excelled as a mentor in UNL’s Undergraduate Creative Activities and Research Experiences (UCARE) program. Funded by the Pepsi Endowment, the program offers undergraduates the opportunity to participate in research alongside faculty.
“I really like working with students and I really like my job, because my job is about conducting research, teaching students and doing service for the community, the campus and my discipline of political science,” Wagner said. “I see all those things as really interconnected and UCARE is a way in which that interconnectedness manifests itself.”
He exemplifies what it means to be a teacher-scholar, is committed in his service to the department, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the university, and is one of those rare people who excels at everything he does, said Beth Theiss-Morse, department chair.
“He intertwines research and teaching seamlessly, which to me is the epitome of what we are supposed to be doing here at UNL,” she said.