Inside Yale’s ISPS Predoctoral Program: Research, Mentorship, and Graduate School Preparation

Rick Harrison
Juliana Mothersbaugh speaks in a classroom

Juliana Mothersbaugh will begin a Ph.D. program in political science at Stanford University this fall.

Students considering a Ph.D. often face difficult questions, including where to apply. But sometimes the hardest question can be whether to apply at all.

At Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies’ Center for the Study of American Politics (CSAP), a predoctoral fellowship clarifies that decision. In partnership with the Tobin Center for Economic Policy, scholars with undergraduate degrees spend one or two years immersed in political science research. They join an intellectual community, build skills, and learn what graduate study looks like day to day.

“The predoc at ISPS is like an immersive experience in professionalization,” said Juliana Mothersbaugh, a predoctoral fellow who worked under the mentorship of ISPS faculty fellow and assistant professor of political science Allison Harris. “There were a lot of things about this type of work that were invisible to me as an undergraduate. And actually going through it step by step helped a lot.”

In the fall, Mothersbaugh will begin a Ph.D. program in political science at Stanford University. Her work at Yale focused on how social identity and inequality relate to the operation of the criminal justice system.

“The predoctoral fellowship was a confidence builder,” she said, citing research immersion, skill strengthening, and intellectual exchange through workshops, conferences, and peer feedback. “I don’t think I would have done a Ph.D. without this program.”

ISPS predoctoral fellows work as full-time research assistants for one or more ISPS faculty mentors while taking for credit — or auditing — one course per semester, participating in weekly professional development seminars, and attending political science and economics research seminars.

Gregory Huber, acting director of ISPS, director of CSAP, and Forst Family Professor of Political Science, stressed how the predoctoral fellowship serves as both a training ground and a decision-making space for early-career researchers. He counts acceptances to elite Ph.D. programs and choices to take different paths as equal successes.

“The point of this program is to prepare people for that next step and choose best what it might be,” Huber said.

In addition, Huber said faculty love having predocs, the fellows contribute meaningfully to research, and the program helps them form a strong peer community with one another as well as with graduate students.

“We’re seeing this large network of former ISPS CSAP predocs go out into the world and continue to interact with one another,” Huber said.

Harris described Mothersbaugh as one of the best-prepared prospective scholars she has met, pointing to her training, intellectual breadth, methodological skill, and determination to answer difficult questions.

“She is 100% prepared,” Harris said. “I know she’s going to do well at Stanford.”

Harris said that because fellows work full-time and are physically present in the department, they often get more individualized feedback and support than they might as one of many undergraduate advisees. She noted that faculty mentors in the program are committed from the outset to helping fellows polish application materials and navigate the graduate admissions process.

“They can see what it looks like behind the scenes in a way they probably wouldn’t have as an undergraduate.” Harris said. “These programs are great because they can help prospective graduate students either confirm their suspicions that a Ph.D. is right for them or help them realize this perhaps isn’t the correct path.”

Predoctoral fellow Jack Starobin has not yet decided on pursuing a Ph.D. He will start a job as a voting rights litigation associate at the ACLU of Pennsylvania in August.

“I think this is a great program to figure out if the Ph.D. is right for you,” he said.

Over this past school year, Starobin worked with Jacob Hacker, ISPS faculty fellow and Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science, and Paul Pierson, John Gross Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley on issues involving the Democratic Party.

Starobin said one of the biggest advantages he gained from the program was a clearer sense of what it means to be a professional academic — including how to read scholarship critically, develop an independent research agenda, and participate in scholarly conversations. In addition, he valued the opportunity to interact with peers at all career levels in a close research community.

“You pass people in the hall who might mention something about a project they are working on or a visiting speaker you might be interested in hearing,” he said. “Having that rapport and that space to socialize and to share ideas spontaneously is really important.”

Lucas Kreuzer speaks in a classroom

Lucas Kreuzer will start work on a Ph.D. in political science at the University of California, Berkeley, in the fall.

Julia Crainic will also enter Stanford’s political science Ph.D. program after the summer, as a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. After earning her undergraduate degree, she worked briefly in economic consulting. At Yale, she attended weekly American politics seminars and graduate-level political science courses, boosting her confidence in pursuing a Ph.D. in political science.

“Everything that appealed to me about econ — the rigorous quantitative methods and social science questions — that’s in political science too,” Crainic said. “I’m interested in American political institutions, separation of powers, inter-branch relations, and especially the extent to which formal rules and informal norms constrain political actors.”

She credited her mentor, ISPS faculty fellow and assistant professor of political science Christina Kinane,  for showing interest in her Crainic’s own research and development as a scholar, giving her autonomy, and trusting her to do substantive work as a collaborator.

“I feel like I understand the discipline in a much deeper way than I did a year ago,” Crainic said.

Lucas Kreuzer spent his time as a predoctoral fellow working with Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson on projects examining geographic inequality and local polarization. He will start work on a Ph.D. in political science at the University of California, Berkeley, in the fall.

“I think the great thing about working with Professor Hacker is he puts a lot of trust in pre-docs,” Kreuzer said. “He treats us like collaborators and trusts us to come up with questions, to identify data sources, and to read new literature,” Kreuzer said. “That type of trust and collaboration placed in me this early on was phenomenal.”

Even though he says he likely could have applied to Ph.D. programs before doing the fellowship, Kreuzer believes his two years at Yale were still enormously worthwhile because they allowed him to enter graduate school with much more advanced preparation — clearer research interests, a stronger grasp of the literature, and familiarity with current methods.

“I will come into a Ph.D. program with a clear research agenda and quantitative skills,” he said.

Jack Walker will next pursue a J.D.-Ph.D. degree at Yale Law School and the Department of Politics at Princeton University as a recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.

Walker worked closely with Huber and ISPS Director Alan Gerber, Sterling Professor of Political Science, on projects including a 130,000-person panel survey from the 2024 election cycle. He contributed at every stage, from data collection and analysis to manuscript drafting and publication, ultimately co-authoring work in a peer-reviewed journal.

In addition, Walker credits Mackenzie Lockhart, an external postdoctoral associate with ISPS’s Democratic Innovations program, with helping him develop his research skills. And he credits the physical proximity of his peers for cultivating a strong intellectual community.

“It’s really great to be in a room with eight other pre-docs with diverse interests,” Walker said. “My best work happens in the office, when we’re able to collaborate and bounce ideas off of each other.”