Welcome to the Department of Political Science and Administration of Justice

The mission of the Political Science and Administration of Justice Department is to promote responsible citizenship, prepare students to be skilled and effective leaders in local, state, and federal government and administration, and qualify our majors for acceptance to top-notch graduate programs and law schools. The Political Science and Administration of Justice Department provides majors with exposure to a broad range of topics within the disciplines of Political Science and Administration of Justice, and trains students in the techniques and theories used by scholars and practitioners in these disciplines to explore, describe, and explain political and social phenomena. The UH Hilo Political Science and Administration of Justice Department prides itself on small classes, personal advising, and quality education with aloha.

The Department offers two academic majors: Political Science and Administration of Justice. The Department of Political Science and Administration of Justice is within the Division of Social Sciences that is housed within the College of Arts and Sciences.

For more information about the department, please contact the department chair, Dr. Katherine Young .

Department News

• Dr. Su-Mi Lee 's article, Behind the Curtain: Syria’s 1979 Mediation in the Yemen Dispute, is published in the January 2020 issue of Negotiation Journal.
• Gabriela Lawlor, a POLS major, represents the graduating class as student speaker at the 2019 University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo Fall Commencement.
• Dr. Su-Mi Lee 's co-authored article, The Conditional Effectiveness of Directive Mediation, is published in the October 2019 issue of International Interactions.
• This fall, Dr. Sarah Marusek launches new Book Series, Law and Visual Jurisprudence, with co-editor, Dr. Anne Wagner (University of Lille, France).
• In honor of International Conflict Resolution Day, Dr. Su-Mi Lee collaborates with local organizations to offer a free workshop on negotiation on Friday, October 18.
• The Department of Political Science and Administration of Justice in collaboration with UH Hilo Student Association is hosting the Constitution Day Celebration) event on Campus Center Plaza from 12:30PM to 1:30PM on September 17, 2019.
• Dr. Su-Mi Lee speaks at National Assembly of Korea.
• Dr. Bradley Holland 's co-authored article won the 2019 Peace Science Society Will H. Moore III Prize.
• In April 2019, Dr. Sarah Marusek spent three weeks as Visiting Researcher in Sweden at Örebro Universitet in a yearlong grant collaboration, E-Discourse and the Dynamics of Violence, Gender Discrimination and Abuse as a Dominant Discourse: Communicating through Rumours and Visual Images.