She didn’t just teach political science — she changed how it’s taught

“We try really hard here at Redlands to get students to recognize their own capacities for growth and their own abilities to grow into the person that they can imagine — through hard work, of course.”

On any given day in Renée Van Vechten's classroom, a lesson on federalism might begin with something she heard on the radio that morning — a shift in federal drug policy, a court decision, or a headline that seems unrelated, until it isn't.

“Practically everything is politically relevant in some way,” she said.

This thinking has defined her last two decades of teaching political science at University of Redlands – and carried beyond it. In late 2025, she was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Political Science Education (PSE) member section of the American Political Science Association (APSA).

“I joke that I’ve already peaked, but there's still so much more to do!” she said. “I had no idea that they would honor me at this point in my career.”

Shaping minds

Van Vechten, the Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair in American Politics and Policy, has always treated her students as capable thinkers in a complicated world.

“Part of my job is to show students that they possess what's needed to grasp whatever I’m trying to help them learn,” she said. “We try really hard here at Redlands to get students to recognize their own capacities for growth and their own abilities to grow into the person that they can imagine — through hard work, of course.”

Outside the classroom, she’s spent years building the infrastructure, and equipping other educators to do the same, by serving PSE in several roles. Using every platform to build resources that reach the entire profession, she’s integrated the Teaching and Learning Conference into the Association’s annual meeting and co-chaired it twice, championed the open-access library of peer-reviewed resources used by political scientists nationwide, and has played a pivotal role in turning the “Journal of Political Science Education” into an association-wide publication available to all.  

“Doing association work is about building resources — helpful and meaningful resources—that will be widely shared,” she said.

PSE section president, Maureen Feeley of University of California, San Diego (UCSD), nominated Van Vechten in recognition of her “significant contributions to scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) research, including pathbreaking, and award-winning, work on internships and curricular reform in the discipline, among other areas.”

“There are few colleagues more deserving of the Section’s Lifetime Achievement Award than Renée Van Vechten, and I’m both delighted and honored to nominate her,” Feeley said.

All Van Vechten’s work points back to the same idea — that knowledge isn't created by experts alone, but in the space between teacher and student.

“Whatever we're doing to advance knowledge and create knowledge is a process that must include more than just the experts, because knowledge is co-produced all the time,” she said. “The magical thing about higher education is that we are places of co-production of knowledge, whether that happens at the undergraduate level or the graduate level — and enabling students to be part of that process is where we fulfill our mission as educators.”

Rooted in impact

When PSE presented the award at its annual conference in Vancouver, it represented more than an accolade — it was recognition of a mission Van Vechten has spent two decades crusading for, right here at Redlands.

“I'm grateful to be in a space to explore and research issues related to teaching and learning that are directly relevant to everything I do at Redlands,” she said. “I couldn't do this kind of work at just any institution. That's what I appreciate about Redlands; I'm rewarded for it, I'm able to do it, and it's useful, practical scholarship that has an impact.”

Discover Political Science at Redlands.