The department of Politics, Philosophy and Legal Studies welcomed a new assistant professor of Political Science and Asian Studies. Assistant Professor Dan Chen grew up in China and lived there through the end of her undergraduate schooling. She then attended the University of Kansas, training as a comparativist with a focus on Chinese politics.

She moved to Pennsylvania in June and began working at Elizabethtown College in August. She currently teaches two sections of Introduction to Comparative Politics and a course on Asian politics.

Chen said that her teaching style is derived from three specific sources. “First is definitely my advisor back at Kansas,” she said.

The second major influence on her was her experience as a teaching assistant and an independent instructor for a course on reform in contemporary China.

Chen also cited her experiences at conferences because she was often expected to address a wide, mixed audience of experts and non-experts in the field, forcing her to explain her concepts differently.

She did not always have the goal of being a professor. She said that as a senior in college, she had wanted a career in public relations. Chen went to a small liberal arts college in Beijing, China and was able to do an internship at Weber Shandwick, an American public relations firm. After attending the University of Kansas for graduate school, her interests changed.

“Being a teaching assistant sort of helped me learn a lot of respect for teaching, and that really spurred my interest in teaching,” Chen said.

Chen said that she would love to develop a course on Chinese politics in the future. She would like her course to focus on reform in contemporary China, after having taught a similar course at the University of Kansas. Even with an interest in contemporary Chinese reform, she has no plans to reform her department.

“I love my department. I can’t say I have learned every aspect of my department yet, because I have only been here for less than three months, so there are still a lot of things I am not familiar with and that I don’t know yet,” Chen said.

Chen hopes that her background in Chinese politics, with specifics in media control, censorship and authoritarian regimes, will bring information and guidance to students with similar interests in Asian politics.

She hopes students will use her as a resource or collaborate with her for any research projects they might want to do on that subject.