Graduate Handbook

IX. DIVISION OF GOVERNMENTAL STUDIES & SERVICES

The Division of Governmental Studies and Services (DGSS) is a subunit of the department which was created in 1964 to serve as the primary contact point between public agencies interested in applied research and departmental faculty and graduate students capable of providing such assistance. WSU is a land grant university, and as such it has an obligation to extend disciplinary knowledge to the practical tasks of governance in our state; the department meets this university mission in major part through the activities of DGSS. Over the course of the past three decades DGSS has conducted applied research for a variety of federal, state, and local government agencies and for several foundations and comparable extramural funding institutions.

Graduate students can become involved in DGSS in several ways. Each academic year several graduate students who are not appointed to teaching assistantships work as researchers on projects funded by contracts with government agencies. Other graduate students seek out the assistance of DGSS to help with data collection for doctoral committee-approved projects requiring the collection of original data. Yet other graduate students make use of the datasets accumulated by DGSS in its applied research work to perform secondary analysis, either for preparing course papers, for M.A. or doctoral theses, or for developing professional publications.

DGSS has a particularly close relationship with local governments through the Program for Local Government Education (PLGE). This program brings into partnership DGSS, WSU Cooperative Extension, the Association of Washington Cities, and the Washington Association of County Officials for the development of applied research pertinent to the needs of local government officials. The department maintains a position funded by Cooperative Extension for a "Local Government Specialist," and this faculty member involves graduate students interested in state and local government in their PLGE work.

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