about

Jennie Sweet-Cushman is an associate professor of political science at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where she teaches courses in public policy, American politics, women and politics, and research methods. She was the 2018-2019 “Teacher of the Year” in Chatham’s School of Arts Science and Business, and received the 2020 American Political Science Association’s 2020 CQ Press Award for Teaching Innovation, Chatham University's 2020 recipient of the Buhl Professorship, and the 2021 Jane Burger Advising Award. She currently serves as editor-in-chief of the academic journal Commonwealth: A Pennsylvania Journal of Politics and Policy.

 

From 2013-2019 she also served as the Assistant Director of the Pennsylvania Center for Women and Politics. A former (successful) congressional campaign manager herself, Jennie earned her Ph.D. in political science from Wayne State University in Detroit in 2014.

 

Her research focuses on women's political ambition and representation in the U.S., as well as gender equity in academia. Her recent work has appeared in Political Behavior, Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, PS: Political Science & Politics, Politics, Groups, and Identities, and Politics and the Life Sciences and an ongoing project on the first-in-the-nation majority-female Nevada state legislature was awarded the 2020 Carrie Chapman Catt Prize for research in women and politics.

 

She currently serves as a commissioner on the City of Pittsburgh’s Equal Opportunity Review Commission, appointed by Mayor Bill Peduto in 2017. 

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