Susan Welch received her A.B. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is currently Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Professor of Political Science at The Pennsylvania State University. Her teaching and research areas include legislatures, urban politics, and women and minorities in politics. At the 2002 APSA, she and her coauthors Lee Sigelman, Timothy Bledsoe, and Michael Combs won the 2001 urban politics Best Book Award for RACE AND PLACE: RACE RELATIONS IN AN AMERICAN CITY (Cambridge University Press, 2001).