In addition to the Research Development Seminar, CAPPP students take one or two elective courses. While the seminar is limited to the CAPPP cohort, students from a number of UC campuses take electives together. Each elective is worth four upper division units.

Each quarter, students can choose from six to eight offerings. The courses vary depending on which professors from any of eight UC campuses are teaching at the UC Washington Center at the time.

Elective classes meet during the evenings to accommodate students’ internship work schedules.

Below is a sampling of the kinds of electives that have been offered during recent quarters.
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Anthropology
Working Poor families, Children and Welfare Reforms (Fall 2007)
From the time it was founded, Washington, DC, has been the site of citizen protest. This seminar will focus on the purposes and nature of different DC protests, considering, as it does, Washington as a capital city and American politics more generally.

Communications
Political Wordsmithing (Fall and Winter 2007)
Political writing is a special subspecies of language with several diverse manifestations. There is an art to the op-ed and to the editorial; to the polemical essay and to the review. This course is designed to teach an appreciation for the range and nature of political writing in both its public and governmental forms. It also introduces students to the fundamental skills required actually to do effective political writing.

Cultural Studies
US LATINO CULTURES (Winter & Spring 2005, Winter 2007)
This course explores the past, present, and future US Latino experience, relying primarily on novels, short stories, films, memoirs, and essays. The course will use US Latino narratives as means to help us better understand the viewpoints and strategies of a dynamic people living in a changing political and social world.

Economics
Environmental Policy and Economics (Winter 2006, Fall 2007)
This course is devoted to the economic analysis of environmental policy, focusing on issues of global environmental protection. We will cover topics such as global climate change, the equity and efficiency issues involved in policy design, and private-sector responses to environmentl challenges.

History
Art and Society: Museums and Patrons (Fall 2007)
This interdisciplinary course is concerned with how society has shaped the production, reception and definition of art, via patrons and museums, from the Renaissance to the present day. Through virtual and actual visits to the National Gallery of Art and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, we will consider (i) patronage, collecting and the audience for art in Renaissance Italy (ii) the American millionaires turned mega-patrons of the late 19th and 20th centuries (iii) multimedia programs in museums: bringing a cultural heritage to a wider public.

Political Science
The Presidency (Fall 2007)
This course covers role of the presidency in American politics. Topics will include nomination and election politics, relations with Congress, party leadership, presidential control of the bureaucracy, international political role, and public opinion. This quarter we will pay special attention to the politics of divided government.

The Washington Community (Spring 2007)
This course provides a theoretical and practical examination of how the nation’s capital works. Key questions to be explored are what really goes on in Washington, who are the participants in the process, and how well/poorly our government functions We will try to understand what is meant by the “inside the Beltway” mind-set and its implications for representative democracy.