The student-run academic journal at Queen's, Politicus, now
includes 12 faculty members from the Royal Military College
on the submission review board.

By Rosie Hales, Communications Officer

Politicus, the Queen’s-initiated undergraduate academic journal has joined forces with the Royal Military College of Canada and now twelve RMC faculty members will travel across the causeway to sit on the journal’s Panel of Referees.

As part of the new Queen’s-RMC collaboration, RMC students are now eligible to present their papers and have their research professionally reviewed by the 20 Queen’s and RMC faculty members that make up the referees, making this one of the largest institutional collaborations on a student initiative from Queen’s.

“There’s only opportunity that can come from this partnership,” says Troy Sherman, founder and managing editor of Politicus. “This supports a good number of institutional priorities as outlined in the Strategic Research Plan, and also comes at no extra cost to us.”

Since the journal’s launch this past September, Politicus has held its first panel discussion, with over 130 students in attendance. The first issue of Politicus will be published in March 2014.

Christian Breede, a faculty member at RMC and Fellow in the Centre for International and Defence Policies spearheaded the Politicus initiative at RMC after consulting with Mr. Sherman.

“We here at RMC are thrilled to be given the opportunity to join in with this exciting project. Having two first-rate universities in the same town lends itself to collaborations like this and we are happy to be a part of it,” says Dr. Breede. “Our faculty was eager to help out by being part of the team of reviewers for submissions and having a venue for our students to potentially publish some of their hard work exposes them to a side of academics that is often not revealed until graduate school. We hope this is the start of something really rewarding for both RMC Officer Cadets and Queen’s students.”

Now, students from both Queen’s and RMC who are exceptional in their scholarly work will have the opportunity to have their work reviewed by professors whose research, in many cases, makes up their reading material for their classes.

Dr. Steven Liss, Vice-Principal (Research) says, “The Politicus/RMC partnership will expose students to varied subjects and experts that will greatly widen the scope of topics and issues they are able to cover.  It is also an exciting opportunity for Queen’s to further its research goals of facilitating collaborative and synergistic research.”

Politicus will be releasing its winter term schedule for its public lecture series and workshops in January and will be accepting student submissions to the journal until February 12th, 2014.