PennWest professor sends students to political conventions

They’re able to attend meetings with party delegates, news outlets and other organizations.

By BILL SCHACKNER
Trib Total Media

Sydney Speicher, a rising senior at Pennsylvania Western University, rode an overnight Amtrak train to Chicago so she could spend this week living a political science major’s dream.

There’s no guarantee Speicher, 22, of Midway will witness a major candidate’s speech up close, just because she’s earning academic credit by volunteering at the Democratic National Convention. Nor is it a lock that she’ll get some face time with a U.S. senator, a governor or a network TV anchor.

But that often happens to students in National Party Conventions, a three-credit experiential course taught at PennWest by political science professor Kevan Yenerall. In it, students analyze and experience Democratic and Republican conventions to better understand their role in American politics.

Speicher scored an unexpected bonus. She couldn’t have known when she signed up in the spring that President Joe Biden, 81, would forgo a reelection bid — a rare political act in itself — and pass the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris.

That means Speicher, who attends PennWest California, could be in the arena Thursday night as Harris becomes the first Black woman to accept the nomination of a major party for the presidency.

“It’s kind of history in the making,” she said. “It’s really a big deal. I’m just honored to be a part of it.”

As he has for two decades, Yenerall this summer sent two groups of students on the road — one to July’s Republican Convention in Milwaukee, and the other to the Democratic Convention that runs through Thursday in Chicago’s United Center.

Once there, they are embedded in either Pennsylvania’s party delegation; news outlets such as CNN, PBS and Fox News Radio; or other organizations.

Students attend state delegation breakfast meetings, where the day’s plans are laid out. They staff party receptions, help delegates get around, serve as runners and sometimes distribute coveted passes.

“Every delegate, every special guest, everyone needs their particular credential for that day. That’s the most important thing a state party does,” Yenerall said. “My students do that. They work directly with the party.”

The asynchronous course is the summer iteration of Poli Sci 3990: Special Topics. Students must complete several essays including one comparing the parties’ platforms; do interviews with delegates and politicos; and deliver with classmates a campus presentation on Sept. 17, Constitution Day, reflecting on what they learned and why PennWest students and others should want to better understand the conventions.

Over the years, Yenerall’s students have heard speeches and in some cases spoken with luminaries such as former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, GOP Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and supporters of former Libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul.

Yenerall has convention photos of former president and Republican nominee Donald Trump’s son Eric, and Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law and co-chair of the Republican National Committee, as well as House Speaker Mike Johnson.

“It’s giving them coursework, readings, context, and then having them experience it at the ground level — whether it’s the acceptance address night, whether it’s from the media booth, or interviewing Ron Paul delegates on the floor of the convention or Bernie Sanders delegates,” Yenerall said.

The nation may be polarized and politics held in low regard by some. But Yenerall says students, both Democrat and Republican, receive an important lesson in political engagement — even if the conventions are tightly scripted, made-for-TV events.

“I rarely find that they’re more jaded,” he said. “What I find is they have a better understanding of what parties do.”

That’s why he’s raised funds to keep the trips going when university or outside funding dried up.

The Washington Center, an educational nonprofit in the nation’s capital, coordinated and sponsored the trips since 2004 but pulled out amid the pandemic. Yenerall said he already had created a scholarship in his grandparents’ names to support the trips.

“I thought, ‘I don’t want to give up 20 years of working on this. I believe in it,’ ” he said. “I wanted to keep it alive.”

He taught the course as a Clarion University professor until that campus, Edinboro and California merged in 2022. He now teaches students from all three PennWest campuses.

Most but not all students taking the course are political science majors. They choose varied career paths.

“They’ve gone into everything from politics and law, education, business, nonprofits,” he said. “I’ve had some that have gone into politics, and then got out of politics.”

Speicher, the PennWest student from Midway, sees herself teaching one day.

Matt Knoedler, director of communications for U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Butler, was a communications major on PennWest’s Clarion campus. He took Yenerall’s course and traveled to the 2012 Republican Convention in Tampa.

A memorable scene from that event was when actor Clint Eastwood spoke to an empty chair onstage meant to symbolize President Barack Obama.

“I remember being on the floor when Paul Ryan accepted the nomination for vice president that night,” Knoedler said. He also met David Gregory, then moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“It was pretty cool,” he said. But it was more than just an academic experience for Knoedler, who grew up in Saegertown, Crawford County.

“I had never been on a plane before, never flown,” he said.

To this day, he has kept credentials from the convention.

Another student, Corinne Hoopes, 28, from Woodstown, N.J., was assigned to CNN during the 2016 Democratic Convention and worked the 4 a.m. shift when not much happened on the convention floor. She would drive correspondents around and offer other logistical assistance, sometimes sitting at their desk during microphone checks.

She was surprised how news was curated in morning meetings.

“They were like, well, this is the fact, and this is how we want our listeners to view this fact in a positive light, in a negative light,” said Hoopes, a 2017 graduate who works as a speech language pathologist in the Cleveland area. “It shaped the whole way that I view mass media and news.”

Seth Ickes said his trip to Philadelphia for the 2016 convention yielded a photo with then-Gov. Tom Wolf and a much better perspective on how conventions fit into the nation’s politics. His brief time on the convention floor was surreal.

“It was loud,” said Ickes, 29, from Altoona, who graduated from Penn-West Clarion in 2017 and works as a public policy associate for USAging in Washington, D.C.

“They wanted you to keep moving. They didn’t want you blocking camera angles,” Ickes said. “It was sensory overload.”

He added, “I can’t say I’ve ever experienced anything like that before or since.”