 I've been thinking about critical thinking for a while as it applies to my discipline because this is an issue in which we've had several conversations in our department. How do we, you know, fostering critical thinking skills, evaluating truth claims is really at the core of our pedagogical efforts in political science. But what does that mean and how do we actually apply that to our classes? And from that, you know, I've been thinking about it for many years now, but a few years ago I had the opportunity to serve as a fellow at the State Department in Washington, D.C. while I was in sabbatical. And what I noticed there is that in one's work environment as well, one has to engage in a lot of critical thinking. So when one is thinking about foreign policy questions and solutions to those questions, again, you're evaluating the facts as they're given to you. You're evaluating the assumptions that come behind those facts and you're trying to see whether the facts that present to you really mesh with what you're seeing around you. And so I wanted to, you know, once I've finished my fellowship, I wanted to come back and apply that not just to my research but to my teaching as well. So getting students to think about critical thinking as something that they learn in every class that they take at the college level and every class that they take in political science, but also thinking particularly in how they can apply that to the work environment. That, you know, when they go for interviews, when they're actually trying to impress their supervisors and their first jobs or the second jobs that they should be able to bring that skill to the forefront. Well, I think it's important to first think about what we mean by critical thinking skills. And if I may, I'll just read some of the ideas about critical thinking skills that I've found in my research, which I think could be applied to a variety of disciplines. So a critical thinker should be able to gather and assess relevant information. She should be able to arrive at well-reasoned conclusions and solutions. And these well-reasoned conclusions and solutions are really about unpacking the information that is given to one and understanding the assumptions and implications of those thoughts. And then finally she should be able to communicate effectively in order to figure out solutions to complex problems. And these attributes, I think, are shared widely across various disciplines. And I think, you know, whether one is in the hard sciences or social sciences or the arts, it can be applied in equal measure. Once we have those generalized ideas about what critical thinking is, we should apply it to our specific discipline. So for example, in my discipline in political science, it's really about evaluating truth claims that apply to public life and to public policy. And so understanding that if someone is making a particular claim about, let's say, the impact of health policy, what is the information that that person is sharing? What is the assumption that that person is sharing? And really trying to understand what the possibilities and the opportunities and the limitations are of that policy based on the ability to evaluate those claims. And that same approach, I think, can be taken across a number of disciplines.