Alumni Story

You can go to college and never meet your professors and think that they’re these big scary people or you can really utilize their expertise and life experiences and at Catawba, their kindness and support.”

As a high school student and lacrosse player, Jason Windett was looking for a school that offered the best academics which could also provide him with both academic and athletic scholarships. He chose Catawba, finishing in three years, playing on Catawba’s men’s lacrosse team all three. He planned to go to graduate school and took several courses in the summer of his last semester at Catawba to finish early. He also came to Catawba with a lot of advanced placement credits. He knew he was facing six years of post-baccalaureate education; he wanted to get on with it.

Intending to go to law school, Jason majored in political science, a natural pathway. Dr. Bitzer and Dr. Sanford Silverburg challenged him to go beyond what was expected in the classroom. Jason and his older brother had plans to open a law firm; meanwhile his brother went to law school and hated it. That plan now off, Jason went to Dr. Bitzer’s office and said, “I’m changing my career path; I don’t want to go to law school. I want to do what you do. And on top of that, I want to do state politics as well.”  In response, Drs. Bitzer and Silverburg started having Jason do research, pushing him like he would be pushed in a master’s or Ph.D. program. “By the time I got to graduate school, I was well-read, I knew what to expect, I knew the type of feedback to expect. They set me up to succeed for twenty-five years,” Jason adds.

Jason shares, “I remember my first year at Catawba, you go to college and there’s freedom. My third or fourth week of class, I skipped Dr. Silverburg’s class, and six or seven minutes into this my phone rings. Dr. Silverburg says, ‘Mr. Windett, you’re supposed to be in my class right now. Where are you?’ After that, I never skipped class again. And now I check in on my students because of that; I don’t call them, but I’ll email and say, ‘I didn’t see you in class today, I’m just checking in to see how you are’. That personal connection we had at Catawba, trying to scale it up to a school of 34,000, it’s challenging. That personal connection is really what makes Catawba so special. It’s great when you feel that your professors are that invested in you, that they care, that you’re not just another face in the crowd.”

After graduation, Jason went to Appalachian State for his master’s degree and went on to UNC-Chapel Hill, getting his Ph.D. in political science with minors in public policy and research methodology. He taught state politics at St. Louis University for six years and has been at UNC-Charlotte for the last eight, where he is jointly appointed Professor of Political Science and Public Administration, Data Science, and Public Policy. “When I was hired at UNCC, at the time they had the data science initiative. This was before their undergraduate and graduate program began, so I was the first social scientist hired to be kind of a bridge between those fields, data science and public policy and political science; they go across different units. I do work in gender and politics with a more humanistic background, data science with more of a hard science background, but all of it is, what’s an interesting question that I can ask?’. It’s just been a lot of fun. I work with students from five or six different colleges, all over the world, domestic and international, North Carolina. It’s exciting to have so much diversity in what people are interested in, their approaches. It keeps me interested.”  Jason was promoted to full professor last year.

Jason was living in North Carolina in 2008 when Bev Purdue and Kay Hagan won statewide offices, which got him thinking about women running for governorship. “When I was in high school, Delaware elected a female governor. My first year at Catawba, we elected a woman to the U.S. Senate, Liddy Dole. Then we elected a woman governor, and a woman senator again. It got me thinking about what states are better or worse at electing women, and that kind of shot my career off from there, understanding historical and cultural influences in making a state more or less conducive for women entering public office.” While he was at Chapel Hill, Purdue was running for governor of North Carolina as was Catawba alumnus Pat McCrory, which made him watch that race closely. “It hooked me.”

“The biggest thing that I took away from Catawba was the ability to think critically,” Jason says. “This was across many different classes. Question things that you read, ask questions that challenge normal assumptions. Don’t be satisfied with the normal or the easy answer. The other thing that I think Catawba really excelled at was we had to write in every class, ten-to-fifteen-page papers, you became a good writer. And writers who can think can be successful.”

“My biggest advice for anyone in college is get involved,” advises Jason. “College shouldn’t be the time where you escape into your phone. It’s a time to make lifelong connections. Not just with friends but with skills and tasks that will help you succeed for your entire life.” He adds, “Try to spread the passion that you have for your major across all your studies. Go sit and talk to your professors during office hours, even if it’s not class content related. You can go to college and never meet your professors and think that they’re these big scary people or you can really utilize their expertise and life experiences and at Catawba, their kindness and support.”