Steffen W. Schmidt is a Professor of Political Science at Iowa State University. He grew up in Colombia, South America, and has studied in Colombia, Switzerland, and France. He obtained his Ph.D. from Columbia University, New York, in public law and government. Schmidt has published six books and over seventy articles in scholarly journals. He is also the recipient of numerous prestigious teaching prizes, including the Amoco Award for Lifetime Career Achievement in Teaching and the Teacher of the Year award. He is a pioneer in the use of Web-based and real-time video courses and is a member of the American Political Science Association�s section on Computers and Multimedia. He is on the… editorial board of the Political Science Educator. Schmidt has a political talk show on WOI radio, where he is known as Dr. Politics. The show has been broadcast live from various U.S. and international venues.