Former Student Spotlight: Dr. Clay Webb ’15
Do you ever flip through Texas Aggie Magazine, impressed by all of the corners of the world where Texas A&M has Former Students, and wonder: “how do these people end up in so many different places”? Part of that story is told by graduate students, like Dr. Clay Webb ’15.
Webb is a distinguished scholar in political methodology and international relations, currently teaching at the University of Kansas and author of A Practical Guide to Time Series Analysis (Cambridge University Press). Known for his expertise in advanced statistics and his collaborative approach to research, Webb’s work has appeared in premier journals including Political Analysis and the American Journal of Political Science. He has taught, by invitation, at the distinguished ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods at the University of Michigan each summer for more than a decade.
But Webb thinks of himself as a scholar second—and an Aggie first. His connection to Texas A&M runs deep—both of his parents earned advanced degrees from Aggieland, and his earliest memories unfold across the university’s horse center, where he lived for four years as a child. After his family moved to Kansas when he was in elementary school, he remembers cheering for Texas A&M every Thanksgiving against t.u. and wondering why other kids weren’t following the game. When it came time to pursue his doctorate, discovering A&M’s nationally ranked political science program made his choice clear. “Texas A&M was the first place I applied,” he recalls. “When I received my acceptance letter for the PhD program, I knew that’s where I would be attending, regardless of any other offers I received.”
As a graduate student, Webb immersed himself in Texas A&M’s rigorous curriculum, taking semester-long and short courses in regression, time series, experimental design, game theory, and more. Webb remembers being impressed by and grateful for the atmosphere of collegiality that is unique to Texas A&M’s Ph.D. program. Where a lot of other programs are adversarial, especially for funding, Texas A&M encouraged students to work together to build skills and develop knowledge. The collaborative learning environment propelled everyone to new heights—Webb describes how students would share insights and help each other master the material, building relationships that shaped his career. This culture of support, combined with the department’s investment in professional development, enabled Webb to stand out in his field. Today, he teaches advanced methodology and international relations at KU and has become a leading scholar regarding time-series analysis in political science, recently authoring a Cambridge University Press book, A Practical Guide to Time Series Analysis.
Reflecting on his time at Texas A&M, Webb emphasizes how unique the department’s collaborative culture truly is. He credits the 12-month salary, research assistantships, and support for attending international workshops—like the ICPSR Summer Program—for accelerating his intellectual growth and connecting him to networks that shaped his career. “You don’t really understand how special Texas A&M is until you find out what other people’s graduate careers were like,” Webb notes. The department’s emphasis on mentorship and the science of social science, he says, not only launched his career but continues to influence his approach as a teacher and scholar. Webb encourages today’s graduate students to embrace the collaborative spirit and skill development that defined his experience at Aggieland.
In some sense, graduate students are extraordinarily unique in their ability to share the Aggie spirit in new places. The academic job market is very challenging, and students usually need to be exceptionally open to geographic diversity when considering their professional careers. “I was fortunate that my path brought me close to home in Kansas, though it might just as easily have led to Canada. Wherever I ended up, I was certain to carry the spirit of Aggieland with me.”
