Due to public concern with undergraduate education and lack of government support for research, political science departments face important threats to viability. Scholars have proposed that the discipline respond by re-orienting itself to address publicly-acknowledged problems. I propose an alternative response: we should expand our service role, especially when we can engage undergraduates in providing public information. I have launched a web-based venture called the Michigan Policy Network, a student-led reporting and research program to report and organize information on Michigan state government. I describe the role of the network, propose similar ideas for extending the public reach of political science, and explain how the challenges facing the discipline look from a department at the state university in the state capital.