past work has shown that discretizing dynamical systems in a structure-preserving way can improve upon the performance of numerical methods constructed using more traditional approaches.  we aim to show that the maxwell-vlasov system of equations, which models plasma dynamics, is amenable to such a structure-preserving approach.  in particular, we will appeal to results obtained for compressible fluids and electromagnetic fields in our treatment of maxwell-vlasov, while discussing obstacles unique to that system.