The threat of international terrorism in the wake of 9/11 prompted costly & controversial US military & stabilization efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Initially targeting terrorism, it expanded into regime change. Bush, Obama, & Trump administrations struggled to craft effective strategies, facing setbacks like ISIS & Taliban resurgence. What can we learn from this chapter in America¿s endeavor to counter terrorist and security threats abroad?

Designed for capstone project teams to meet in groups with advisors and clients to advance work on their projects. Capstone course is for MSDS students.

Experiential course where students work directly w/U.S. Dept. of Defense to address real-world nat'l security challenges, gaining problem-solving & prof. skills for any field. Through research, stakeholder interviews, & engagements w/outside experts, student teams develop policy recs for project sponsors' orgs. Recent project sponsors: US Strategic Command, Space Security & Defense Program, & Nat'l Ground Intelligence Center.

What are the most pressing policy problems facing Virginia and how can they be addressed? Students will learn how the broad historical forces of Virginia's past, her current political institutions, and changing social divisions shape public policy in Virginia today. Student projects will focus on current and future challenges facing the Commonwealth and develop strategies to address them.

This is an introductory course focusing on the "4Ps of marketing" from a marketing strategy perspective. It will encompass decisions regarding Product, Price, Promotion, and Place such that a firm's offerings meet a specific consumer need, demand, or want. This includes a strong consideration of consumer psychology and consumer behavior. This course will address the key questions a marketer must consider for its offerings to be successful.

This course moves beyond the traditional economic approach to public policy and explores the role of psychological analysis. Decision-making is not always rational, but involves various cognitive biases that can result in mistrust and prejudice, preference for avoidance of loss rather than maximization of gain, and overweighting of short-term outcomes.

Social entrepreneurship is an approach to creating system-level change through the application of entrepreneurial thinking to social ventures, non-profit organizations, government institutions, and NGOs to create economic, environmental, and social value for multiple stakeholders. In this course you will be introduced to a range of entrepreneurial approaches aimed at solving social problems - from the non-profit to the for-profit.

Course provides an introduction to leadership in the public arena. Through course readings, team projects, and discussion of case studies, students will develop skill at identifying the resources, options, and constraints of leaders and followers in different organizational and political settings, writing policy memos, making professional policy presentations, developing negotiation strategies, managing uncertainty and stress, & working in teams.

This course guides graduate students to communicate their research to non-technical audiences such as the public, the media, scholars in other fields, and policymakers. Topics include audience analysis, message design, managing jargon, and presentation skills. Lectures will introduce key topics which will be practiced in discussion sections. The course is most effective if you have an active research focus.

This course will introduce the latest practices and technologies for managing big data. It will first compare and contrast big data to relational data in both operational and analytical data systems. It will then explore modern technologies (e.g., Spark and NoSQL), cloud computing (e.g., AWS), and reference architectures for retrieving, storing, integrating and analyzing big data. Finally, it will demonstrate big-data-enabled AI applications.