Faculty Publications

Last month, the unclassified version of the Donald Trump administration’s Maritime Cybersecurity Plan was published to the White House website … and then summarily taken down, apparently relegated to the trash bin marked “last president’s stuff.”

All the U.S. military services suffer a shortage of competent and experienced cyber talent. But with a tiny pool of eligible candidates willing to do work for the Department of Defense, hiring programs need to rely on more than just patriotism to be successful. The most recent attempt to shore up cyber capabilities comes from the Marine Corps’ announcement that it will create a Cyber Auxiliary.

When militaries avoid making choices about new technologies, they often wind up with something like the “screw-sloop”: a hybrid solution that fails to take full advantage of either the old or the new technology. In the mid-1800s, many navies commissioned screw-sloops, which were warships with both steam propulsion and masts and rigging for sails.

In terms of gamification within political science, some fields-particularly international relations and American politics--have received more attention than others. One of the most underserved parts of the discipline is research methods; a course that, coincidentally, is frequently cited as one that instructors hate to teach and students hate to take.

Despite the existence of a large literature on the use and effectiveness of simulations as part of the active learning pedagogical toolbox, simulations have yet to achieve wide adoption rates among college instructors. One of the principal constraints is time: traditionally, most simulations require extensive time for the faculty to design, prepare, and use in the classroom setting.