A Foreign Mission 

Four SIS students took home first place—besting a record 28 teams from 18 states—in the annual Schuman Challenge, an academic competition hosted by the European Union Delegation to the United States that promotes dialogue around transatlantic policy issues.

This year’s competition challenged undergraduates to consider how the EU and US can more effectively engage the Latin America and Caribbean region on areas of shared priorities and common interest. 

AU’s policy brief—which they presented to a panel that included EU ambassador to the US Jovita Neliupšienė—proposed that enhancing satellite collaboration could help address shared goals on climate change, digital connectivity, infrastructure, and space security. 

“The win is a bonus, but it’s the quality of the work, the seriousness of the proposal, and the thoroughness they put into it that is really incredible to watch as faculty,” says SIS professor Garret Martin, who served as advisor with SIS professor Michelle Egan. “It’s the best of what you expect from students.” 

AU also won the inaugural Schuman Challenge in 2017.

Making Headlines

Among the scrum of reporters on the ground in New Hampshire ahead of the country’s first primary in late January were 25 Eagles—students in one of AU’s signature experiential learning courses.

Offered every four years, Presidential Primaries—cotaught by SPA’s Betsy Fischer Martin, SPA/BA ’92, SOC/MA ’96, executive director of the Women and Politics Institute, and SOC’s Molly O’Rourke and Lynne Perri—was inaugurated during the 2008 election. 

Now in its fifth cycle, the class immerses students in retail politics, giving them hands-on experience covering rallies, interpreting poll data, and filing stories. This trip marked the third time AU students—some of whom even landed bylines—collaborated with the Boston Globe, feeding the paper news snippets on election day. “There’s no better kind of career training,” O’Rourke says.

Eagle editor Abigail Turner, SOC-SPA/BA ’25, wore three pairs of pants to combat the frigid New Hampshire winter while interviewing voters. (O’Rourke had warned students to pack their long johns and energy bars.) Despite her frostbitten fingers, Turner—who met Nikki Haley twice—says the trip “confirmed that this is the work I want to do.” 

Fischer Martin says other Eagles have had similarly transformative experiences. “We’ve had alumni look back to this course as a monumental component of teaching them how to work on a campaign or write for newspapers.”

Check under the Hood

A pair of Teslas—the Model Y and Model 3 Long Range—raced to the top of the 2023 Kogod Made in America Auto Index with 87.5 percent total domestic content. In all, nine electric vehicles made the top 10.

Now in its 11th year, the searchable database of more than 500 models was created by international business professor Frank DuBois to help consumers determine the origin of their vehicles. 

“I want to start a conversation about what it means to buy an American product,” DuBois says. “I find it fascinating to investigate the sourcing strategies of global manufacturers and the interdependence of the global supply chain.” No car is made entirely in the USA—or Japan or Europe, he continues. “Like people, cars are a blend of DNA from everywhere.” 

Ratings are based on data required by the American Automotive Labeling Act and collected during on-site dealership visits, along with such factors as profit margin, labor, major component sourcing, the location of research and development activities, and inventory, capital, and other expenses.

Birds of a Feather

A team of 11 Eagles is helping middle schoolers spot fowl play online through a new bird-themed game featuring a fictional Twitter-esque platform. The Combatting Harmful Information and Resisting Pressures (CHIRP) Project was developed as part of Professor Cynthia Miller-Idriss’s Terrorism, Extremism, and Education course and tested in three classes at a private DC school.

“Rather than convincing kids to stay offline, we wanted to engage with what they’re doing and teach them how to be more productive and safer,” says Kyra Thordsen, SPA/BA ’24, of the game, which challenges kids aged 11–14 to determine the trustworthiness of bird-centric content.

The AU students worked closely with the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) to submit their project to Invent2Prevent, a nationwide competition sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security. This is the fourth AU team to participate in Invent2Prevent; in 2022, the university took first place, winning a $5,000 grant to implement their video, which teaches third graders to identify digital misinformation.

“We underestimate how much harmful content kids are exposed to all day, every day, online,” says Miller-Idriss, PERIL’s founding director, who holds a joint appointment in SPA and SOE. “They describe it to us as a steady stream of racist and sexist content—just ugly, violent stuff—and they don’t know who to talk to about it.”

All in on AI

Kogod announced in March that it’s weaving artificial intelligence into its entire curriculum to ensure Eagles are on the leading edge of business and technology.

This fall the school will debut more than 20 new and updated courses—a mix of offerings that immerse students in real-world applications of AI and explore the technology in a more abstract, theoretical way. Students will master prompt engineering and programming—essential AI concepts and tools—and gain experience with R, Python, and AI and machine learning models. They will also explore the inherent risks and ethical challenges underlying the technology.

“Artificial intelligence is here to stay, and business students need to be prepared to utilize applications for generative AI on day one of their future jobs,” Dean David Marchick says. “To prepare our students to enter the global marketplace, we are being aggressive and bold with our curriculum.”

Kogod’s rollout includes trainings for faculty and staff, new certificate programs for students, and campus events with executives across sectors—from marketing to finance to tech—in which AI is driving change. 

Fight Club

The Syrian Civil War has drawn tens of thousands of volunteer soldiers from around the globe and generated a wave of scholarship on foreign fighters—most of which is based on open sources and biographies. 

But a first-of-its-kind study by SPA professors Joe Young and David Malet offers new insights on foreign fighters’ motivations. Published in Terrorism and Political Violence, “Foreign Fighter Mobilization: YPG Volunteers in Their Own Words,” was coauthored with Joshua Farrell-Molloy, a doctoral student at Malmö University and a former infantryman with the Royal Irish Regiment, who traveled to Syria and Iraq in 2015 to fight for the Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG).

The paper features interviews with 15 volunteers from seven Western nations, many of them military veterans, who traveled at their own expense to join the Kurds in their conflict with the Islamic State. It marks the first time foreign fighters were both research subjects and partners in the work.

“We thought, ‘Wow, this is an amazing opportunity,’” says Young, who also holds an appointment in SIS. “We don’t have to speculate on why they joined, what they expected to find, why they were disgruntled, and why they came back. We can ask them.”

Most interviewees said the decision to join the fight was prompted by logistical considerations that enabled them to leave their home countries, like the end of a lease, or a humanitarian call to action triggered, for example, by ISIS execution films.