(September 22). Every semester, educators spend time developing lectures and discussions. Most of that work reaches a single audience during a single term and is rarely used beyond its original setting. Recent advances in video production technology and artificial intelligence have lowered the barriers to recording and sharing educational content, allowing instructors to extend the reach and lifespan of what they already teach.

This practical course introduces participants to the process of turning classroom instruction into educational video content. Topics include basic recording strategies, camera and audio considerations, simple production workflows, editing tools, video hosting platforms, and publishing practices. Participants will also explore how AI can support content creation by generating titles, descriptions, transcripts, keywords, and search engine optimization (SEO) recommendations.

The course emphasizes practical approaches that can be implemented with basic equipment and limited technical expertise. Rather than focusing on professional studio production, the session examines how instructors can capture lectures, presentations, and educational demonstrations efficiently and make them available to broader audiences.

By the end of the session, participants will understand a complete workflow for creating educational video content, from recording and production to publishing and distribution. The goal is not to turn educators into full-time content creators, but to help them preserve valuable instructional material and extend the impact of their expertise beyond a single classroom or semester.

(August 24). In this course, participants will be introduced to analyzing text data in RStudio. Preya will discuss topics like cleaning text data, analyzing the importance of a term (tf-idf), testing for correlations, Markov Chain links, network analysis, and text data visualization. She will also demonstrate how to apply RStudio to analyze text data.

(May 28). This course offers professional development training for scholars of international affairs seeking to conduct more public or policy engagement. It brings together the core content of two longer-form, well-established professional development programs: the International Policy Summer Institute, a curriculum for international affairs scholars who want to build the tools and networks to produce and disseminate policy-relevant academic research; and the Responsible Public Engagement Initiative, which addresses challenges around direct engagement with policy actors at various stages of the research and dissemination process.

It also draws on the innovative work of the Research on International Policy Implementation Lab, a leader in efforts to co-create knowledge through partnerships between scholars and practitioners. The course will cover the value of conducting public and policy engagement, how to co-create knowledge through partnerships between scholars and practitioners, and how to conduct public and policy engagement ethically and responsibly.

(April 16). AI as Research Ally is a practical seminar designed for graduate students, early-career researchers, faculty, and academic librarians, focused on the critical, responsible application of AI within the research lifecycle.

The session begins by categorizing AI tools based on their functional utility, from literature discovery and summarization to data coding and manuscript revision. Rather than treating AI as a monolithic, universal solution, participants will evaluate specific tasks where these technologies provide measurable support and identify areas where human oversight remains indispensable.

Participants will also examine the ethical implications of AI use, including risks related to algorithmic bias, data privacy, and the phenomenon of ""hallucinations."" Crucially, the session clarifies the distinction between acknowledging AI as a functional assistant and formally citing it as a source, as well as practices for ensuring compliance with shifting journal and institutional policies.

For those in teaching roles, the seminar offers strategies for syllabus design and classroom management. We will discuss how to move toward a model of transparency, fostering academic integrity by teaching students to use AI critically and methodologically.

The session concludes with an active learning lab. Participants will work in small groups to apply these tools to concrete scholarly tasks while establishing practical ""rules of thumb"" for their specific tools and disciplines. Attendees will leave with a grounded understanding of how to maintain the human-centered nature of research while utilizing AI as a supportive resource.

(April 6). Gen AI tools are rapidly expanding, and many academics are struggling to keep up with what tools are out there and how to use them effectively. This AI Crash Course is a faculty introduction to basic AI literacy. We will walk attendees through how and why to use some of these new tools, such as Chat GPT, Elicit, Scite_, Perplexity, NotebookLM and others.

We will look at how to identify student use of AI and how to respond; how to use these tools as a research and teaching assistant; how to create a custom chatbot to act as a tutor or TA for your students; how to reduce time spent on administrative tasks; and share examples of prompts and classroom activities that allow for resilience against unwanted AI use, as well as those that encourage AI use to teach AI literacy alongside disciplinary content.

Most importantly, we will discuss the impact of using AI, its limitations, and why AI literacy is an essential skill moving forward. Attendees will leave with greater knowledge of AI tools, practical tips on using them, and many techniques they can employ immediately.

(February 24). In this session, participants will learn how to use AI to develop simulations for the classroom. Active learning is important for connecting students to written material and lectures, but designing creative, engaging simulations is time consuming and can increase instructor frustration. AI is an efficient and helpful tool for creating the specific classroom simulations you want without the stress of remaking the wheel. Attendees will actively follow along with the session, learning how to create AI prompts for simulations as well as how to craft the activities to meet your needs. We will also go over some pros and cons to this approach as well as some tips for applying the simulations in your classes. We will primarily use the free version of Chat GPT but I will also show you some examples using Google's Gemini and Claude AI.

(February 9). The competition for access to and use of space is intensifying, bringing new actors, unprecedented dual-use technologies, and trends towards space weaponization that intersect with all emerging and disruptive technologies (EDTs) – cyber, quantum, robotics, AI, and nuclear. This two- hour professional development course focuses on the evolution of space security, and specifically the challenges practitioners face in navigating the new dynamics of outer space affairs. Participants will acquire state-of-the-art knowledge, build cross-national and international organizational awareness, and learn to develop diplomatic response options under time pressure through a series of guided mini-table top exercises (TTX) inspired by real-world incidents.

(January 6). In this session, participants will explore strategies for designing AI-resistant assignments. These assignments are carefully crafted to significantly reduce, and in some cases entirely prevent, students from using AI tools to earn high grades without genuine effort. By minimizing the potential for AI to complete tasks on behalf of students, these approaches ensure that academic integrity is upheld. Furthermore, they alleviate the need for instructors to act as "AI investigators," removing the burden of determining whether AI was involved in the completion of student work.

(October 9 and 10). What is a Research Presentation? Simple, it is an oral presentation that displays your research. The problem is that you have spent all of your time thinking and expressing your research in a medium other than the oral form of communication. Although the underlying ideas you wish to convey are largely the same, the medium in which you are now asked to express them is profoundly different.

The primary challenge in crafting a research talk, then, is this: How do I translate my research from one mode of communication to another? This is precisely the question this workshop seeks to answer, and it does so by drawing on storytelling as the central translating device. This workshop is designed to offer you, first and foremost, a general framework on how to think about the research presentation as storytelling.

Our journey will take us through such questions as: What is storytelling? What makes storytelling so compelling? How can it be used in the context of research presentations? Alongside answering these deeper questions, the workshop will also walk through a portion of an actual presentation to demonstrate the principles of storytelling when applied to research.

On the second day, participants will be afforded the opportunity to start crafting their own research presentation in the form of storytelling. While this workshop is primarily geared toward participants who work on their research projects, it can also benefit those who want to learn more about storytelling and hone their presentation and oral communication skills.

(October 1). Many graduate students and professors have a “sink or swim” experience transitioning to teaching larger/lecture classes and giving job talks or conference papers. Most never took public speaking, nor learned elements of effective vocal, nonverbal, or visual communication. Sadly, these deficiencies in delivery can overshadow subject matter expertise and sound scholarship in public speaking contexts, costing credibility.

As a political scientist turned Professor of Applied Communication at Army War College, Dr. Abram Trosky helps senior civilian and military leaders from eighty countries improve their speaking skills and evolve their presentations to complement their message, broaden their audience, and deepen their impact. Tailoring material from his Public Speaking for International Strategic Leaders, Art & Science of Effective Communication, and Online Presence & Publication for Strategic Leaders classes, he shares insights, strategies, and material from classical rhetoric, cognitive psychology, data storytelling, data visualization, and design thinking.

Participants will learn how to implement these principles and practices in the preparation and execution of online, PowerPoint, and extemporaneous presentations, and will have the opportunity to share their slides or recordings in advance for critique.

(June 9). “What is the best way to collect and retain information and build knowledge during one's academic career and life?”

This is a quintessential question and challenge for anyone whose work relies on creating, organizing, and using vast amounts of information. As international relations scholars, we accumulate notes while preparing for PhD qualifying exams, keeping track of our research ideas, drafting papers, and creating syllabi. Often, these notes are spread across different media, from post-its and physical notebooks to Word documents and citation software, and we may not be able to find them in the moment when they would be most helpful. This workshop suggests a philosophy for a central system of note-taking and demonstrates a technical implementation using the software Scrivener. This session will review how to use Scrivener to manage information in a way that allows researchers to focus on what matters most: creating new insights and knowledge for others.

(May 29). Visual presentations are a key vehicle to inform and convince others. Scholars present their research at conferences, and instructors present ideas in the classroom. In creating their visual presentations, most people need to rely on their taste or on pre-manufactured templates. Few people have had the opportunity to acquire the specific knowledge and skills to make presentations visually impactful, look professional, or just aesthetically pleasing. Participants will learn about fundamental design principles — such as contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity — and branding principles, such as consistency. They will also discover the century-old craft of typography that underlies all professional visual communication, learning about the difference between typefaces and fonts and suitable combinations of typefaces. Participants will learn about master and layout slides, which make it easy to reuse designs and ensure consistency across slides. After attending this workshop, scholars will have insights to create professional presentations that effectively capture attention and distinguish them from their peers.

(January 18). Navigating the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in higher education can feel like exploring uncharted waters. However, leveraging the technology and integrating it into the learning process can enhance critical thinking, problem solving, and technological skills. This session will share a brief overview of AI tools available for the higher education classroom and their uses.

(January 16). This workshop will introduce simulation models for engaging students of International Studies. These models employ different scenarios, assign roles to students, and organize negotiation sessions for various purposes, namely conflict resolution, intergovernmental dynamics and policy making, NGOs project design and implementation, counterterrorism, and counterstrategies design.

Students will learn how to adapt simulation models to different student populations, including undergraduate and postgraduate, even in highly multicultural communities. Each model can be modified, depending on the topic, the sensitivity, the length of the course, and can be turned into virtual or hybrid.

(January 10). We constantly see scholars being asked to contribute to certain news outlets or media portals. They do so through either ready-made pieces, which editors hate, or through long-winded interviews that are seldom accessible to the audience because of jargon and academic prose.

Instead, we would like scholars, who produce excellent research and have come to be the foremost experts on niche topics to be read and heard more widely, while still maintaining a rigor that helps bolster their public profiles.

The training will span three hours and tackle several aspects of the scholarly relationship to a wider audience, through mainstream and specialized media.

The objectives of the training are to familiarize scholars with journalistic practices, editorial policies, and potential pitfalls of speaking to the media; as well as to prepare scholars to know better their media outlets, pitch the right stories, and - if the media allows - get paid.