Our Learning Objectives

Missouri State University’s School of Defense and Strategic Studies (DSS) is dedicated to ensuring the successful accomplishment of five key learning objectives for all students:  

1. Subject Matter Expertise. We seek to make students experts in their field: skilled national security professionals who are valued by their colleagues and superiors for their evidence-based and historically-informed policy insights, background knowledge and command of decisional context, and command of the conceptual and theoretical terrain on which national security policymaking takes place.
2. Critical Thinking. We seek to make our students effective critical thinkers: skilled at discerning and systematically evaluating key trends and dynamics affecting the national security environment, identifying and interrogating explicit and tacit assumptions, assessing the risks and opportunities inherent in alternative courses of action–including possible second- and third-order effects–and applying wisdom and rigorous reasoning to the solution of policy dilemmas.
3. Clear and Effective Communication. We seek to make our students effective communicators: able to convey analytical conclusions and policy recommendations–as well as the bases for such conclusions and recommendations–with concision and clarity to a wide variety of audiences, both in person and in writing.
4. Capacity to Expand Knowledge. We seek to equip our students to be lifelong learners in their field: national security professionals committed to continually upgrading their knowledge and experiential base, possessing exceptional situational awareness in the policy community, and able on an ongoing basis to undertake complex fact-finding, research and analytical tasks to bring up-to-date knowledge and historical context into their work.
5. Dedication to Realistic and Effective Answers. We seek to make our students into sharp-eyed and sober analysts, scholars and decision-makers: experts rather than just “wishers,” who are devoted to finding and implementing effective solutions to national security challenges, aware of the complex interdependencies and Clausewitzian “friction” involved in bringing visions into reality, and embracing the challenge of making sound security policy in the world as it is rather than merely as we would wish it to be.

The breadth and intensity of the studies and work undertaken by students will vary across DSS’ academic programs, of course, depending upon whether a student is in a graduate certificate program, master’s degree program, or the DSS professional doctorate. Nevertheless, these key learning objectives remain valid throughout.