National Security Policy Capstone

The Capstone is a 2-unit course for the Master of National Security Policy that culminates in an individual or group project on a national security topic. Students will meet weekly over two quarters for sessions that focus on designing and scoping their project and communicating their research to various policy audiences in different formats. Once students determine their topic area of interest, they will be matched with a RAND subject matter expert mentor and will be given time during the weekly sessions to work collaboratively on their project with classmates and RAND mentors.

The course will also take advantage of expertise across RAND, offering short seminars on understanding each of the military services, national security topics in the news, how to interact with Capitol Hill in the policy space, how to write an op-ed or interact with the media, among many other topics, depending on student areas of interest. At the end of the course, students will be required to produce written and oral products related to their project.