The Kozmetsky Center at St. Edward's University provides a forum for global dialogue and exchange of diverse perspectives among the academic, policy and private-sector communities-
On Monday evening November 12, the Kozmetsky Center will host a panel forum with U.S. military and academic nuclear subject area experts entitled “Safeguarding Nuclear Security.” Speakers will offer their assessments on managing the evolving nuclear threat to the United States and broader global community encompassing a broad range of issues including arms control and deterrence, nuclear proliferation (North Korea, Iran, others), effectiveness of alert systems, nuclear terrorism and more. Speakers include U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Christopher Coffelt, Deputy Director of Nuclear Operations, Global Operations Directorate, U.S. Strategic Command, Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska. General Coffelt is responsible for the overall USSTRATCOM nuclear mission. He directs the actions and alert status of the National Airborne Operations Center, the Global Operations Center, and the Airborne Command Post. As the lead for all USSTRATCOM nuclear matters, General Coffelt oversees the readiness of the strategic deterrent forces including bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles and ballistic missile submarines for the United States. General Coffelt is a career space and missile operations officer and served as the 36th Commandant of the United States Air Force Air War College, Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. He completed his undergraduate studies in aerospace engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder and holds an MA in Organizational Management from George Washington University. Other confirmed participating experts include Miles A. Pomper, Senior Fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and the former editor of Arms Control Today. Miles Pomper is the author of The Russian Nuclear Industry: Status and Prospects, published by the Centre for International Governance Innovation and he has written on South Korea's nuclear industry for the Korea Economic Institute and East Asia Forum. Distinguished participating faculty experts leading regional nuclear security academic programs include Dr. Craig Marianno, Professor, Department of Nuclear Engineering and Deputy Director of the Center for Nuclear Security Science and Policy Initiatives (NSSPI) at Texas A & M University and Dr. Alan J. Kuperman serving as Chair of the Graduate Studies Committee of the LBJ School’s Global Policy Studies program and founding Coordinator of the Nuclear Proliferation Project at the University of Texas, Austin. Professor Marianno holds a BS in Physics from the University of California, Davis and doctorate in Radiation Health Physics from Oregon State University. He has published in leading academic journals on topics related to nuclear counter terrorism, nuclear instrumentation development, radiological consequences of management and environmental health physics. Professor Kuperman is author of Nuclear Terrorism and Global Security: The Challenge of Phasing out Highly Enriched Uranium, Routledge, 2018. The evening program will include discussing graduate opportunities available at the regional Texas and wider national levels for students interested in pursuing professional careers contributing in the areas of nuclear security. This session will be held in cooperation with the Austin World Affairs Council from 7:00-9:30 PM in Jones Global Event Center. Speakers will also be meeting with students in select class seminar settings. The Kozmetsky Center will hold this forum in tribute to Bob Wilems, PhD (1963 St. Edward’s University graduate in physics) who dedicated his career to issues of nuclear security.
On Thursday September 27, the Kozmetsky Center will feature our first event for the 2018-2019 AY entitled “Understanding Exploitation of the Internet and Social Media in Promoting Violent Extremism and Terrorism.” presented by Dr. Maura Conway, Professor at Dublin City University in Ireland and Director of the European Union Framework Programme Network of Excellence in Violent Online Political Extremism, entitled VOX-Pol, launched in January 2014. The VOX-Pol project supports a consortium of universities funded by the European Union to promote research and collaboration toward bettering understanding the vulnerabilities of the cyber sphere to exploitation by terrorist and violent extremist networks. Professor Conway currently collaborates with a network of colleagues in Computer Science tracing extremist networks on Twitter and developing methods for analyzing violent online political extremist material. Dr. Conway has participated widely as a leading international expert speaker on the topic of terrorist exploitation of the internet including at the United Nations, the Commission of the European Union in Brussels, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London, the Irish Military College at the Curragh, the Danish Institute of International Affairs in Copenhagen, and elsewhere. Dr. Conway serves as an editorial board member for the journals Media, War, & Conflict and Irish Studies in International Affairs. In addition to her position as Vice-Chair of the International Affairs Committee of the Royal Irish Academy, she is a past-Chair (2011 – 2012) of the International Studies Association’s (ISA) International Communication Section. Prior to assuming her current faculty position at Dublin City University, Dr. Conway was a Teaching Fellow in the School of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and she has also been Visiting Professor in the Centre for Contemporary Middle East Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. Dr. Conway’s lecture, scheduled for 3:30-5:00 PM in the Carter Auditorium in the John Brooks Williams Natural Sciences Center, supports the Global Understanding Workshop devoted to the theme "Unraveling Global Terrorism” and is open to the campus community.
On Tuesday October 23, the Kozmetsky Center will host an evening lecture event session in the Jones Global Event Center at 7:00 PM-8:30 PM with Dr. Lourdes Casanova, Senior Lecturer and Director of the Center for Emerging Markets Institute (EMI), S. C. Johnson School of Management at Cornell University. Dr. Casanova specializes in international business with a focus on emerging market multinationals. She earned her MA degree as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Southern California and holds a PhD from the University of Barcelona. Dr. Casanova previously taught and directed executive programs for senior managers at INSEAD, one of the world's leading and largest graduate business schools with campuses in the Middle East, Europe and North America. Her major publications include Entrepreneurship and the Finance of Innovation in Emerging Markets, Elsevier, 2017, Emerging Market Multinationals Report 2016: The China Surge, The Political Economy of an Emerging Global Power: In Search of the Brazil Dream, Palgrave Macmillan 2014, Global Latinas: Latin America’s Emerging Multinationals, Palgrave Macmillan 2009, Innovalatino, Fostering Innovation in Latin America, Ariel 2011 as well as articles in leading journals including Beijing Business Review, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Business and Politics and Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica. Dr. Casanova is a regular contributor on global business issues to CNN en español, member of the Latin America Global Agenda Council, Competitiveness in Latin America taskforce of World Economic Forum, B20 Task Force on ICT and Innovation in G20 summit, Los Cabos (2012), and led the Goldman Sachs 10,000 women initiative at INSEAD. She was previously a Faculty Fellow at the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, Visiting Professor, Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, Latin American Centre, University of Oxford, University of Zurich, and Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. Consultant Inter-American Development Bank. In 2014 and 2015, Professor Casanova was recognized by Esglobal as one of the 50 most influential Iberoamerican intellectuals and in 2017 one of the 30 most influential Iberoamerican women intellectuals. Her lecture entitled “Global Emerging Markets: Challenges and Opportunities” will provide an introductory overview of regional opportunities and priority new investment areas throughout the world and identify prerequisites for successfully investing and conducting business projects among emerging markets. She will offer her perspective on the potential contributions of the private sector to fostering sustainable development, enhanced living standards, peace and prosperity through financial engagement among emerging markets spanning the world community. Finally, she will speak about educational and professional preparations and opportunities for students interested in international business and particularly emerging markets throughout the world community.
Please click here to see the Fall 2018 Council of Foreign Relations Conference Call Series.
These conference calls are open to all students; please RSVP to Alesondra Cruz [acruz9 [at] stedwards.edu] and Theresa Zelazny [theresab [at] stedwards.edu] if you would like to attend.