Can Students Solve Real-World Security Crises? Inside the ISE Global Strategy Competition

Episode 120 of the At The Boundary podcast, hosted by Global and National Security Institute, titled "Can Students Solve Real-World Security Crises? Inside the ISE Global Strategy Competition" was published on March 2, 2026 and runs 40 minutes.

March 2, 2026 ·40m · At The Boundary

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Summary

Text the ATB Team! We'd love to hear from you! In this episode of GNSI’s At the Boundary podcast, GNSI’s Academic Director, Dr. David Oakley, is joined by the U.S. Army War College’s Chair of Executive and Strategic Leadership, Dr. Celestino Perez, to discuss GNSI’s upcoming undergraduate strategy competition during April’s International Security Experience. Perez, who developed the Army War College strategy competition, worked with Oakley to plan the ISE’s strategy competition for undergrad...

Episode Description

Text the ATB Team! We'd love to hear from you!

In this episode of GNSI’s At the Boundary podcast, GNSI’s Academic Director, Dr. David Oakley, is joined by the U.S. Army War College’s Chair of Executive and Strategic Leadership, Dr. Celestino Perez, to discuss GNSI’s upcoming undergraduate strategy competition during April’s International Security Experience.

Perez, who developed the Army War College strategy competition, worked with Oakley to plan the ISE’s strategy competition for undergraduate students from USF and other universities around the country and globe, most of whom do not have military backgrounds. Perez and Oakley discuss the merits of this experiential learning exercise in solving strategic problems, as well as Perez’s mantra for strategy competitions: “Strategy is performance.”

They emphasize the importance of teamwork in crafting successful strategies and discuss how classroom environments can foster better strategic thinking among students. During the competition, teams made up of six students each will develop a strategic response based on a prompt, and then each team’s strategy will be judged, and one team will ultimately win the competition.

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At the Boundary from the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida, features global and national security issues we’ve found to be insightful, intriguing, fascinating, maybe controversial, but overall just worth talking about.

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