Curriculum Materials

The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism emphasizes the importance of translating its investigators' cutting-edge research on terrorism and responses to terrorism into increased education and training opportunities. As part of this effort, START sponsors the development of curriculum materials for use in classrooms across the consortium.

The curriculum materials are freely available to interested instructors, and the materials for each completed unit can be requested by emailing education@start.umd.edu.

These curriculum units reflect START's educational priorities, including:

• Presentation of cutting-edge START research;
• Interactivity and novel approaches to teaching;
• Interdisciplinarity, with the goal of challenging students to engage in critical, cross-disciplinary discourse;
• Scalability to different education levels (e.g., K-12, undergraduate, graduate, executive education); and
• Immediacy and impact, with a focus on attention to problems and issues of immediate relevance to national and international policy.

Available Curriculum Units

Christine Bevc, PhD Student, Department of Sociology, University of Colorado
"Networks and Preparedness"

This curriculum unit introduces students at the undergraduate, graduate, and executive education levels to the methods of social network analysis (SNA) and its application to the study of community preparedness.

Bidisha Biswas, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Western Washington University
"Online Simulation Modeled on November 2008 Mumbai Attacks"

This curriculum unit consists of a simulation which can be used with secondary school, undergraduate, graduate, and executive level students. The simulation divides students into teams representing the governments of India, Pakistan, the United States, and Afghanistan, as well as the United Nations and the Pakistani Army. Teams are required to negotiate steps to respond to a series of terrorist attacks on India's capital, New Delhi.

Shawn Flanigan, Assistant Professor, Department of Public Administration, San Diego State University
"Conducting Field Research Outside the United States and in Difficult-to-Access Communities"

This curriculum unit introduces students at the secondary school, undergraduate, graduate, and executive levels to the practice of academic fieldwork, including data collection tools such as interview protocols and surveys, specifically in reference to work with low-income and otherwise vulnerable populations.

Jeffrey Lewis, Lecturer, Department of History, The Ohio State University
"Engaging and Countering the Social and Cultural Mechanisms Used by Organizations to Motivate Suicide Attackers"

This curriculum unit aims to introduce undergraduate, graduate, and executive level students to an understanding of suicide bombing as a complex social phenomenon.

Katherine Izsak, Education Director, START, University of Maryland
Tim Wedig, Former Simulation Developer, International Conflict and Negotiation (ICONS) Project, University of Maryland
"Terrorism and International Negotiations in Kurdistan"

This curriculum unit consists of a simulation which can be used with secondary school, undergraduate, graduate, and executive level students. The simulation divides students into third-party negotiator roles in response to a series of terrorist attacks and violent counter strikes along the border of Turkey and Iraq.

Christine Muller, PhD Student, American Studies, University of Maryland
"What Can Oral Histories Tell Us About September 11?"

This curriculum unit seeks to introduce secondary school and undergraduate students to the production of September 11, 2001, as history. The unit focuses on oral accounts and video news reporting of the World Trade Center attacks and asks students to conduct a critical analysis of oral histories.

Coming Soon

Anthony Lemieux
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Purchase College, SUNY "Modular Approach to Radicalization and Terrorist Motivations"

This three-part curriculum unit will focus on terrorist motivations and radicalization. The first element of the unit will provide an overview presentation on terrorist motivations that emphasize different levels of analysis (individual, group, societal, and structural levels). The second element of the curriculum unit will provide a very basic overview of research methods, with a particular emphasis on the use (and potential limitations) of experimental methods. The third element will discuss findings from Lemieux's START-funded, experimental research on the impact of risk, grievance, personality factors, and intergroup images on an individual's likelihood to support and/or engage in terrorism.

Brian Nussbaum
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Bridgewater State University "Risk Management and Analytic Techniques"

This curriculum unit is designed to introduce students (or officials/officers) to Terrorism Risk and thinking about Terrorism Risk in a systematic way. It does this by examining concepts of risk and the constituent parts of risk--threat, vulnerability and consequence--in terms of terrorism. Using both presentations and assessment activities, it helps prepare students to conduct terrorism threat and risk assessments at several levels of analysis; including general assessments, jurisdiction specific assessments (state, city), and even basic facility threat assessments. The unit is designed to provide students with the knowledge base, tools, and some suggested publicly-available data sources, so that they can systematically and accurately assess the risk of terrorism.

Please direct questions to education@start.umd.edu.

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