Alumni College 2015 speaker Donna Schlagheck

Donna M. Schlagheck, born in Cincinnati (1954), received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota (1985) and joined the faculty at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. Shortly thereafter, she began an ongoing relationship with the Defense Institute of Security Assistance Management (DISAM) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where she provided briefings on U.S. security policy and terrorist threats to officers taking up assignments in Europe and the Middle East. Dr. Schlagheck's interests in American foreign policy and international terrorism are also in demand in the community, where she served twice as President of the Dayton Council on World Affairs. Dr. Schlagheck has hosted a public affairs radio program through Wright State University, and is a frequent community speaker and author of articles in the local press.

Professor Schlagheck was promoted to the rank of Professor and served as Chair of the Department of Political Science before her retirement, where she led a successful effort to design a new graduate program in International Relations with emphases on peace and security policy. She was elected President of the University faculty, and helped lead a major strategic planning cycle. Her primary interests lie in teaching and researching the question of how democracies respond to terrorism. She regularly taught classes on International Terrorism and US Foreign Policy, and is one of the university's most honored teachers, having received the Alumni Award, the Distinguished Professor of Teaching Award, and the University Board of Trustees Award for Faculty Excellence. She led the WSU Model UN program that teaches students international diplomacy and conflict resolution, and her teams have received the top awards at the national conference throughout her 30 years of leadership.

Dr. Schlagheck's research and publishing on the question of terrorism preceded the growth of interest in the field. Her 1988 book INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM, was the first textbook on terrorism designed for classroom use, and was followed in 1989 by an article on Islamic Fundamentalism as the new ideological challenger to Western culture. Since then, she has continued to research and teach in this field, with particular interest in raising student and public awareness of the threat terrorism poses.

Her latest text on ISSUES IN AMERICAN POLITICAL LIFE, 5th ed., with Thobaben and Funderburk, unlike other political issues texts, has included a treatment of terrorism since its first edition published in 1991. Dr. Schlagheck's interest in terrorism was triggered in 1972 while she was studying in Antwerp, Belgium, during the terrorist attack on the Munich Olympic Games. While beginning work on her doctoral dissertation, her brother David, a USMC Capt. onboard the Tarawa, was dispatched to Beirut to assist in the rescue of US Marines killed in the first large scale terror attack on Americans abroad. Deepening public awareness of this threat continues to be a personal and professional goal for Dr. Schlagheck.