Rate My Professor Rebecca Patterson

Patterson earned an M.S. in Engineering Management from Missouri University of Science and Technology and a Ph.D. in National Security Policy from George Washington University. Her career includes roles as an economist in the World Bank's Independent Evaluation Group, Deputy Director of the Office of Peace Operations, Sanctions, and Counterterrorism at the U.S. Department of State, and Associate Professor at the National Defense University. She joined Georgetown in fall 2018 as Associate Director and Professor of the Practice before assuming her current directorship. She teaches Military Operations and Grand Strategy, Political Economy, and Peacekeeping. Her research interests encompass civil-military relations, nation-building, peacekeeping, and post-conflict economics. Notable publications are The Challenge of Nation-Building: Implementing Effective Innovation in the U.S. Army from World War II to the Iraq War (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014) and co-authored Winning Without Fighting: Irregular Warfare and Strategic Competition in the 21st Century (Cambria Press, 2024). A life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, she moderates public events and serves on the advisory board of the Georgetown Security Studies Review.