Dean of the Presidential Fellows Program and Director of Education Projects
Alex Douville is currently Dean of the Center's Presidential Fellows Program, a year-long experience for 85 select graduate and undergraduate students from schools across the nation. In this capacity, he works with the Fellows Coordinator to manage two annual conferences during which these future leaders meet with journalists, Presidential scholars, and influential policy-makers. These duties include communicating with the participating colleges and universities throughout the year and advising them in the annual student selection process, as well as managing the program's budget and fundraising. Alex is also responsible for the development of a growing Fellows Alumni Association and edits the yearly anthology of the 20 best papers written by the Fellows on subjects relating to our Chief Executive.Alex is also the Center's Director of Education Projects for which he manages and coordinates the Center's projects that seek to educate and inform the nation's current and rising leaders about the need to include character and ethics in decision-making as well as how historical lessons of U.S. history can be applied to current challenges and to better understand U.S. domestic and international policies.
Until July 2008 Alex was Director of Policy Studies at the Center. In that capacity, Alex coordinated the Center's policy initiatives and works with project directors to ensure that each project adhered to Center strategy and mission. He led development and management of the Center's Agenda 2008 initiative, a series of working groups that addressed a number of critical strategic challenges facing the nation and the next President. Recommendations from these groups are now being compiled into a comprehensive net assessment and given to the President and Congress. As part of the Project on National Security Reform, a former Center-sponsored initiative that aims to restructure the national security process, Alex wrote a case study on the Iran-Contra affair that has been published in the book Mismanaging Mayhem: How Washington Responds to Crisis. Alex also worked on the Center's European Exchange Program and the Nuclear Defense Working Group.
Alex joined the Center in October 2004 as a Research Assistant to the Director of Homeland Security Projects. He coordinated each of the Center's homeland security initiatives, including projects on strengthening NATO's role in the global war on terror, enhancing a defense against the threat of smuggled nuclear weapons and weapons of mass effect, and examining the impacts of an overstretched Reserve and National Guard. In 2005, Alex became the Center's Strategic Planning Director and Special Assistant to the President. In that role he assisted Center President David Abshire in his research and speech writing. He also co-wrote and edited a Center brochure, and designed and edited the Center's 2005 publication, Maximizing NATO for the War on Terror.
From 2006-2009 Alex served as a Presidential Fellows Mentor. Each year he assisted two Fellows as they researched and wrote a paper on some aspect of the American Presidency.
Alex earned his B.A. in European History from Union College in 1997, and his M.A. in U.S. Military History from Temple University in 1999. He received the 1998-1999 U.S. Marine Corps' Masters Thesis Fellowship. His thesis on the Pacific War is included in the archives at the Marine Corps Historical Center in Quantico, VA.
Staff Contact
Please contact Alex Douville via
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