Dr. Wayne A. Schroeder is PhD Program Director and an Adjunct Professor at the Institute of World Politics. He has had a 47-year career in Washington, DC, with service in government, industry, public policy, the military, and higher education.  He has taught courses at both the graduate and undergraduate levels on such subjects as Defense Strategy, Planning and Budgeting; US Bilateral Security Agreements; American Foreign Policy; Theater Security Decision Making; International Organizations and Multilateral Diplomacy; International
Relations; and the Politics of Western Europe. 

Dr. Schroeder served as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Resource Planning/Management) in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) from 2001-2004, receiving the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service. He was also a Professional Staff Member for the US Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee (1981-86) under Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), with responsibilities for oversight of DoD research and development programs during the years of the Reagan defense buildup.  

Dr. Schroeder has published more than 30 articles on various defense and national security topics and has contributed to numerous trade, industry, and think tank studies. In 2023, he wrote a series of articles in Orbis on the US defense posture in the era of Great Power Competition. A Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council, he served as Project Director for its report, Moving Out: A Comprehensive Assessment of European Military Mobility (April 2020). He is currently working on National Security in the Nixon Era: Conflict and Diplomacy in the Cold War, a book to be published by the Naval Institute Press.

An H.B. Earhart Foundation Fellow, Dr. Schroeder received his Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of Southern California in 1981, specializing in Defense and Strategic Studies. He earned an M.A. in Political Science from Portland State University (1976) and a B.A. in Political Science (1974) from the University of Oregon.  Long committed to viewpoint diversity in higher education, Dr. Schroeder is a member of Heterodox Academy. He is also on the Board of Directors of Kele Global, an international non-governmental organization operating in Sudan, South Sudan, and East Africa that helps communities build locally driven solutions to current problems through a wide range of youth programs.