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an idea

The eight students might be interested in spending a few hours talking with RAND researchers about a real problem. Here's my idea: I pose one or two real problems so that a team of students (maybe one team of eight or two teams of four) can do some advanced research. Then they present their findings to us, and we talk about them: what are the good points? What are the ambiguous points? What's left to be done?

Here's an example I'm thinking about, so you get the idea:

- The latest CSI/FBI (Computer Security Institute/FBI) survey suggests that insider threat has exceeded viruses as the biggest corporate concern. We want to find out the nature of the insider threat. What do we mean by "insider" and "insider threat"? What does a typical insider look like? What kinds of insider behaviors are we interested in? How would we tell if someone were about to do something inappropriate? How much is lost to insider attacks in a given year? What kinds of insider attacks are the most costly? The most common?

We could have the students meet with us in our open area, so that they have Internet access. Then as they present their findings and we question them, they can go online to get supplemental materials to support their cases or refute ours.

It would be a good study in research methods, and especially in how to question one's own research, how to determine if a source is credible, and so on. We could even have our librarian participate, and she can help the students understand that the Web is not the only source of information -- and that much of the information on the web is not very trustworthy.

getting there

We are right at the Pentagon City metro stop -- literally atop the station. That is on the blue and yellow lines. So you have three choices:

- If you take the VRE, you can get off at Crystal City and walk about 15 minutes to our building. - Or you can take the VRE and alight at Alexandria. You walk around the block to the King Street metro and take the metro to Pentagon City -- just a few stops. - If you take a van to Springfield, you can take the metro (blue line) from there to Pentagon City.

Or you can just drive all the way. There is a parking garage for the Pentagon City mall just behind our building.

My vote would be to take VRE, though; it's good practice for when students have jobs and have to get up on time for work, and it helps them understand how nice public transport can be.