Professor Todd Sechser awarded 2026 All-University

Sechser is recognized for bringing nuclear strategy and foreign policy to life through role-playing assignments, classroom simulations, and original research projects.

When Professor Todd Sechser hands out the centerpiece assignment of his nuclear politics course, his students discover that they are now a member of the National Security Council in Jerusalem, Seoul, Moscow, or Beijing -- and that they have been asked to consider some of most consequential decisions a government can make. Should Israel end fifty years of nuclear ambiguity and openly declare its arsenal? Should South Korea build a clandestine bomb? Should China negotiate a sweeping arms control pact with Washington? When his students convene the following week, they learn at the door whether they have been assigned to defend one of these positions -- or dismantle it. Each student must walk in prepared to do either.

This kind of immersive classroom activity is part of why the University of Virginia professor of politics has been named a recipient of the 2026 All-University Teaching Award, UVA’s highest honor for teaching.

Presented annually, the award celebrates faculty members who demonstrate excellence and creativity in the classroom, a deep commitment to student learning, and meaningful contributions to their respective fields. Awardees are selected based on evidence of effective teaching, innovation, dedication to students, and continued efforts to grow as educators. Sechser was this year’s only winner from the College of Arts and Sciences.

Sechser, who also serves as Senior Fellow at the Miller Center and previously directed the Karsh Institute’s Democratic Statecraft Lab, has spent two decades bringing abstract concepts to life for undergraduate audiences. His signature course, International Politics in the Nuclear Age, covers topics ranging from the physics of nuclear fission to the fine points of nuclear strategy. He builds the course around a series of structured exercises that turn the theoretical concepts on the syllabus into hypotheses that his 240 students can test in real-time. A “Nuclear Brinkmanship” contest, for example, gives students a visceral feel for how danger, emotion, and unintended consequences shape nuclear diplomacy. A classroom experiment about the wartime use of nuclear weapons illustrates the complex dynamics of national security decision-making. And his syllabus regularly includes guest speakers with extensive experience in the policy world, including a former commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, high-level State Department officials, and think-tank scholars.

“The reality is that the most important questions in nuclear security don’t have settled answers. But the technical jargon and complexity of nuclear debates sometimes intimidates people from contributing their own ideas,” Sechser said. “My goal is to equip students with the analytical tools, language, and confidence to make up their own minds. In my classes, nobody’s views are immune to scrutiny -- least of all my own.”

In addition, Sechser directs the Politics Honors Program, which ushers six elite students per year through an intensive program of specialized seminars and a senior thesis. Alumni of the program regularly earn nationally competitive awards -- such as the Rhodes, Truman, and Marshall Scholarships -- and earn admission to top graduate programs in law, business, and other fields.

“The Politics Honors program is UVA’s ‘top gun,’” Sechser told UVA Today. “These students are the best of the best. And we put them through a course of study as rigorous and intensive as anything available at the University.”

In Sechser’s Honors seminar last fall, he and Politics Department chair Jennifer Lawless organized a large-scale Election Day survey in Charlottesville to teach principles of research design. The six Honors students spent the semester designing original survey experiments testing theories of foreign policy, voter behavior, and racial attitudes. Then on November 4, more than 100 UVA undergraduates fanned out across Charlottesville’s nine voting precincts with clipboards and paper surveys, ultimately collecting 3,500 responses. The experiments explored topics ranging from the factors that shape voter turnout, to Americans’ views on military aid to Ukraine.

Sechser’s pedagogical reach extends beyond his own classroom in other ways as well. He developed a three-day arms control simulation in which students role-play as ambassadors negotiating an imaginary nuclear crisis -- an activity he has helped colleagues adapt at Columbia, Duke, and Dartmouth. He helped develop teaching materials for a widely-used international relations textbook, and he has written chapters for undergraduate-focused research volumes. Over the course of his career, he has served on dozens of Ph.D. dissertation committees and advised a steady stream of undergraduate theses across the Politics Honors, Distinguished Majors, and Politics, Philosophy, and Law programs.

According to Lawless, who has taught with Sechser, “Todd is an extraordinary teacher whose courses consistently change how students think about politics, evidence, and the real-world consequences of political decisions. His teaching does not merely transmit knowledge; it trains students to reason carefully, argue persuasively, and approach complex political problems with analytical discipline and intellectual humility.”

This is not Sechser’s first major teaching recognition. He was an inaugural recipient of UVA’s Cory Family Teaching Award in 2013 and received a Mead Endowment Faculty Award in 2014. His teaching has been supported by competitive grants from the Stanton Foundation, the Mead Endowment, and the Jack E. Harper Endowment for Public Service.