Dr. Marybeth P. Ulrich is the distinguished visiting professor of Political Science at the US Air Force Academy. She is visiting from the US Army War College where she is the professor of government in the department of national security and strategy. Dr. Ulrich is a distinguished graduate of the US Air Force Academy, where she earned a BS in international affairs in 1984. She earned her PhD in Political Science from the University of Illinois in 1996. She served 34 years in the Air Force, retiring at the rank of Colonel. She logged more than 1900 hours in Strategic Air Command as a navigator, instructor navigator, and standardization and evaluation navigator on KC-135Q refueling planes. She also completed reserve assignments with the Undersecretary of the Air Force for International Affairs (SAF/IA) and served in the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) reserve attaché program with assignments in Prague, Moscow, and Athens.
Her research interests are focused on strategic studies with a special emphasis on civil-military relations, grand strategy, and national security democratization issues. She has more than 50 publications including her book, Democratizing Communist Militaries: The Cases of the Czech and Russian Armed Forces, (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999.) She is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and an Adjunct Fellow at the Modern War Institute. A native of Chicago, Dr. Ulrich is married to Mark Ulrich.