Homeland security, by the book

In addition to carrying out Homeland Security research, colleges and universities are offering more courses, degrees and certificates in emergency management and Homeland Security than ever

The national security load shifted four years ago. Following Sept. 11, 2001, national security became an internal issue, for which the civilian sector, not the military, assumed direct responsibility.

Police commissioners, fire chiefs, public health officials, emergency managers, civil engineers and architects are now expected to confront, mitigate and manage any number of extreme, unanticipated threats that five years ago would have been considered bizarre: airliners flying into skyscrapers, anthrax wafting out of mail, rush-hour subway trains exploding. No one knows when or where the next shoe will drop or what sort of new horror will spill out.

New dangers require a new educational paradigm, and the revolution is under way. Homeland Security and emergency management have rapidly developed into specific vocations with greater relevance than ever before.

Without federal guidance or mandate, the U.S. academic community responded to the Sept. 11 attacks with a flood of Homeland Security course offerings and degree programs, though there seEMS to be no agreement on what to call the new curricula.

First Class
The University of North Carolina calls it Disaster Management, but elsewhere it’s Emergency Management or Hazards Risk Management (George Washington University), Hazards Management (University of Colorado–Denver), Emergency and Disaster Management (Upper Iowa University, American Public University), Homeland Security (Naval Postgraduate School), Emergency Management and Organizational Continuity (Boston University), Emergency Management and Business Continuity (Norwich University), Public Safety Management (St. Edward’s University), or Comprehensive Vulnerability Management (University of North Texas).

Program names notwitHStanding, students at a growing number of the nation’s colleges and universities will now find listings in their course catalogs for classes in Terrorism Today, Hostage Negotiations, Cyber Weapons, and Technology in a Dangerous World.

-- Along with Western Civilization 101, Drexel University students can enroll in EMS 631: Disaster Analysis and Management.

-- Grantham University offers courses in the Psychology of Terrorism, Forecasting Terrorism, and Border and Coastal Security.

-- Engineering students at Johns Hopkins University can study Cryptography and Information Security, Medical Sensors and Devices, and Biochemical Sensor Systems.

-- Louisiana State University provides instruction in Critical Incident Management and Explosive Incident Countermeasures.

High Marks
The federal Homeland Security machine finally engaged higher education early in 2005. Through the Homeland Security Centers of Excellence program (HS-Centers), DHS enlisted the academic community to focus on a variety of threats that include agricultural, chemical, biological, nuclear and radiological, explosive, and cyber terrorism, as well as the behavioral aspects of terrorism. (­www.DHS.gov/DHSpublic/display?content=3856)

DHS selected the University of Southern California (partnering with the University of Wisconsin, New York University, North Carolina State, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell and others) to house the first HS-Center, known as the Homeland Security Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events. DHS is providing $12 million seed money over three years for the study of risk analysis related to the economic consequences of terrorist threats and events.

Also, Texas A&M University and its partners (the University of Texas Medical Branch, University of California at Davis, USC and Maryland) have been awarded $18 million over three years for a National Center for Foreign Animal and Zoonotic Disease Defense, designed to address potential threats to animal agriculture including foot-and-mouth disease, Rift Valley fever, avian influenza and brucellosis. The foot-and-mouth disease research will be conducted in close collaboration with Homeland Security’s Plum Island Animal Disease Center.

The University of Minnesota and its partners have been awarded a three-year $15 million grant for an HS-Center for Food Protection and Defense, which will address agro-security issues related to post-harvest food protection. Minnesota’s team includes Michigan State, Wisconsin, North Dakota State, Georgia Tech, Rutgers, Harvard, Tennessee, Cornell, Purdue and North Carolina State, as well as major food companies, each of which contributes particular expertise.

Michigan State’s role, for instance, is education coordination, the principal goal of which is to reduce duplication of effort among the tremendous growth of homeland protection programs in higher education.

“In August we launched ­www.FoodProtectionEducation.org, intended to be a compendium of all available Homeland Security training and education courses in the U.S.,” says Trent Wakenight, education coordinator for Michigan State’s new National Food Safety & Toxicology Center.

The site covers many facets of Homeland Security education, with emphasis on food protection.

“We’re attempting to create a food protection learning community, bringing together multiple government, industry and academic partners to conduct an education needs assessment: what do specific audiences need in terms of education and training, and how can we best meet those needs,” Wakenight says.

The mobilization of higher education is not restricted to elite four-year institutions and well-funded HS-Centers. Two-year associate of arts degrees in emergency management are available at 30 community colleges.

One, Monroe Community College in Rochester, N.Y., which once trained all officers from the Rochester Police Department in its Public Safety Training Center, is now prepared to instruct first responders nationwide through online courses under its Homeland Security Management Institute, which also offers conferences for corporate executives and community leaders, as well as community response training for private citizens.

Making the Grade
The astonishing growth of homeland protection programs in academia moved fema to establish a roster to track who’s doing what. ­(http://training.fema.gov/emiweb/edu/) Currently, at least 104 U.S. colleges and universities offer one or more such classes, 41 with certificate tracks, 36 leading to bachelor-level degrees, 32 have master’s degree programs, and doctoral degrees can be earned at seven schools: George Washington, Georgia State, lsu, North Dakota State, Oklahoma State, Texas A&M and Delaware.

Some institutions offer several levels of instruction. At George Washington, individuals already engaged in or students seeking professional careers in crisis, disaster and emergency management in the public or private sectors can work toward a graduate certificate in Homeland Security Emergency Preparedness and Response, or a Master of Science or Doctor of Science degree in Engineering Management with a concentration in Crisis, Emergency and Risk Management.

The education revolution doesn’t stop at emergency management. The nation’s first nursing program specializing in mass casualties was established at the University of Tennessee. Under a $650,000 Health and Human Services grant, the program offers master’s and doctorates in two tracks: one focusing on managing healthcare of mass-casualty disasters and the other on advanced clinical nursing practices for victims of everything from toxic spills to terrorist attack.

Likewise, Penn State will open a Master of Homeland Security in Health Preparedness program next year to prepare emergency management workers to better respond to the challenges of the day.

“The events of Sept. 11, 2001, and more recently this summer’s terror attacks in London changed the way criminal justice, intelligence, transportation, private security, corporate and other professionals think about the way they do their work,” says Esther Taitsman, associate dean of the Graduate School at Thomas Edison State College, Trenton, N.J. tesc, like many schools, anticipated the need and began offering a four-course online curriculum leading to a 12-unit Graduate Certificate in Homeland Security. Course hls-520: Preparedness: Prevention and Deterrence, for instance, focuses on how strategic planning, incident management and intelligence techniques combine to provide the foundation needed for anti-terrorism preparedness. Topics include infrastructure protection, the National Incident Management System, data-collection and -analysis techniques, threat and vulnerability assessments, information-sharing, resource planning, intelligence failures, and terrorism prevention.

Class War
Another course, HS-510: Protecting the Homeland: Balancing Security and Liberty, examines developments in the United States since the 2001 terrorist attacks, including the establishment of DHS, the Transportation Security Administration, the USA Patriot Act, and the detention and torture of so-called enemy combatants in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“This class explores the questioning done by both government and the public regarding the country’s intelligence mechanisms and security procedures, and also looks at whether the nation’s security needs justify the consequent restrictions on our freedoms,” Taitsman says.

When the Patriot Act passed a mere 45 days after the Sept. 11 attacks with little debate or discussion, concern surfaced in academia and on the street that this was another case of national security being used as a pretext for violations of individual rights. Many feel that zealotry in the name of national security runs the risk of violating the very rights the security is supposed to protect.

University classrooms are one setting where the short- and long-term implications of security measures can appropriately be examined. A recent National Research Council report (“Frameworks for Higher Education in Homeland Security,” National Academies Press, 2005) encourages Homeland Security interests to exploit the traditional strengtHS of academia. The higher education sector should provide an educational path leading to careers supporting the goals of Homeland Security, whether in public, private or nongovernmental sectors, the report says.

Moreover, the reports says academia should educate citizens about the nature of threats and about core democratic values that should be considered in devising principles, policies and practices for confronting these threats. In short, institutions of higher learning should serve as forums for public debate and decision on critical issues of the day.

However, limited access to government information pertaining to security threats is a persistent problem, inhibiting academia’s ability to graduate individuals trained in the very areas required to deliver domestic safety and security.

The problem, the NRC report states, is that the nation does not yet have adequate institutional mechanisms for sharing sensitive information, which itself presents a significant security threat. The report claims, for example, that stringent government regulations on select agent research at universities, as well as the highly publicized indictment and imprisonment of Texas Tech plague researcher Thomas Butler, have inadvertently created disincentives for researchers to engage in work beneficial to U.S. defense against biological weapons.

Likewise, the trend toward tighter visa restrictions and new limitations on government contracts has impeded participation of foreign students and faculty in research at U.S. universities, a trend that over the long haul could inhibit scientific and technological advances in pertinent areas.

“Controls over the publication of sensitive but unclassified research could further curtail researcher interest and willingness to pursue work supportive of security goals,” the report warns.

School Spirit
Nevertheless, institutions continue to retool existing strengths, repackaging conventional coursework in innovative ways to spawn new homeland protection offerings.

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, for instance, has designed five professional pathways toward a Bachelor of Science degree in Global Security and Intelligence Studies, a curriculum requiring work in information technology, a foreign language, history and cultural studies, philosophy, and a series of courses in security and intelligence.

Richard Bloom, director of Embry-Riddle’s Terrorism, Intelligence and Security Studies program, says one unique feature of the program is the Global Intelligence Monitoring Center, with its training in intelligence analysis and transmittal of analytic products to corporate and government entities.

Other features include faculty-led student teams that perform security and intelligence consulting and an aviation and intermodal transportation security curriculum.

Other institutions are focusing not so much on the technical side of an emergency as on management of response organizations in the aftermath of an event.

The University of Maryland University College, for instance, offers a unique online program intended for mid- and senior-level public- and private-sector managers that focuses on ways to oversee the complex planning and coordination necessary to protect both their organizations and the public.

Boston University also provides an online emergency management program. This four-course certificate was developed with New England emergency response professionals and is designed to help first responders and business managers maintain organizational continuity throughout operational disruptions relating to terror attacks, as well as more mundane, though nevertheless potentially deadly, natural disasters and regional power outages.

Not all colleges waited until Sept. 11, 2001, to react. The University of Findlay created its School of Environmental and Emergency Management in 1986 and then added its Center for Terrorism Preparedness in 1999. Both blend academic classes with hands-on training for practicing professionals. Findlay is also exploiting the power of the Internet by offering Webcasts of live, interactive training events.

“By virtue of being broadcast live via the Web, participants can not only view the event live, they can actually participate by responding to questions, asking other questions, or by ‘voting’ on what should be done next in the event scenario,” says J. Randal Van Dyne, Seem’s executive director.

Recent and future Webcasts (http://seem.findlay.edu/webcasts/) include a railcar chlorine leak and a biotoxin release.

The events of Sept. 11 not only changed the way Americans view the world, they forced academia out of its ivory tower to the head of the emergency preparedness class. Whether a disaster comes from an act of terrorism or an act of providence, higher education is now addressing the threats that emergency managers and responders increasingly face.

Douglas Page writes about science and technology from Pine Mountain, Calif.