The National Homeland Defense Foundation (NHDF), a homeland defense think tank, is one of five members of the steering committee of the consortium, both of which are based in Colorado Springs, Colo.—also the home of U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM). William T. Harris, NHDF president, said his organization sees the consortium as vitally important to the future of homeland defense. 

“For us, this is an activity that is really important,” Harris said. “It’s in the nature of building the country’s workforce in homeland defense and security. We don’t have one. We didn’t know we needed one five years ago. Corporate America is screaming bloody murder, ‘Where are my 25-year-old master’s graduates? All I can find are 55-year-old retired firemen.’ “That just doesn’t work in the long-term, so we are trying to promote a real strong institutional basis for building this workforce,” he added.

Harris noted that the generation of military servicemembers are rising to the new homeland defense mission and are completing degree and certificate programs related to disciplines vitally needed in government and industry in the post-9/11 world.

Captain Brian Scott of the Washington Air National Guard is one such warfighter. He recently graduated from a program at the University of Washington. Scott was attending another master’s program when he discovered the university’s strategic planning for critical infrastructure program.

“When I saw this, I dropped [the other program] because I knew this relates directly to my job and my future with the Air National Guard and the state. This is something that specifically relates to a lot of the missions that the military and government in general have,” Scott told Military Advanced Education.

Like many universities seeking to provide the best in education to warfighters who face rigorous deployment schedules and long hours, the University of Washington offers its courses online. That aspect of the program provided Scott with the ability to put his military duties first without having to worry about missing out on his education.

“I was pretty impressed with the flexibility of how the program is set up,” he said. “You can access it from any computer. At times, the professors would even be conciliatory with the dates if we had a conflict with work that we let them know about ahead of time. I didn’t find there to be any technical issues either.”

CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE

Many programs invite military authorities to take a hands-on approach to the design of the curriculum and coursework, often including military officers in the constitution of their advisory boards. At the University of Washington, the Washington National Guard assisted the college with the development of its strategic planning for critical infrastructure program, a master’s degree for those who want to focus on homeland security and emergency management.

David Szatmary, vice provost of Educational Outreach at the University of Washington, told MAE that the school is in the process of expanding its offerings to certificate programs. “Next year, we are rolling out a series of three certificate programs that will be embedded within the degree. If you don’t want the entire degree, you can get a certificate,” Szatmary said. “The three certificate programs will be one in strategic planning, one in homeland security, and another in emergency management.”

Students who wanted to pursue a certificate could do so and then decide to roll their certificate credits into the larger degree program. The courses of the strategic planning for critical infrastructure degree focus on the study of different critical infrastructures, including physical and biomedical, with the addition of courses on strategic planning for emergencies. The master’s program resides in the university’s department of urban design and planning.

To increase flexibility and reach deployed military servicemembers wherever they may be, students take the program completely online. Earlier this year, more than 40 graduates from the first and second year of the program flew to Washington State for the program’s first graduation ceremony.

“It was quite endearing in a lot of ways. A number of people flew in from all over the country who hadn’t physically met each other before but knew each other with their online coursework. They had never met the instructors before, but the instructors knew them. So it was quite an experience,” Szatmary said.

Students can take the courses just about anywhere, Szatmary stressed, as with the case of a current student who is working through the degree from Iraq. The ability to offer distance learning under such conditions is important to the program’s advisory board, who actively suggest curriculum and admission standards.

Experts like Jim Mullen, director of State Emergency Management at the Washington Military Department’s Emergency Management Division, and Colonel Jeff W. Mathis III, commander of Special Operations Detachment-Pacific, serve on the board as well as Byrant Harrison, a liaison from Region 10 of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). They provide input as to how the program can remain relevant with changing tactics and new emergencies.

“All of the board members can do that because they are all practitioners and they confront these emergencies of all types like Katrina and other types of emergencies on a daily basis,” Szatmary said.

BIOSECURITY

Many schools will specialize in specific areas of emergency management. While the University of Washington has a focus on critical infrastructure protection, the St. Louis University in Missouri has a focus on biosecurity. Terri Rebmann, associate director of curricular affairs at the Institute for Biosecurity at the St. Louis University School of Public Health, explained the makeup of the school’s masters degree in biosecurity and disaster preparedness.

“We focus on all aspects of disaster preparedness and response but we have a very strong focus in biosecurity, meaning bioterrorism, emerging infectious disease outbreaks or any infectious disease emergency,” Rebmann told Military Advanced Education. “We have some background classes like communicable disease control and infectious control. Then we have a class on public health and disasters, where we talk about the impact on public health from a variety of disasters. We cover CBRN threats and naturally occurring disasters as well.”

The program has enrolled a number of military servicemembers, who can take the entire program online without any requirement to physically attend the university. Students also can take specific classes without enrolling in the master’s program. So warfighters could take a class in disaster planning, infectious disease surveillance, disaster communications, and other subject areas to boost their job performance. The university offers flexibility to military students who have to miss a class or hand in an assignment late due to their duties.

The courses can be a help to anyone in the military—whether their job involves health care or administration. One class on business security teaches how to keep operations going during and in the wake of a disaster. The program is useful to a range of people, from those who are on the ground confronting a threat to those in charge of planning in a faraway office, Rebmann said.

“We have a very big focus on what we have learned. So we look at what happened with Hurricane Katrina; we look at what happened with SARS and some other disasters and terrorist attacks that have occurred. We look at 9/11,” Rebmann said. “We really try to focus on the practical aspects of disaster preparedness and response. The instructors look at the research in order to teach the content, but it’s provided at a very practical level for people who are out functioning in disaster preparedness and response,” she added. The instructors also have real-life experience. Many of the program’s instructors are former military; one instructor was formerly in charge of the weapons of mass destruction program at the FBI, Rebmann noted.

“We just have a really good set of instructors that really know the information. It’s not one of those programs where you have ivory tower instructors trying to teach grass roots information,” she said.

HOMELAND SECURITY MANAGEMENT

The ability to reach out to students via the Internet, of course, has rapidly become a staple of advanced education programs targeting military servicemembers. Long Island University (LIU) has begun to offer a graduate degree through online courses as well, said Dr. Vincent Henry, program director of the LIU Homeland Security Management Institute, based in Southampton, N.Y.

LIU began last year by offering an advanced certificate in homeland security management, a program with 15 credits that stood up in September 2005. Beginning this September, the university offers a Master of Science in homeland security management, a 36-credit program.

“The advanced certificate is the core of the master’s,” Henry told Military Advanced Education. “Folks can come and do the 15-credit graduate-level advanced certificate and then they can decide to opt out because of their job situation or changes, and they can leave after the advanced certificate or they can continue on to finish the full master’s.”

Traditionally, warfighters might have struggled to complete a course due to their deployment schedules. They might even start a class unaware of an impending deployment, which would then interrupt their schooling. While many universities would compensate a soldier or sailor for these problems, a military servicemember would lose none of the work at LIU.

“We had quite a few students, for example, that deployed right after we stood up the program last fall,” Henry stated. “We had quite a few students that were sent to New Orleans to help in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. But not one of them lost a day’s work. They were not put behind or anything like that. They were able to continue to do what they needed to do with asynchronous online learning, no matter what time of the day or night or day of the week. They were able to go online to do what they needed to do and they were also able to fulfill their responsibilities.”

Military servicemembers also receive a one-third off discount for tuition in LIU’s homeland security programs.

Many of the students at the Homeland Security Management Institute already possess graduate degrees, Henry noted. About 70 percent of students so far already have obtained some graduate credentials. For example, one current student has a J.D.; another has a Ph.D. These students often attend the institute to deepen their understanding in a subject area where they have roles and responsibilities in the relatively new fields of homeland security and homeland defense.

To that end, it becomes essential that the university has the assistance of an advisory board that can help keep the courses relevant, Henry said. LIU receives input from several members of Congress serving on its homeland security advisory board, including Reps. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) and Peter King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. Several military experts, including Lieutenant Colonel Xavier Stewart, Army National Guard commander of the 3rd Civil Support Weapons of Mass Destruction team in Pennsylvania, and retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel David Ruvola, also serve on the board.

The university also works with the North America Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), NORTHCOM, FEMA, and the Homeland Security Defense Education Consortium, among other homeland security and homeland defense organizations.

NATIONAL SECURITY

Military servicemembers are drawn to homeland security course offerings because of their intense interests in public service and national security, argued Dr. Gwendolyn Hall, chair of Homeland Security and Transportation and Logistics Management at the American Military University (AMU), based in Charles Town, W. Va.

“If you think about the public service commitment traditionally held by military servicemembers and the national security interests that most military servicemembers are very familiar with, then homeland security fits in naturally,” Hall said. “Homeland security is part of national security in the post-9/11 period. Once you realize that homeland security is national security and you are aware that military members have a passion for contributing to national security, then homeland security is something that the military gravitates to.”

Many warfighters who separate or retire from military service often find their next careers in homeland security, noted Hall, who herself retired from the Air Force as a lieutenant colonel after more than 28 years of service. But, she warned, “It’s very hard to draw a very fine line between homeland defense and homeland security.

When the Department of Homeland Security first stood up and the homeland defense undersecretary was stood up in the Defense Department, there was quite a lot of debate on the Hill and in the executive branch as to who would do what and whether or not there really is a difference between the two efforts.

“There were a number of attempts to define homeland defense and homeland security as having their own separate sandboxes. Over time, the reality has set in that it is a shared responsibility and the different names don’t portray any difference in reality,” she added.

American Military University has developed an advanced view of homeland security through its experience with coursework in the area, which predates 9/11, Hall noted. Not only does the university have one of the country’s longestrunning homeland security programs, but also its faculty members are actual practitioners in homeland security disciplines. This depth of knowledge also has led the university to recognize the demands of military and homeland security work and to create a schedule that could fit the needs of even the most demanding career. Instead of offering classes that start at the traditional semester breaks, courses at the American Military University literally start every month.

“The homeland security business is a very demanding one. I work quite a few projects with the Department of Homeland Security. It is a very fluid environment and it requires a lot of energy. So our homeland security professionals and our military professionals committed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and in situations around the world can find that to be able to fulfill your dreams in terms of academic pursuits can be very difficult,” Hall said. “But at AMU, we literally can follow you all over the world.”

TERRORISM LAW

The Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas, is the only law school that belongs to the Homeland Security/ Defense Education Consortium. Dr. Jeffrey Addicott, its director, said that he is often pushing other universities in the consortium to consider the legal aspects of their subject matter.

“One of the things about a lot of the universities that have homeland security programs is that they don’t have a legal piece to them,” Addicott said. “I’ve been trying to convince a lot of them that they need to include more emphasis on the law in their courses because you can’t drink a cup of coffee without having legal implications to it.

“When you are talking about homeland security, you are talking about quarantine issues and a lot of other legal aspects that have to be addressed,” he added. “At the university level, they usually just talk about a lot of the various structures and program capabilities. But we try to add legal policy to the consortium.”

St. Mary’s University collaborates with the Joint Training and Exercises Directorate (J-7) at NORTHCOM regularly and assists the Military Commission for Guantanamo Bay. Such work enables the university to stay abreast of legal issues in the anti-terrorism community.

Addicott travels extensively to offer various symposia designed to educate military servicemembers and law enforcement on important topics. For example, he led a panel regarding “Legal Issues in Response to Katrina” at the National Conference for the Protection of American Communities on November 8-9. Addicott also is the author of Cases and Materials in Terrorism Law, a textbook now in its fourth edition.

Although the program is still relatively young, Addicott and others are working to make it effective and affordable. “We are not in business to focus on making money,” Addicott commented. “We don’t offer courses and charge people enormous amounts for lessons that don’t go anywhere. For law enforcement, we will charge them $200 a pop just to cover our costs. We are truly just trying to assist and get the word out and do the right thing.” ♦

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