DHS as educator: Teaching the ABCs of homeland security
Jay Cohen
Thus, S&T has emerged as a key player in an education revolution, prompting schools, universities and institutes to develop a rapidly growing body of specialized courses designed to prepare students for the needs of homeland security-related agencies and companies.
Last week, in Washington, DC, Cohen hosted one of the largest gatherings of players in this rapidly growing academic field.
The Second Annual DHS University Network Summit brought in academics, students, government leaders and policy wonks from all parts of the U.S. There was a significant foreign contingent, too, with participants arriving from Australia, Japan, Malaysia, England, France, Israel and Sweden.
According to one S&T source, there were more than 560 attendees and 120 students present at the two-day conference.
The eight plenary sessions and 24 specialized panels were designed to give academics a sampling of the diverse disciplines represented in the homeland security field. Panel topics covered developments in explosives detection, event modeling, port security, border protection, biometrics and terrorism research.
For those who didn’t attend panels, the conference gave an opportunity to meet academic peers from far and wide. They came from the universities of Maryland, Connecticut and Texas. The wonks from MIT compared notes with peers from USC and Texas A&M. They were often joined by a significant contingent of foreign students and academics. The language may have been English, but the discussions were global in scope.
There were lessons to be learned by all. If academics were anxious to understand the range of DHS activities, managers on the frontlines of homeland security were eager to attract academics (and their students) whose pursuits could develop technologies and methodologies to solve a myriad of security problems challenging the U.S.
"We have taken ideas from universities and turned them into real-life technologies," said Diana Beecher, chief technology officer of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, in a luncheon speech to conference attendees.
Beecher pointed out that while it is increasingly necessary for homeland security officials to seek solutions from creative academic minds, educators need to appreciate the requirements of the homeland security community.
"Both parties need to be cooperative," she said. "We cannot sacrifice our business practices [and] universities cannot sacrifice open inquiry. The needs of everybody at the table need to be clearly understood and addressed."
Conference attendees were clearly at the table, as far as DHS is concerned. During the conference, the agency encouraged universities and colleges to explore funding, research and other opportunities within vast consortia of schools linked by region as well as by area of activity.
Those consortia include:
• CREATE (the Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events), led by the University of Southern California.
• PACER (the National Center for the Study of Preparedness and Catastrophic Event Response), led by Michigan State University and established jointly with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
• The National Center for Foreign Animal and Zoonotic Disease Defense (FAZD), led by Texas A&M University.
• START (the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism), led by the University of Maryland.
The proliferation of consortia acronyms prompted one university professor to quip that DHS might want to expand the number of letters in the alphabet. But a telling response was that the letters were not as important as the substance behind them.
Warren Edwards, director of the Southeast Region Research Initiative (SERRI), managed by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, put it best, telling the conference that the nature of homeland security projects requires schools to link with other schools, national laboratories or private companies to maximize their research and development capabilities.
The conference itself was an effort by S&T to win hearts and minds in the academic community to join such efforts.
In his closing remarks, Paul Schneider, DHS under secretary for management, underscored this theme.
"The challenge we have is to harness university brainpower," he said, with emphasis to the academics in the room. "The work you do is essential to the mission of DHS."
- Add your comment
- trackback url: http://www.gsnmagazine.com/cms/trackback/619-1
