Undergraduate Certificate in Homeland Security

This course addresses the potential results from nuclear, biological, and chemical incidents or uses. Topics include public health consequences of such incidents, emergency planning and response measures in place among U.S. agencies, and emerging detection and management technologies. Existing vulnerabilities to these types of incidents and attacks will also be discussed. Objectives of the course include identification of the historical development and use of chemical and biological weapons; definition of the types of chemical and biological weapons and their impacts; analysis of case studies related to the development and use of chemical and biological weapons, and research on chemical and biological warfare.

Over the past several years, the concepts of homeland defense and the need to better fortify the US homeland and its interests from asymmetric threats were recognized, but action to remedy vulnerabilities was limited in comparison to defensive measures taken during the Cold War. Within this context, this course will explore the boundaries of this national security mission by examining the threats, the actors, and the organizational structures and resources required to defend the American homeland.

This course provides an overview of the chemical and biological threat that America and the rest of the industrialized nations face today. Subjects to be covered include weapons of mass destruction (WMD) technologies, equipment and response assets, and patterns of global terrorism. Additionally, the course will cover homeland security concerns and the US Government's plans and programs to execute a response to a WMD incident.

This course is a study of federal, state, local, private, and other organizational entities involved in homeland security. It addresses the evolution of homeland security from early to modern times with an emphasis on the emerging homeland security structure, culture, and organization.

This course introduces the student to the relationships between intelligence and homeland security strategy. The course utilizes a historical case study approach, analyzing both past and contemporary national security issues from an intelligence perspective to highlight the increasingly important role intelligence has played and will play in the homeland security strategy process. The course presents the evolving relationship between intelligence and homeland security strategy during the 20th century, with particular emphasis on the Cold War because of the lessons to be learned from that period.

This course examines the processes involved in forecasting terrorism. The syllabus examines the theoretical underpinnings of the phenomenon of terrorism, actual and planned cases of chemical and biological weapons use, and the modern threat of improvised weapons of mass destruction. It continues by differentiating the varying magnitudes of threat and effect of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high yield explosive (CBRNE) weapons and analyzes terrorist precedent, strategy, and psychology from which terrorism forecasts and counter-terrorism activities are generated. It moves on to examine traditional and newer methods of forecasting terrorism: intuition-based, profiling, conflict vulnerability analysis and prognosis (early warning), Atypical Signal Analysis & Processing (ASAP), and the Khalsa systematic Indications and Warning (I&W) methodologies. It concludes with a brief overview of the state of the terrorist threat almost a decade after 9/11