Undergraduate Certificate in Intelligence Analysis

This course prepares students to employ basic research methods and writing skills to produce sound research papers and analytical products. Students will learn how to develop the elements of a research strategy, critically read and evaluate data, and communicate their findings in coherent, well-organized written work.

This course provides an introduction to critical thinking, intelligence analysis, and the use of structured methodologies. Functions associated with the processing of information to include perception, memory, and the evaluation of information are examined. Conscious and unconscious cognitive biases along with strategies to mitigate their impact are also assessed. (Prerequisite: INTL300).

Pre Reqs: Research Methods in Intelligence Studies(INTL300),Research, Analysis, and Writing(COLL300)

This course builds upon the foundations of critical analysis taught in INTL 401, expanding the student's repertoire of analytical techniques. Students explore creative analysis techniques, including hypothesis generation, red-teaming, and adversarial collaboration. Students focus on intelligence as a service to decision makers, including principles of customer-focused writing and techniques for analytic problems designed to provide tactical, operational, or strategic support.(Prerequisite: INTL300).

Pre Reqs: Research Methods in Intelligence Studies(INTL300),Research, Analysis, and Writing(COLL300)

With states as the level of analysis, this course examines their political, economic, and social condition which allows an understanding of threats to the state and their vulnerabilities. This course provides students with analytic procedures to assess a state’s military capabilities, strengths and weaknesses of their political and economic systems, and challenges presented by their social systems.

This course is an exploration of the historical development, capabilities and the constellation of remote sensing and other intelligence collection platforms available for use by decision makers in intelligence driven policies, homeland defense, and law enforcement. The focus will be on how geospatial products are applied to produce analyses of terrain, climate, natural resources, boundaries, various infrastructures, demographics, and intent and capabilities of various nations and groups in the context of the geospatial environment.

The rapid increase in multinational analysis and transnational organized crime, corporate drug trafficking organizations, and the impact of crime on national and international policy has created a critical need for law enforcement intelligence experts in the relatively new field of criminal intelligence. The course provides the student with an introduction to the methods and techniques of criminal intelligence analysis and strategic organized crime. It will demonstrate how to predict trends, weaknesses, capabilities, intentions, changes, and warnings needed to dismantle criminal organizations. Law enforcement professionals at the federal, state, and local level, criminal intelligence analysts working in private industry, and military intelligence personnel making a transition from a military to a law enforcement career will benefit from this course. Students will be introduced to techniques such as association and link analysis, visual investigative analysis (VIA), telephone toll analysis, matrix analysis, reporting and application to violent crime, and organized crime to include drug, white collar, and money laundering. This course emphasizes criminal intelligence as opposed to criminal investigation.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) contain a powerful set of tools for data acquisition, management, query and display. This course will provide students first with a substantial foundation in the history of cartography and mapmaking. The second major emphasis of this course will merge both theoretical and historical information with hands-on practical training utilizing the basic tools provided with the GIS software. Students will become familiar with the importance of metadata, editing and updating metadata and how this is important to the success or failure of the dataset as a whole.

Using the ArcGIS software, students will be taught how to manipulate datasets based on complex queries in several advanced platforms within the GIS environment including geospatial analyses, creating basic models, interpolation among multiple data points, and advanced data table editing and creation. Students will learn methodologies for determining the presence or absence of patterns and identify associations among different data layers. Additionally, students will be taught to examine cases where GIS could have been used but was not, and postulate how this system could have improved analysis within each case. This course will focus on vector data analysis techniques only. (Prerequisite: IS418 Geographic Information Systems I. (Prerequisite: INTL432).

Pre Reqs: Geographic Information Systems I(INTL432)

This course surveys the role of narcotics and the illicit drug trade as risks to national security, international development, and progress. The purpose is to assess both domestic and foreign intelligence gathering and analysis, with an emphasis on counter-narcotics policies and strategies. Students will be able to critically analyze, strategically assess effective intelligence collection, and evaluate the impact of current drug interdiction efforts by federal domestic and international agencies.

This course 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. The course surveys traditional and newer methods of forecasting terrorism: intuition-based, profiling, conflict vulnerability analysis and prognosis (early warning), etc. It concludes with a brief overview of the state of the terrorist threat almost a decade after 9/11