Daniel Webster College in Nashua is breaking new ground.
It's the first college in New England to offer an undergraduate degree in homeland security.
The academic trend to educate students in the field of counterterrorism is growing nationwide.
But critics say colleges are capitalizing on a fad and fear.
NHPR Correspondent Sheryl Rich-Kern has more.
Daniel Webster College looks like other small New England campuses.
Except-- on a warm spring day – one is more likely to hear the engine of small planes, rather than kids tossing Frisbees.
Many of the students come for college’s aviation programs.
But come this fall, some will declare a new major:
Bowman: My name is Heather Bowman. I’m from the Pocono’s of Pennsylvania, and I’m double majoring with aviation management and homeland security.
Dorm ambience: music, talking
Bowman, a wiry freshman, was only 10 when planes hurled into the World Trade Center.
Bowman: I’m only an hour and a half from New York city, and September 11th shook my local area.
9-11 and its aftermath, Bowman says, changed the way we handle conflict.
Bowman: I’m not sure homeland security would be a major without that awakening.
Bowman’s roommate, Erin Pedersen, is another of the college’s new enrollees.
Pedersen rattles off a few of the courses:
Conflict ideology and terror, how to deal with crises, acute stress management -- that will be fun -- and terrorism, a strict class (laughs) on terrorism…fade out
Stan Supinski is with the Center of Homeland Defense and Security which is sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security.
He helped found the Homeland Security Education Consortium.
When the group first met in 2003, 15 schools attended.
Supinski: Right now, there are 250 programs. It’s probably the fastest growing area in academia.
Colleges, says Supinski, are once again finding ways to support a national effort.
Supinski: …. Back at the beginning of the Cold War, for example. We needed a lot of people who understood the East Bloc, who understood Russian. Academia came forward with policy programs, language programs. These didn’t exist prior to the Cold War.
But, he says, buyers beware:
Supinski: A lot of schools have jumped on this bandwagon. They’ve taken existing programs and renamed them homeland security programs.
Roscoe: That’s an old concept. It’s always been there. It’s just a different name on it.
That’s criminal justice professor Allan Roscoe, from the University of Massachusetts in Lowell.
Coincidentally, his first terrorism course was scheduled for 8 AM on September 11, 2001.
By the end of the week, the room was full.
In 2003, the university added a homeland security certificate to its existing degrees.
Roscoe: It’s kept up its impact. The need is there. Is there a need to develop a separate discipline? No, it has to be blended into the criminal justice system.
Michael Fishbein is the provost at Daniel Webster College.
He says making homeland security its own discipline brought with it some academic concerns.
For example, some see it as buying into the government line.:
Fishbein: There was also some political discomfort among those who felt higher ed was in some way condoning the steps that had been taken on the war on terror by offering a program in homeland security. We were careful to say we’re not endorsing anyone’s politics. We were recognizing a reality and a social need.
That need is not only about responding to perceived threats, says Fishbein.
It’s about managing chaos.
Fishbein: Regardless of whether it’s a terrorist attack or a flood, what they most want are people who know how to restart a business, and get the supply chain moving.
BAE Systems in Nashua sells aircraft protection and intelligence systems to the Pentagon
JC Dodson is a vice president of the company’s security operations.
Dodson agrees about the growing emphasis on maintaining continuity in the supply chain after a disaster.
He calls it. …
Business resiliency. We’re in the defense business. A lot of our products are directly related to supporting our troops in the field. Interruptions in any of those critical production lines, assembly lines, have an impact.
BAE Systems, says Dodson, needs to hire people who understand how to plan for catastrophe.
And he says they need to understand how people react.
….. That includes what happens during a crisis in terms of human emotions, and how do you communicate risk without communicating hysteria. Those are great skill sets that need to be articulated in the academia.
It’s a skill set, Dodson says, that in the last few years requires advanced proficiencies and education.
And that demands higher salaries and the opportunity for those salaries.
Colleges like Daniel Webster in Nashua, Virginia Commonwealth in Richmond and Georgia’s Savannah State are attracting students right out of high school to their homeland security programs.
Report cards on the trend are not yet out.
Schools get the high marks when recruiters begin to specify the credential: “Wanted: a degree in homeland security.”
For NHPR News in Nashua, this is Sheryl Rich-Kern.
