EIIP Virtual Forum Presentation — August 11, 2010
The Naval Postgraduate School's Center for
Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS)
Programs, Activities, and Resources
Glen L. Woodbury
Director, Center for Homeland Defense and Security
Naval Postgraduate School
Amy Sebring
EIIP Moderator
The following has been prepared from a transcription of the recording.
The complete slide set (Adobe PDF) may be downloaded from http://www.emforum.org/vforum/NPS/CHSDoverview.pdf for ease of printing.
[Welcome / Introduction]
Amy Sebring: Good morning/afternoon everyone. Welcome to EMforum.org. I am Amy Sebring and will serve as Moderator today. We are very glad you could join us.
Our topic today is the Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS) at the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey California. The mission of the Center is to "strengthen the national security of the United States by providing graduate level educational programs and services that meet the immediate and long-term leadership needs of organizations responsible for homeland defense and security." Today we will have an overview of how the center has been accomplishing this mission.
[Slide 1]
Now it is my pleasure and privilege to introduce today’s guest: Glen Woodbury is currently serving as the Director of CHDS, and previously served as an Associate Director from 2004-2007 responsible for the development of executive education workshops, seminars and training for senior state and local officials as well as military leaders.
From 1998-2004 he served as Director of the Emergency Management Division for the State of Washington directing the state's response to numerous emergencies, disasters and heightened security threat levels. During his tenure the Division received numerous awards and recognition for national and international excellence in the areas of public education, tsunami and earthquake preparedness, hazard mitigation and homeland security.
Please see today’s background page for further biographical information and links to related resources.
Welcome Glen, and thank you very much for being with us today. I now turn the floor over to you to start us off please.
[Presentation]
Glen Woodbury: Thank you, Amy. Good morning, afternoon, and evening to everyone. Thanks for spending some time with us and for allowing me to talk about our program here at the Naval Postgraduate School.
[Slide 2]
A little bit of history first—as we know, Homeland Security didn’t really come into being until after the attacks of September 11 and certainly was not an academic discipline part of that. Interestingly enough, there was a study that was being conducted as a result of terrorist attacks in the nineties looking at how we are educating senior leaders at all levels of government as well as the private sector in dealing with weapons of mass destruction and terrorism.
This study identified a significant gap in the higher education realm for roles and responsibilities for officials. This study was actually conducted prior to those horrific attacks of September 11. Immediately after those attacks, the Naval Postgraduate School, the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice came together and talked about how to meet this growing need over the next decade.
[Slide 3]
Our program was established to provide a neutral educational forum. What I mean by that is that we are here to provide an academic environment to study, to talk about, and to think about all those things that affect homeland security. It’s interesting to note that as Homeland Security has evolved over the past 9 years in its definition and its components, so has our education as well as the discipline itself.
All of our programs are based upon a very rigorous evaluation program. What I mean by that is, we look to the students and practitioners of our programs to help drive the content that we teach. I’ll talk about this a little more in a minute. The point here is that Homeland Security is such a new discipline within the professional fields, but also within academia, that frankly, we’re not sure exactly yet what to define and definitions of Homeland Security are, and therefore, what we should be teaching.
We look to our students and faculty to help tell us if we’re talking about the right things. Are we actually gaining knowledge and gaining value from what we research, study and discuss within our classrooms.
The third purpose of the program here at the center is to provide a multiplier effect. What we mean by that is many of our core programs that focus on master’s degree education and executive seminars—we look to those products, services and resources that we developed for those programs to be able to deliver even more services and resources outside of those core programs.
For example, our digital library was developed as a result for a need for a research library in Homeland Security in the master’s program, but we quickly discovered how valuable that resource would be to the rest of the government and private sector community. So, we take the taxpayer’s investment and see how we can provide that to the greater Homeland Security community.
[Slide 4]
A little bit of background—our primary sponsors are the Department of Homeland Security—the vast majority of our funding comes through Congressional appropriation through the department of Homeland Security, FEMA and National Preparedness Directorate. Certainly, the Navy, where we are located within the Department of Defense provides us our infrastructure and our services.
The U.S. Northern Command, the FBI, Army National Guard, and many others provide either funding for specific projects or tuition for their students. Let me first say that the program is fully sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security. What I mean by that is we don’t look to states and localities and travel entities to have to pay their own way in any of our programs or services. We are fully sponsored and fully funded.
Some may ask, "Why the Navy?" The Naval Post Graduate School has been around for about 100 years and has a very robust and rich national security affairs department. Early on in the inception of the program, the Department of Justice was looking for somebody who had a strong national security program, but was also a government entity and at the same time provided postgraduate education as well as insight into terrorism tactics and strategies.
Frankly, the Naval Postgraduate School fit that bill just about perfectly.
[Slide 5]
This right here describes all the programs that we are currently looking at. Our core programs are on the left hand side of the slide. These are the programs that the bulk of our resources and efforts are dedicated to—the Master’s Degree program, the Executive Leaders program, and our Mobile Education Teams, or our METs.
As I mentioned before, we look to take each program that we develop and all the resources and activities that go in that program and say, "Is there something else we can do with what we have developed for that core program?" We have several, and continue to add more, multiplier effect programs, as we call them.
For example, within the master’s degree program, we have an Intelligence for Homeland Security course. We get many of our students from state and local Fusion Center Homeland Security advisors and departments, and emergency management agencies. We looked at that and said that we need a special program just for Fusion Center leaders. Working with FEMA, DHS Intelligence and Analysis Office as well as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, we said, "We need a specific program, and can we deliver a specific program just for Fusion Center leaders?"
That’s an example of one of our core programs and looking at how we can expand it and do more. Another example would be our digital library, as I mentioned before. Also, our university and agency partnerships—we are charged with developing curriculum for all of our programs and then delivering it out, free of charge, to other universities, agencies and partners throughout the country.
We have over 200 colleges, universities, and agencies now that can access our curriculum, all of our reading materials, all of our articulated lectures, any of our online media, and use it as long as they give credit to the Naval Postgraduate School. They can use it for their own programs. These are some of the examples, and I’ll talk about each of these in a moment.
[Slide 6]
Our focus is on a neutral academic environment. What I mean by that is even though we are a Department of Defense entity, funded by the Department of Homeland Security primarily, we are here not to promulgate necessarily or dictate policy. We are here as a graduate level discussion. We are here to talk about policies and strategies that prevent terrorism, as well as other programs that are affiliated with Homeland Security, and to build Homeland Security preparedness.
We look at—how are we organized for Homeland Security? How are states organized? How are localities organized? How should we be organized? How do we deal with this multi-disciplined, multi-jurisdictional, multi-agency, public/private endeavor we call Homeland Security?
As we are funded through state and local programs, our primary focus is on the state, localities, tribal entities, and territorial leaders out there. We are here to help mayors, governors and federal agencies better educate their leaders for the future for the oncoming decades that we will be dealing with Homeland Security. We also ask that our students research actual policy challenges that they are facing now. I’ll talk about that when I talk about theses in a moment.
[Slide 7]
A little bit about our Master’s Degree program—we have 5 cohorts underway at any one time. When I say cohort, I mean a group of approximately 28-32 students who we look to mirror Homeland Security across the nation. We try to replicate the multi-jurisdictional, multi-discipline picture of Homeland Security as it is actually enacted.
Our classroom, any one classroom, would have FBI, Homeland Security advisors, emergency management folks, public affairs, public information people, military, NORTHCOM, Coast Guard, and all the other realms of the Homeland Security environment. Within these cohorts, we split them down into 2 small groups of 15-16 each so they can have a dynamic, engaging experience throughout their 18 months. The program is 18 months long, however, only 2 weeks are in residence here in Monterey or at our campus in West Virginia every 3 months.
Really, the students are in residence only 7 times throughout that 18 months, 2 weeks at a time. The rest of the time, they are in an online web-enabled environment where the students are doing research papers, or online collaborations and discussions, they are doing simulations, and frankly, they are engaging with each other and the instructors throughout the time they are not here in residence.
We have 3 cohorts in Monterey, and 2 in our national capital region in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. The time spent on the program—obviously, when they are in residence, it is full time, whether they are in Monterey or West Virginia— when they are not in residence and they are online, the average time they spend is 20-30 hours per course, per week.
Your lunch times, some of your evenings and your weekends are taken up by the online environment and working with other students and faculty. It is a pretty big commitment, even when you are not here in residence.
[Slide 8]
Here is an example of our curriculum. This is the curriculum we are currently teaching. Remember before that I said our content and our curriculum is driven by what the students and faculty are telling us about the content. Is the content relevant? Is there value added? Are we gaining knowledge?
The current curriculum is actually the third iteration of the curriculum we’ve experienced just in 9 years. Some of the courses we taught initially are either no longer taught, just because maybe they lacked relevance or value, or they were modified because of the changing Homeland Security environment. We evaluate every course every time it is taught.
[Slide 9]
These are just some of the factors we look at. We want to know if knowledge was gained. We want to know if that topic was important. We want to know if there is any relevance. I went through the program in 2003-2004. Just as an example, there were a couple of courses that were just fascinating, but I couldn’t find the relevance.
How did this apply? Why should I care about this? Does this matter to Homeland Security? Through a couple of iterations, I discovered that while this is a great course, it is not relevant to what we should be teaching state, local and federal officials at Homeland Security, so the course was changed, or the course was eliminated and replaced by another.
At the same time, as we went through our evolution, we found things that were not being taught that should be taught, such as looking at special topics in agricultural terrorism, or public health issues. So, we added courses to make sure that we addressed those gaps in education and relevance as well.
[Slide 10]
Our students in the Master’s Degree program are required to complete a thesis by graduation or with extensions. What we ask our students to do is look at a topic that is passionate to them, and that would add value to either their jurisdiction, their discipline or Homeland Security at large. We certainly encourage the students to talk to their sponsors meaning their bosses.
What is it I should be looking at and thinking about and researching during my 18 month program in Monterey or West Virginia? We also ask our students—what keeps you up at night? What has been one of those issues or challenges that you just keep thinking about or coming back to? Well, you’re here for 18 months—you’re going to be working hard—why don’t you make that your thesis topic?
We look at our theses to provide our sponsors with a "twofer". They add good research in science and an educated and critical thinking student or employee back to their program, but they also get some research done in a topic that is relevant to them.
[Slide 11]
Here are just some of the examples of some of the thesis topics. If you look at these, they are addressing challenges and issues within Homeland Security, which frankly, we’ve all been talking about. Some are specific to agencies or disciplines, but some also look at the broader Homeland Security challenges at large, as an interagency collaboration among disciplines.
How do we do capability based planning? Is that the right approach? What about radio interoperability? Is it really the equipment, or is there something else going on? The Coast Guard may look at their reorganization or maritime domain awareness—again, very specific topics as well as broad, general topics.
You also notice that these theses often lead to real policy change or real activities that continue well after the thesis is completed.
[Slide 12]
Again, we are funded by the taxpayer and we owe something back to the larger Homeland Security community through the sharing of our programs and resources. These are some of the examples of the resources, tools and innovations that we share with others.
We developed the simulation environment that our students go through in several courses to engage in a fictional city. How do you establish policy and strategy for Homeland Security based upon what we’re talking about in class and what we’re learning? We created a fictional area, a fictional city that we can modify based upon the instructor’s desires. Since we’ve developed this tool, why not share it? This is available to universities and agency partners around the country.
Our CIP (Critical Infrastructure Protection) simulation software is available to government officials. We do short interviews with guest lecturers and others who come across our campus, just talking about issues in Homeland Security that are impacting them. Then we publish all these on our website.
We are often asked—what are your students reading? We publish our book list. These are the current books that we require our students to read. Again, this is evolving and changing often to support our changing curriculum. There are a whole bunch of other resources and innovations through our website that I’ll talk about in a moment.
The idea is if we’re developing something for our core programs, or even our multiplier effect programs, that we can get out to the broader community, that’s what we try to do.
[Slide 13]
We have self study courses. These are non-credit courses, but we develop them for our students here and we make them available for the greater community as well. Right now these are only eligible for government officials and some of our university partners, but we are looking at how we can expand these further.
There are often private sector folks who are working on Homeland Security who have access to these as long as they can justify their connection to Homeland Security. These are just some of the courses. They are free and online for use.
[Slide 14]
Our next core programs are our Executive Education Seminars, or our METs. Picture a governor or mayor in a room with about 30 of his staff, maybe some of his regional partners, and we sit down and for 4 hours in a non-attribution setting, we talk about the challenges facing that jurisdiction, whether it’s a tribal level, the city level, the regional level or state level. We’ve done some at the FEMA regional level.
The idea is to put in place a forum in which leaders can sit down and talk together about what it is they are trying to accomplish, what it is they are trying to change, and where they are trying to go in the future in the area of Homeland Security. We bring in subject matter experts and basically have a facilitative discussion, with some debate and argument, about the Homeland Security challenges facing that jurisdiction.
We have done over 150 of these sessions now. Actually, I think we are approaching 200 since 2003. For the most part, they have either raised awareness of Homeland Security issues, or helped changed the policy and direction of individual jurisdictions based upon these discussions. Unfortunately, we find that many times these seminars are the first time that these leaders have gotten together in this jurisdiction to talk about this topic.
[Slide 15]
Our next program is the Executive Leader program. This is targeted at the senior directors, senior SGFs, the adjutant generals, the directors of emergency management or Homeland Security within states, localities and at the federal agency level. These are four 1-week sessions over nine months out here in Monterey where we talk about the issues and challenges facing Homeland Security issues but without the rigorous coursework that we see in our Master’s program.
We have two cohorts underway at any one time. One is a federally heavy cohort which is predominantly federal representatives with some state, local and tribal. The other cohort is basically the opposite—heavily state, local and tribal, with some federal agency representation. The idea is to strengthen those relationships and strengthen the understandings of the partnerships that are needed to achieve Homeland Security.
[Slide 16]
There is a library that I mentioned before, created out of a need for a Homeland Security graduate level research library that did not exist at the inception of our program. We quickly realized that this program, since it is completely web-enabled and online, could be shared throughout the country.
Right now we have 3 different versions of access. One is completely public access, which is availability of any Homeland Security related policy program, etc., research article that is already publicly available. We also have a password protected site only for government officials where folks have posted—or we have looked at documents that the office has asked to be restricted to government only—not classified, not restricted, but something that we thought should not be in the public domain.
We have a third area, which is a restricted section, which is FOUO, and people can apply for access and media alerts to that. What’s really neat about the library is that it is also taking advantage of knowledge management tools and resources. For example, you can ask the librarian about certain articles you are looking for or certain subject areas, and the librarian, either automated or in person, will help you find those.
Our users are nationwide—over 20,000 visits per month. It is a very popular and often used library by state agencies and federal agencies, congressional staff, and many others.
[Slide 17]
As we all embarked on this endeavor we call Homeland Security, we noticed there was no peer-reviewed journal at the time. There was a National Security Affairs, and other journals for other disciplines, but there was no Homeland Security peer-reviewed avenue to put forth provocative yet academic articles. We established the Homeland Security Affairs Journal, which is completely online—peer-reviewed articles, as well as essays and commentary.
[Slide 18]
As I mentioned before, one of our charters is to be—the gold standard—and that sounds a little bit egotistical—but to have us, and we are well-sponsored, to develop the cutting edge curriculum. However, we don’t see Homeland Security as yet an established academic discipline. Therefore, we see the growth of Homeland Security within academia at this point is a very collaborative and partnership endeavor.
We take all of our curriculum, all of our resources, our articulated lectures, our viewpoints, everything we develop, and we share with universities and colleges and other educational institutions across the country. We also provide an environment in which those universities can share curriculum and ideas as well as instructors with each other.
In fact, just this week we are doing a "Teach the Teacher" conference where we have brought in 25 colleges and universities from across the country and we are teaching them how we teach our Homeland Security curriculum. This isn’t to say that our standard is the only standard. In fact, we encourage debate and divergence of curriculum and what should be taught.
We look to our partners in academia to help evolve Homeland Security as both a discipline and a profession.
[Slide 19]
We are very proud of what we have created here at the Naval Postgraduate School. We have had over 370 graduates of our Master’s program, over 200 graduates of our Executive Leaders program, and over 200 METs seminars. We’ve created what we think is one avenue, and not the only avenue, and maybe not even the best avenue, to develop critical thinking skills in leaders within Homeland Security for the future.
This is our website, and you’ll see across the top bar here some of the leads into our academic programs, our Master’s program, or Executive Leaders program—conferences and seminars and workshops we conduct—a full listing of all our theses. Maybe about 4 or 5 are restricted for various reasons, but most of them are open for public access.
There are numerous publications by our faculty and students and alumni. The resources I mentioned before—there is a quick link to that as well, as well as our press archives.
If you scroll down just a little bit, you’ll see on the left hand side information and links to our core programs or Master’s degree, Executive Leaders, our METs seminars, university partnerships and etc. Once you click on those links, it will take you to information and background on those programs as well as how to apply for each of those.
The university partnership initiative, while geared towards academia, is certainly available and used by federal and state agencies. We find that there are many agencies outside of academia that see use in our curriculum, resources, and tools that they can access through what we call the UAPI. You’ll notice that we try to attract our alumni and students as well as our faculty and what they are working on through our press archives or NCHS reach out to the nation.
You’ll see below that something new we’re trying. We asked one of our instructors to look at all the papers and presentations that their students conducted just within that one course within the 13 courses of the Master’s programs, and what did they learn that they are applying in the real world?
[http://www.chds.us/?spost/spost_display&postid=2]
You’ll see that what we’ve tried to capture is—is it relevant outside the classroom? They are finding that it certainly is. Again, just within this course, we took a selection and we saw that there were many things within the technology realm that people were working on or had worked on within their coursework that has real world applications.
We are pretty big on that. We don’t see our program as being either strictly practitioner or strictly academic. We see us trying to tie the two together. We call our students the practitioner-scholars. This is just some of the work they’ve been doing.
You’ll see on the right hand side if you scroll down a little bit, links to our library, to our peer-review journal, and you’ll also see links to some of our videos. As I said before, we’ve had over 50 of these interviews. They are multimedia. You can get them through various Flash software or Windows software to watch these 5-10 minute interviews about challenging issues or things that people are talking about out there in the Homeland Security community. You’ll see links to more viewpoint videos as well as our annual essay contest and other things we’ve been working on.
We keep this website updated very frequently, but we try to do articles and releases about every two weeks. We understand that this may not be the homepage on your own web browser, but there’s lots of information, not just about our program, but about what we think is going on in the Homeland Security environment, with links to our resources, links to our tools that anybody within the government realm can access as well as some of those in the private sector as long as they can demonstrate the need and the security for our tools and resources.
One thing we’ve been attempting to do is along with getting more of our tools and resources out there in the public domain is also looking at what within the sectors of our programs should be available out to the general public, not just government officials. I think we’re realizing that there is a lot more to Homeland Security than what the government sector focuses on.
This is one attempt by at least one academic institution to push out more information into the general dialogue and not just the government dialogue. At this point, I’m ready for any questions.
Amy Sebring: Thank you very much Glen. It does seem to me that you have accomplished a great deal in only a few years. Now, to proceed to our Q&A.
[Audience Questions & Answers]
Question:
Isabel McCurdy: Glen, is your school open to international students?
Glen Woodbury: Not yet, but we’ve been talking about that pretty intensely. One of the challenges is that our program is funded by Congress using U.S. taxpayer funds and through our Department of Homeland Security state and local programs. At this point, it is not open to non-U.S. citizens.
We’ve been talking about how we can include more international aspects in all of our programs. For example, in a few months we’ll be holding the first Continental Homeland Security Education Conference where we’re inviting Canadian and Mexican universities to participate in a discussion about Homeland Security at an academic level.
We are looking at and considering how we could also get international students within our program. We are just not there yet.
Question:
Bary Lusby: How do you see the funding for this program for the future?
Glen Woodbury: I see the funding continuing. We are certainly very thankful of Congress and the Department of Homeland Security and our other partners for seeing the value of our program. I think we show the value. Our focus is on doing good work with good people and producing a good educational experience, as well as the tools and resources.
Our funding, as far as we know, has been consistent and will need to be consistent in the future. It is based upon Congressional appropriation and Department of Homeland Security and the President’s support.
Question:
CPT David Cauble: How many students apply annually for the 150 student slots in the masters program?
Glen Woodbury: We have 2 application periods. One deadline is May 1, and the other is December 1 for the Master’s program. We will get about 200 to 300 applications for the 32 slots for each cohort. In May, we are accepting applications for the September program start, and in December we accept applications for 2 program starts. One is the federal heavy program that starts around April, and one that starts in June. Generally, it’s about a 1:8 or 1:10 application to acceptance rate.
Question:
Tamra Temple: Since all citizens ought to have awareness of homeland security, would you open up the online courses through some screening process to those of us not on a government or university payroll?
Glen Woodbury: I assume we are talking about the self study courses. Yes, we are considering that. We have actually changed some of our guidelines and rules about who can have access and who cannot. For example, all 5 of our courses to include the research course were limited to just government officials initially when we began them. We’ve moved the research program out to general public access.
We are looking at the same thing for the other self study courses. We just have to make sure that both the faculty and the sponsor are okay with us opening those self study courses to broader access. Right now, they are only open to government officials, university partners and their students, and private sector folks who can show a connection to Homeland Security efforts.
Maybe you have already attempted to apply, but continue to apply, or check in with us, because we are trying to make those broader accesses as well. We have to make sure there are no copyright infringements as well as any security challenges that we might have if we open it up to the general public. You have to realize, once we open it up to the general public, it’s not just to the U.S., we’re basically opening it up to the entire globe. We want to make sure that anything we put out there promotes Homeland Security and doesn’t take away from it.
Question:
Martin Tierney: What has been the greatest concern, or two, from attendees as to the greatest threat and therefore need, we are facing in the country as it relates to Homeland Security?
Glen Woodbury: I would not say it’s so much a hazard, as far as a threat, I would offer—and this is one person’s opinion from what I hear—that our threat is returning to a period where we really started Homeland Security when many of our agencies and jurisdictions were in silos. We didn’t share information or ideas. We didn’t collaborate.
I’m not saying that we’re returning to that now, but that is a concern. Homeland Security, I think the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review put it best, is an enterprise. It is an all-government, all-private sector, all-citizen attempt to secure our country from threats and hazards that threaten public health and safety.
It’s not so much a hazard; it’s a threat to an attitude. If we go into a period where we are entrenching ourselves back into our agencies, our local government, or our disciplines, we are not open to sharing our resources, ideas, and our policy development—I think that is the threat we face.
I’m not saying we’re losing collaboration, but we have to be careful of weak signals out there where maybe 5 years ago, one discipline, one jurisdiction or one level of government said that this is all about partnerships and collaboration and made significant efforts to do that. With challenging budget times and challenging political times, we need to be on the lookout for people reversing from that attitude.
Question:
Jim St. John: Regarding the Executive Leaders' program, is the applicant-to-seat ratio similar to the MA program?
Glen Woodbury: Yes, it is. We will generally receive about 200 or 300 applications for the Executive Leaders program each time it is offered.
Question:
Amy Sebring: Is there any possibility that you are looking at expanding at all in the future?
Glen Woodbury: We have talked about that—well, we talked about the Master’s program first. We’ve got 5 cohorts underway. We feel that the 5 cohorts we have in combination with all the other universities and colleges offering Homeland Security education, 5 cohorts is about right for us. We’re not looking at looking to expand to 6 or 7 cohorts for the Master’s program.
Also, we’re not looking at numbers; we’re looking at quality. We think that 5 cohorts with our excellent faculty and the way we are able to dedicate our attention to the students that we have, we wouldn’t want to go above 150 students enrolled at any one time.
In the Executive Leaders program, we talk about that often—about doing more on the Executive Leaders program—either more courses like we are doing now, or even targeted Executive Leaders programs to either topics or maybe even disciplines. The Fusion Center Leaders program is an evolution of the Executive Leaders program, where there is specific requirement and request to focus on Fusion Center leaders. We developed a one week course just for that audience.
Question:
Isabel McCurdy: Glen, what are the demographics of the students attending so far?
Glen Woodbury: When we put a cohort together—let me talk a little bit about the application process. Applicants go to our online application page. It is a lot of work to do an application. There are 5 essays, resumes, letters of support from your employers, those kinds of things. When we get the applications in, they are scored.
We are looking for experience, academic achievement, and employer support while you are in the program. That is really important. The program is difficult. Generally, 4 to 5 students do not complete the program that they start with, or the cohort they start with. The folks we are looking at already have demanding jobs, so adding another 40 hours per week to what you’re already working on—60 or 80 hours a week—is quite a challenge.
When we get the applications in, we score the applications. Then we put a cohort together based upon not necessarily who scored the highest, but who scored the highest within a multi-discipline, multi-jurisdictional, multi-geographical cohort that we can put together. These are guidelines—we have 32 slots—some of those in the cohort are dedicated to federal agencies. Three of our cohorts are state, local, and tribal heavy. They have 75 to 80 percent state and local slots, and the others go to federal agencies.
Within the state and locals, we look for 2 to 4 firefighter leaders—2 from urban areas, and 2 from mid or small jurisdictions. We look for 2 or 3 emergency managers for each cohort. We look for public health and public information. NORTHCOM provides 2 students per cohort.
Basically, as we build the cohort together, we are looking at the top scores on the application list, but just because 32 FBI agents scored in the top 32 slots with an application process, only 2 will get in because we are looking for that multi-discipline, multi-jurisdiction cross section.
Generally, in each cohort you’ll see firefighters, police officers, FBI agents, National Guard, emergency management, public health, public information officers, TSA folks, customs and border people—it is really as diverse as we can make it. I don’t know if there is a specific answer to that, other than we try to make the cohort as diverse as we see the community of Homeland Security.
We are encouraging differing perspectives. We don’t want a class or a cohort just taking the perspective of a big city. We want small and medium sized jurisdictions out there saying, "Now wait a minute—let’s talk about risk based funding, and policies that affect the whole country, not just where the centers of population are."
Question:
Avagene Moore: Glen, thank you for this excellent information and resource for the U.S. Glad to see how effective you have been with elected officials. How are elected officials recruited or made aware of the opportunities you provide? How do you promote this training?
Glen Woodbury: Through several avenues—we have folks that are dedicated to outreach. We’ll attend most public safety and security conferences that are held across the country—the Urban Area Security Initiative Conference, the National Governor’s Association, the Fire Chiefs Association Conference—so one avenue is to get out the word through the conferences.
We also use the students and alumni we currently have, who have either gone through the program or are going through the program to talk about the program to their bosses and elected officials and their peers and colleagues.
The METs seminars are one of the ways we talk to senior elected officials, governors and mayors, county commissioners, etc. We also work with the National League of Cities, National Conference of Mayors and other major associations, basically just to make them aware of the program and the resources we have for them.
As many people know, we have a potential for at least 50% governors’ transitions in the next election, and maybe more than that. There is going to be a big outreach from our center letting the new governors, mayors and Congressional leaders know that we exist, what we do and how we might help them.
To answer your questions specifically, it is generally through word of mouth and the major associations.
Question:
Amy Sebring: Do you coordinate in any way with the FEMA Higher Education program?
Glen Woodbury: Yes, we do. We are looking at either better linkages between our university and agency partnership and the FEMA Higher Education program. We have seen several possibilities in the future, and we are talking about that right now with our sponsor. Actually, our sponsor is the same sponsor and leader that sponsors Higher Education at FEMA.
Question:
Amy Sebring: As you look across the country as you look at the Homeland Security programs that are offered in universities, can you characterize that as growing, stable, or shrinking?
Glen Woodbury: It is growing. At our last survey, and survey may be too strong a word, or last kind of look at the landscape of Homeland Security education across the country, we have over 180 university partners just within our partnership. We estimate that the total number of university and college programs out there across the nation is about 320 and moving higher.
Each year we see more and more universities and colleges take on Homeland Security and Defense programs, and are delivering them.
Question:
Thomas Fahy: Can you please provide an overview of the Lacy Suiter Policy Forum?
Glen Woodbury: Sure—the Lacy Suiter Policy Forum is in honor of one of our founders and friends, Lacy Suiter, who is pretty well known in the emergency management community as one of the fathers of modern emergency management. He actually hired me on when I left the state of Washington to work in the program with him. We worked in the METs seminars.
The Lacy Suiter Policy Forum is an event that we hold once a year over 2 days to talk about what is emerging in Homeland Security and what we should be looking at in the future. Lacy was big about basically throwing the grenade in the middle of the room and seeing how people react to it. It is all about the argument of the future.
One thing Lacy always asked and challenged us with was—what is the next big thing? What is the next big idea? Where should we be looking? What is over the horizon that we should be thinking about? Those are the ideas and concept that we bring into the policy forum.
We will bring in guest lecturers, folks with innovative ideas, and sitting and past leaders of emergency management to sit around in a small forum of 25 or 26 people to talk about where the field of emergency management and Homeland Security might be going in the future.
That forum is by invitation only, but if people are interested, just send me a note, and we’ll take a look.
Question:
Marcelle Penn Mathis: What qualifications do you seek in those interested in joining as an adjunct faculty staff member?
Glen Woodbury: We’re looking for folks—that’s a great question, because the dynamics we try to introduce within the teaching of Master’s program and Executive Leaders program is a combination of academic rigor as well as practical experience. Just about every one of our courses is co-taught or co-led by 2 core instructors—one with a primarily academic background, and one with some academic credential, but mostly someone from the practitioner field.
When we look at adjunct faculty, we are looking for people with a lot of experience in complex events or complex policy arenas as well as some academic criteria. For example, we might look at the former director of XYZ agency supporting Homeland Security who also possesses a Master’s degree in public administration.
That’s not to say that somebody without academic credentials can’t be a subject matter expert or adjunct faculty, but we have to make sure that everything we do fits in our accreditation requirements as well. Heavy experience, some academic, or heavy academic with some experience—or the best of both worlds is the cream of the crop.
Question:
Amy Sebring: Your journal—do you solicit papers for that? How does that work? Is it open?
Glen Woodbury: It is open solicitation. It’s a completely open journal to the general public. There is a link on there on how to submit articles to it and what the process is, and the requirements for peer-review articles as well as essays we also accept.
[Closing]
Amy Sebring: Time to wrap for today. Thanks very much Glen, we appreciate your taking the time to share this information with us. We wish you continued success with your efforts in the future.
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Our next program will be on August 25th when our special guest will be Dr. Thomas E. Drabek, well known disaster researcher and author of the book, The Human Side of Disaster published earlier this year. Please make plans to join us then.
In the meantime, thanks to everyone for participating today and have a great afternoon everyone. We are adjourned.