By Dorie Turner, Associated Press
ATLANTA — Next year, Justan Holloway’s class schedule will look more like an action movie plot than an academic pursuit. The Savannah State University sophomore will study international terrorism, disaster planning, criminology, social psychology and Arabic.
Holloway plans to be among the first to enroll in the college’s new degree program in homeland security. The first of its kind in Georgia, the program is among a growing number of homeland security majors available across the country as schools try to meet a rising demand for workers trained in a variety of national defense areas.
So far, the graduates are finding themselves attractive to government agencies, defense contractors and private companies. They do everything from create emergency management plans to design gas masks.
Some programs focus on terrorism and manmade threats while other colleges, such as Savannah State, also train students to help with major natural disasters in the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s decimation of the Gulf Coast.
“After the Katrina situation, I didn’t like the way FEMA handled it,” said the 19-year-old student from LaGrange, Ga. “I was like, ‘Maybe I can make a difference.”’
More than 300 colleges have some type of instruction in homeland security, a trend that started soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to the Ohio-based National Academic Consortium for Homeland Security, which started three years ago with just a handful of institutions.
There is no data available for the number of students enrolled in the programs.
Critics say that awarding degrees in homeland security is pointless because it’s too generic. Students would be more successful if they majored in a specific aspect of national defense, like Middle Eastern studies or cyber-security, said Steven Lab, head of the criminal justice department at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.
“This is a money grab is what it is,” Lab said. “The federal government decided to pour our money on this, and everybody wants to get a piece of the pie.”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has a division dedicated to university programs and it is spending about $50 million this year on grants to colleges with research in national defense and on science and engineering scholarships. Laura Petonito, the division’s acting director, said the government’s total tab for homeland security training programs is difficult to pin down because most other divisions within the department and other federal agencies also are putting dollars toward those efforts.
Petonito’s division budget started out at $3 million in 2003 and likely will increase again next year.
“Clearly our country has a need for folks that have an interest and a passion for homeland security at large,” Petonito said. “You can slice that and dice that lots of ways — first responders, science and engineering, intelligence analysis, critical infrastructure.”
The programs lack much consistency because the concept of homeland security still is evolving within the federal government, said Todd Stewart, director of the National Academic Consortium for Homeland Security based at Ohio State University.
“In the beginning of 2003, most would say homeland security has something to do with terrorism. If you say it at the beginning of 2007, it’s terrorism, earthquakes and who knows what else,” Stewart said. “This is a long way from being an academic discipline.”
Stewart launched the consortium to help shape the programs into a more uniform structure and keep track of what colleges are offering homeland security courses.
Many schools that offer the degrees created their program by regrouping existing courses like biosecurity, terrorism and Arabic into one area of study. Colleges are beefing up public administration programs and disaster relief training to produce graduates ready to help cities and states plan for and respond to major disasters.
Shirley Geiger, whose department of political science, public administration and urban studies at Savannah State will house its homeland security program, said the historically black college will produce more minorities to work in disaster relief.
“We want to make sure those who respond to disasters look like the people who are needing assistance,” Geiger said. “There are cultural differences in how people respond to emergencies.”
Savannah State modeled its program after one started in 2005 at Virginia Commonwealth University. Program coordinator William Newmann said he expected to have 100 students enrolled after five years of operation, but he reached that number after just one year.
So far four students have graduated from the program — three of them have jobs and one is in graduate school. Newmann said two are employed in emergency management and one is starting work with the U.S. Border Patrol.
“People asked the question ‘Is homeland security just going to be a fad?”’ Newmann said. “We designed the program as broadly as we possibly could. Most of what the students learn deals with natural disasters. Even if we are successful as we can possibly imagine being fighting terrorism, the emergency response and natural disaster response will be there.”
The University of Massachusetts-Lowell has offered a certificate in homeland security for three years, prompted by the Sept. 11 attacks and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. The certificate allows students in different majors to take a cluster of homeland security courses that complement their studies.
For example, a student majoring in computer science would get a homeland security certificate to get a job in government agencies that have sensitive computer files and need intense cyber-security.
The instructors are former FBI and CIA agents and former military intelligence officers, said Eve Buzawa, head of the college’s criminal justice department.
“If you look at the websites of these agencies, they’re not looking for degrees in criminal justice or criminology,” Buzawa said. “They want engineers and technology people who have expertise in this area.”
Large government contractors like Lockheed Martin Corp. look for training in homeland security, among other areas of expertise, when recruiting workers.
“From industry standpoint we’ll continue to follow the evolution of these degree programs, and where there’s applications for us there, we’ll look for those individuals,” Lockheed spokesman Thomas Greer said. “They are aligned with where our customers’ interests lie.”