The purpose of this course is to advance critical thinking, research and inquiry skills as a first step in the thesis writing process. This course identifies and teaches the principles of quality investigational research including research methodologies, sources, thesis organization and development. The goal of the sequence is to provide a sound foundation for initiating a thesis project and to support the degree objectives of the MA-HLS program by preparing students to conduct graduate-level, policy-relevant research and deliver the results of this research in an academically rigorous thesis.

(3 Credits)

This course provides an overview of the essential ideas that constitute the emerging discipline of homeland security. The objectives of the course are to expand students’ abilities to think critically, analyze and communicate the central tenents of homeland security from a social justice perspective. Students will examine the evolution of terrorist movements, strategies to combat terrorism, crisis management, response to conventional and non-conventional threats and the impact of heightened security and surveillance on individual rights and civil liberties.

(3 Credits)

This course analyses principles of critical infrastructure, in both the private and public sectors, vital to our community on a local, state, and federal level while demonstrating how critical infrastructure protection is one of the cornerstones of homeland security. This course evaluates risk reduction techniques to determine the optimal strategy for protection of each sector of critical infrastructure. This will include risk assessments for hard and soft targets that address risk mitigation plans and appropriate countermeasures in an all-hazards approach. Students will also apply vulnerability analysis techniques to critical infrastructure within their multijurisdictional region and derive optimal strategies and draft policies for prevention of future terrorist attacks.

(3 Credits)

This course serves as an introduction for homeland security professionals to terrorism as a psychological phenomenon. Government agencies involved in homeland security need to understand the psychological consequences of mass-casualty terrorist attacks and other disasters. This course provides a broad overview of the psychological effects of terrorism; the status of and fallacies related to the interventions applied to victims of terrorism and the generalized fear and anxiety experienced by the public at large. Current government strategies used to disseminate information to terrorist groups; psychological phenomena related to media coverage of terrorism; misconceptions and inaccuracies about the socio-political and religious motivations of terrorist groups; “profiling” and the typical psychological and cultural makeup of modern terrorists; and the social and cultural psychology of public conceptions of terrorists and acts of terror will be examined.

(3 Credits)

This course examines key questions and issues facing the U.S. intelligence community and its role in homeland security and homeland defense, including terrorism, emergency management, and cyber security. Intelligence community operations at the state and local levels, with federal cooperation through the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 are examined. This will afford students the opportunity to address, analyze, and critique policy, oversight, intelligence support, organizational protection of civil liberties and substantive issues regarding homeland defense/security and national decision-making.

(3 Credits)

This course is intended to provide practitioners with the opportunity to expand their ability to apply their education (undergraduate and graduate), training (vocational, career, job-related), and experience and knowledge to the homeland security capstone project. The homeland security capstone encompasses material in the other MA-HLS courses and, provides practitioners with the skills to perform their professional roles in new ways that will initiate and sustain change even at the level of the broader institutional context of governance in which they must function. This course completes the thesis project as the final step before graduation.

(3 Credits)

Prerequisite: None

This course is designed to highlight important topics pertinent to the protection of human rights during a time of national security concerns. Protecting individual rights is an inseparable part of a democratic society, the rule of law and a government dedicated to the advancement of the common good. The aim of this course is to create a clear understanding among students how respect for human rights can positively impact human security and promote civil societies.

Offered fall/spring semester. (3 Credits)

The purpose of this course is to provide students with insight into the structural, conceptual, intellectual foundations and implications of a multidisciplinary approach to homeland security. Students will examine how the perceptions of homeland security varies among professionals in the field, the general public and differing ethnic, racial, religious and socio-economic groups.

(3 Credits)

The threat landscape in the world today is poorly understood, often being diluted to easy and pithy words and phrases that do not adequately explain what is happening or who the attackers are. This course is about clearly identifying threat actors and their motivations, including the geopolitical and economic reasons for their actions. Misunderstanding the adversary can lead to missing the best approaches to circumventing attacks, as well as opportunities to think more broadly about how to address security-related issues globally rather than using only local controls at each individual business.

(3 Credits)

*Easily add a Graduate Certificate: This course can be applied toward the embedded advanced cybersecurity certificate in Information Security Essentials, Security Operations or Software Security.

Appropriate security must start with business needs, since the business defines what essential resources they can invest in that effort. This begins with policies but continues through standards and processes. None of these can be developed in isolation, however, nor can they remain stagnant since attacker techniques are continuing to evolve to counter controls in place. This is why threat intelligence and effective communication with staff and external stakeholders are both essential.

(3 Credits)

*Easily add a Graduate Certificate: This course can be applied toward the embedded advanced cybersecurity certificate in Information Security Essentials.

This course will provide students with the skills to learn from global best practices and successful tactics used in combatting terrorism and apply those lessons to current threats in the United States. Students will learn to apply best practices within the scope of U.S. law while protecting individual human rights. Students will better understand the threats, policies and strategies democratic countries use to cope with terrorism.

(3 Credits)

The purpose of this course is to provide an introduction to the operational and organizational dynamics of terrorism. Specific topics addressed in this course include terrorism by suicide, the role of the media, innovation and technology acquisition, the decline of terrorism and methods of measuring the effect of counterterrorism policies, strategies and sabotage. Emphasis in designing effective measures for countering and responding to terrorism based upon an understanding of organizational and operational dynamics in Homeland Security are integrated within the course to provide students with a real world approach to unconventional thinking in order to counter unconventional threats.”

(3 Credits)

This course provides the framework and language to understand what is considered an information security problem. This includes understanding the essential properties of information security -- confidentiality, integrity, and availability -- as well as ways to implement controls that ensure the application of those properties. There are several control frameworks in use around the world that provide easy starting places to ensure protections are in place. This course will help students evaluate those control frameworks for applicability in their environments.

Offered fall/spring semester. (3 Credits)

The threat landscape in the world today is poorly understood, often being diluted to easy and pithy words and phrases that do not adequately explain what is happening or who the attackers are. This course is about clearly identifying threat actors and their motivations, including the geopolitical and economic reasons for their actions. Misunderstanding the adversary can lead to missing the best approaches to circumventing attacks, as well as opportunities to think more broadly about how to address security-related issues globally rather than using only local controls at each individual business.

Offered fall/spring semester. (3 Credits)

*Easily Stack Graduate Cybersecurity Certificates: This course can be applied toward the requirements for each of the three Post Baccalaureate Cybersecurity Certificates when stacked into the MS Global Cybersecurity degree.

Information security is all about people. People are the first, last, and best line of defense. Attackers regularly make use of this understanding, spending a lot of time thinking about how to best manipulate people into performing actions against their best interests. Too often, security practitioners believe they can require people to behave in certain, tightly circumscribed ways. They miss that humans will continue to be humans, so it is best to work with them rather than against them. Understanding not only the attacker mindset but also the diverse mindsets of the people within the organization can help identify the best controls to implement.

Offered fall/spring semester. (3 Credits)

Appropriate security must start with business needs, since the business defines what essential resources they can invest in that effort. This begins with policies but continues through standards and processes. None of these can be developed in isolation, however, nor can they remain stagnant since attacker techniques are continuing to evolve to counter controls in place. This is why threat intelligence and effective communication with staff and external stakeholders are both essential.

Offered fall/spring semester. (3 Credits)

A common approach to identifying defensive strategies is to go on the offensive. The theory is, if a friendly entity identifies vulnerabilities, they can be remediated before an attacker can identify them. However, some of these practices simply result in a false sense of security for organizations. Students will come away from this course with an understanding of what types of offensive security practices would be best for their organization.

Offered fall/spring semester. (3 Credits)

The threat landscape in the world today is poorly understood, often being diluted to easy and pithy words and phrases that do not adequately explain what is happening or who the attackers are. This course is about clearly identifying threat actors and their motivations, including the geopolitical and economic reasons for their actions. Misunderstanding the adversary can lead to missing the best approaches to circumventing attacks, as well as opportunities to think more broadly about how to address security-related issues globally rather than using only local controls at each individual business.

Offered fall/spring semester. (3 Credits)

*Easily Stack Gradaute Cybersecurity Certificates: This course can be applied toward the requirements for each of the three Post Baccalaureate Cybersecurity Certificates when stacked into the MS Global Cybersecurity degree.

Offensive security can be helpful to identify vulnerabilities that need to be addressed, but you can’t protect against everything. Organizations need to be vigilant and have the necessary visibility to notice when attackers are attempting to compromise systems. This requires appropriate architectures that enable extensive logging and the ability to consume and act on those logs. Again, this requires threat intelligence to know what is happening in the world with respect to threat groups and their activities, as well as an understanding of business requirements to identify attempts to compromise critical information assets.

Offered fall/spring semester. (3 Credits)

Logging and alerting are important to get visibility into activities within the business systems but as soon as an alert happens, the organization needs to be able to respond. Often, there is a focus on the purely technical investigation when people look at incident response. This entirely misses the planning that is required when building the incident response plan and framework, since there are a variety of legal, management, regulatory, and communications considerations. These are not the types of considerations that should be considered in the middle of a crisis when an attacker is in the environment, as that is a luxury of time that no organization has at that moment.

Offered fall/spring semester. (3 Credits)

Learning to program is an essential practice, since it forces a structured, logical way of thinking, while also encouraging a level of creativity in problem solving. Languages like C have been used to teach programming for decades, but C has been enabling very bad programming practices since the late 1960s. Newer languages like Rust encourage better programming practices, focusing on solid exception handling, in addition to good memory management techniques. This course is a primer on programming in Rust, without the expectation of anyone coming out an expert in programming but having had an understanding of the approach to problem solving necessary for programming tasks.

Offered fall/spring semester. (3 Credits)

The threat landscape in the world today is poorly understood, often being diluted to easy and pithy words and phrases that do not adequately explain what is happening or who the attackers are. This course is about clearly identifying threat actors and their motivations, including the geopolitical and economic reasons for their actions. Misunderstanding the adversary can lead to missing the best approaches to circumventing attacks, as well as opportunities to think more broadly about how to address security-related issues globally rather than using only local controls at each individual business.

Offered fall/spring semester. (3 Credits)

*Easily Stack Graduate Cybersecurity Certificates: This course can be applied toward the requirements for each of the three Post Baccalaureate Cybersecurity Certificates when stacked into the MS Global Cybersecurity degree.

Vulnerabilities often start in software. This is not entirely true, since the biggest source of vulnerabilities is the human element, but to the extent possible, vulnerabilities can be controlled with solid software testing and validation. This course will build on the programming skills from the Programming in Rust course, introducing testing practices and principles used against software, including native as well as web-based applications.

Offered fall/spring semester. (3 Credits)

The software industry is undergoing a major shift in the delivery of functionality to the end user. Many traditional native applications (applications that run on a local system) are moving to a web-based delivery model, where a uniform interface is used regardless of the application - - the web browser. This shift has put a lot more control back in the hands of the company developing the software and has the potential to enhance security, by reducing vulnerabilities and enabling better resilience in a more cost-effective way. This course introduces security early in the software development lifecycle, identifying ways to inject security practices in the requirements, development, testing and deployment phases. Understanding how to protect information from the start of the development process all the way through deployment of software will go a long way to making it harder to get to information assets.

Offered fall/spring semester. (3 Credits)

This course provides an overview of forensic psychology to include a comprehensive history of the field and how the field has changed to impact today’s world. Forensic psychology will be examined as a profession, field of study and participant in the legal system. Emphasis will be placed on the relationship between psychology and law and the varying and expansive roles forensic counselors play in navigating both the mental health and the legal system.

(3 Credits)

Prerequisite: None

Information security is all about people. People are the first, last, and best line of defense. Attackers regularly make use of this understanding, spending a lot of time thinking about how to best manipulate people into performing actions against their best interests. Too often, security practitioners believe they can require people to behave in certain, tightly circumscribed ways. They miss that humans will continue to be humans, so it is best to work with them rather than against them. Understanding not only the attacker mindset but also the diverse mindsets of the people within the organization can help identify the best controls to implement.

Offered fall/spring semester. (3 Credits)

Prerequisite: None

This course introduces students to central questions and research in the field of victimology. Emphasis is placed on the role of victims in the criminal process, problems of adjustment to victimization, offender relationships, victim compensation, restorative justice, and victim’s rights. Several victim typologies will also be addressed. Students will be given the tools necessary for critical evaluation an understanding of the often-neglected role of the victim before, during, and after the criminal event.

Offered spring semester. (3 Credits)

Prerequisite: None

This course is designed to provide a basic understanding of the juvenile justice system. Major topics to be covered include normal juvenile development, juvenile delinquency, and the juvenile justice process including prevention, intervention and treatment methods and juvenile justice codes and case law.

Offered fall/spring semester. (3 Credits)

Prerequisite: None

This course is designed to provide a basic understanding of counseling techniques and the relationships with adult offenders in our society. Major topics to be covered include mental health issues common with adult offenders, assessment and diagnosis of adult offenders, role of counselors working with adult offenders, and current treatment approaches. The role of political ideology and social context in generating and supporting different correctional strategies will be reviewed.

Offered fall/spring semester. (3 Credits)

This course focuses on differentiating the conceptual and theoretical aspects and models of leadership and leadership studies in order for students to apply leadership skills and principles in their places of business. The fundamentals of leadership are taught with an emphasis on how to live out these fundamentals in an ethical manner. 

(3 Credits)

Organizational Psychology and Behavior concentrate on employee behavior and processes in organizations. The focus of this course is on individual, group, inter-group and organizational wide behavior and its impact on employee satisfaction and productivity. The course attempts to add to each student’s understanding of life in complex organizations by covering topics which span the micro or individual level of analysis (motivation, decision making) and the macro or organizational level of analysis (culture, structure). Attention is given to group dynamics, change and development.

(3 Credits)

Prerequisite: None

A leader’s ability to understand and follow the change management process collaboratively is vital to master. A proactive mindset is critical to a successful business or personal change. Students will learn the various change management models and problem-solve to find the best ways to leverage change agents and how best to manage ethical change. Students will create a model of change for workplace application.

Offered spring semester. (3 Credits)

Prerequisite: None

Students in this course will learn forward thinking concepts of coaching, mentoring, and succession planning to promote a learning organization. Students will learn how to leverage the Human Capital Management model to foster knowledge transfer between employees. The focus of the course will be the elevation of learning to a strategic organizational imperative.

Offered fall semester. (3 Credits)

Prerequisite: None

Today’s business success requires intercultural awareness as well as effective cross cultural and cross generational communication skills. This course demonstrates the importance of cross cultural and cross generational communication and the benefits of being sensitive to the differences in organizational settings. Concepts of negotiating styles, cultural differences, proper etiquette, and conflict analysis/resolution will be discussed at length.

Offered fall/spring semester. (3 Credits)

Prerequisite: None

This course explores the business, legal, political, and social aspects surrounding the phenomenon called Intellectual Property. In particular, this course is predicated on two fundamental questions, “What is Intellectual Property, and does my company have it?” This simple yet powerful inquiry—and the subsequent responses—guides the course over four days of intensive readings, discussions, and writings.

Offered fall/spring semester. (3 Credits)

*This course can be applied toward the MBA Master Courses requirement.