CAL U prepares its students for careers in homeland security

experience in the working field. Dr. Aref Al-Khattar, a retired law enforcement officer with seventeen years of experience in the Kingdom of Jordan, received a Medal of Independence from late King Hussein in 1992 for his role in protecting the security of the Kingdom. He is currently a professor of criminology and criminal justice at CAL U and teaches courses on terrorism, intelligence, research methods, and crime theories.

Dr. Jeffrey Magers, a retired law enforcement captain, served four years on active duty as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army Military Police, and continued serving for twenty-one years in the Army Reserve. Dr. Magers became a full-time faculty member at CAL U during the fall of 2006, and currently focuses in the areas of law and public policy, homeland security, terrorism, intelligence practice, and law.

Professor Mike Hummel, a retired military officer, has been involved in security, law enforcement, and special operations for twenty-six years. As the associate professor and acting dean of the college of liberal arts, his courses involve policy-related studies that analyze events such as the 1993 WTC bombing. Hummel described how his class would approach the subject-matter and determine security flaws that might have enabled the terrorist attack: “Our students will look at that case study and evaluate it from a policy perspective and then they will come up with recommendations on how to fix or prevent that type of incident from happening again.”

“We spend an enormous amount of time teaching and practicing the proactive approach of conducting risk analysis,” Hummel said, “which involves a threat assessment, a risk assessment, developing countermeasures, and developing contingency plans.” The Homeland Security coursework at CAL U varies significantly depending on the track and program the students enlists in.

One course for the 2011 academic year on terrorism will examine current terrorism, its origins and ideological bases in relation to political institutions and the criminal justice process. Attention will be given to M.O. trends and the way law enforcement agencies react to certain threats.

A graduate level course on executive protection and the law will teach students how to develop protective formations and threat assessments while providing them with a perspective on the profession of those responsible for the lives of others. CAL U’s second annual security conference held on 11 September 2008, focused on executive protection by discussing counter surveillance, advanced defensive driving, and citizen security assistance. The institute holds a conference on a different subject every year.

Aside from the new course offerings and conferences, Hummel believes CAL U’s Homeland Security oriented programs are unique because of the backgrounds and formal educations its faculty has received. Another unique aspect of the educational institute is the internship program offered during the school year and summer where students have the chance to work for public safety departments, DoD, and Interpol.

The university also employs a regional crime mapping program directed by Dr. Tom Mueller, who earned his Ph.D. in geography in 1999 and his Geographic Information Sciences Professional Certification in 2005. This program serves as a repository for data storage, which can later be analyzed while training those interested in crime prevention, investigation, and enforcement. Students involved with the crime mapping effort at CAL U are able to plug in crime data and intelligence reports similar to the Suspicious Activity Reports (SARS) used by DHS.

Coming down the pipeline, Hummel mentioned the rolling out of an undergraduate online homeland security program this coming fall, as funded by the state. Articulation agreements established between nearby community colleges in the Alleghany area allow students with associate’s degrees to transfer their credits to CAL U and pursue a bachelor’s and master’s, if they so wished. CAL U does not keep statistics of students that go on to work in the public security arena, but Hummel stated that graduates have gone on to work for NASA, police agencies, border control, and federal marshals. This coming year, a class of fifty will be graduating and will have the chance to socialize and network with local CEOs, chiefs of police, and sheriffs.

This year’s security conference will feature a group of nationally recognized experts discussing the threat and implications posed by transnational crimes and border security issues. The prevalence of drug-related crimes at the Mexico border is an important matter to Hummel who said that “what’s international impacts domestic security, as far as I’m concerned.”