• Food safety grant to fund research on preventing food-borne illnesses

    A $1.3 million grant to develop a new food-safety training program for government and industry has been awarded by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to the University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine

  • Electronegativity will simplify chemistry education, allows new research

    Researchers at Oregon State University have created a new, unifying method to describe a basic chemical concept called “electronegativity,” first described almost eighty years ago by OSU alumnus Linus Pauling and part of the work that led to his receiving the Nobel Prize

  • Teaching sensors to think for themselves

    There is a major problem with sensors: data overload; as sensors gather more and more information, it has become increasingly difficult for human users to separate out what is relevant from what is not; two U Vermont researchers received a grant from DARPA to teach sensors what to look for — and what not to look for

  • St. Andrews University promoting its certificate in terrorism studies

    The University of St. Andrews is promoting a program leading to a certificate in it terrorism studies; the program was established in 2006 in is offered on-line

  • 9/11 generates growth of homeland security college programs

    The 9/11 attacks led to a flurry of spending not only on defense and homeland security needs, but also education; in recent years dozens of homeland security programs have emerged at community colleges, universities, and graduate schools across the country and thousands of students have flocked to these new programs lured by the promise of jobs

  • General Dynamics teams up with Virginia Tech to bolster cybersecurity

    Defense giant General Dynamics’ cybersecurity division has teamed up with Virginia Tech to help strengthen the nation’s cybersecurity research capabilities; on Wednesday, the company announced that its Advanced Information Systems branch will assist Virginia Tech with its new Security and Software Engineering Research Center (S2ERC)

  • Wake Tech uses grant funding to expand law enforcement education

    North Carolina-based Wake Tech Community College received grants of more than $2.5 million in the 2010-2011 fiscal year; the money was used, among other things, to develop training programs in the latest cybercrime and latent evidence technologies and to add a new, state-of-the-art crime lab to its public safety training facility

  • California universities prepare homeland security leaders of tomorrow

    Fresno State University in California is readying itself for the launch of a new bachelor’s degree program that prepares students for careers in homeland security and emergency management; the program is part of a broader effort by California State University (CSU) leaders as well as local and state officials to boost the state’s security by training more professionals to enter a field that is facing shortages of qualified workers

  • Online university announces Master’s in homeland security program

    An online university recently announced that students can now enroll in its online degree program to obtain a Master’s of Science in Homeland Security; the online degree can be earned through Capella University, an accredited online university with nearly 40,000 students currently enrolled; courses will focus on topics like emergency preparedness, management, infrastructure protection, threat analysis, media communications, and cyber security

  • Engineering students win wastewater treatment competition

    In a surprise win, Humboldt State University (HSU) students recently bested engineering students at top ranked California universities to gain first place at the annual American Society of Civil Engineers Mid-Pacific Water Treatment Competition; this year teams were asked to build a system that would treat contaminated water that was heading toward a sensitive wetland ecosystem after an earthen levy around a biosolids compost facility had been breached; the teams were challenged to either design a containment system for the water or a treatment system; the HSU team won the competition beating U.C. Berkeley by more than thirty points

  • U.K. universities accused of being "hotbeds of Islamic extremism"

    British universities have been accused of being fertile breeding grounds for violent extremism; a recent investigation by British MPs claims that Islamic fundamentalism has flourished at universities and school officials have done little to stop it; school officials have denied these charges and insist that the report is entirely lacking in factual evidence; university vice-chancellors said the parliamentary report conflates the fact that young people are susceptible to radicalization and that a very large percentage of young people in the United Kingdom attend universities

  • Jersey community college first to offer homeland security degree

    Ocean County College is the first community college in New Jersey to begin offering students an associate’s degree in homeland security studies; as police departments across the United States have seen their budgets slashed, it has become increasingly difficult for recent graduates hoping to find jobs as police officers; the program encourages students to pursue law enforcement opportunities with DHS; currently there is a need in the private and public sector for qualified personnel, but a shortage of talented individuals; the program will introduce homeland security to students and if they are interested in a position with the government must receive a bachelor’s degree from a four year college

  • Corruption in academic accreditation

    Little-known colleges, most unaccredited, exploit Byzantine federal regulations, enrolling almost exclusively foreign students and charging them upward of $3,000 for a chance to work legally in the United States; they flourish in California and Virginia, where regulations are lax, and many of their practices are shoddy — for instance, holding some classes on only three weekends per semester; these colleges usher in thousands of foreign students and generate millions of dollars in profits because they have the power, bestowed by the U.S. government, to help students get visas

  • CAL U prepares its students for careers in homeland security

    California University of Pennsylvania (CAL U), an institute of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, offers various courses, certificates, and degrees in Homeland Security; a recent survey found that CAL U offers the nation’s best Internet-based degree programs; the acting dean of the college of liberal arts says: “the quality, education, experience, and student-centered attitude of our faculty, along with our connections with real world professional organizations makes us one of the top education institutes in our country”

  • American Military University: meeting the needs of the security community

    AMU promises a learning community of like-minded adult professionals with established careers in law enforcement, emergency services, national security, and intelligence; the current student body of 70,000 students worldwide is divided between 60 percent military and 40 percent non-military; in terms of program satisfaction, 98 percent of the 3,631 students surveyed between January 2010 and September 2010 reported that they were either satisfied or very satisfied with their overall experience at AMU