Homeland Security

This course provides an overview of the discipline of homeland security and emergency management. Since the September 11th terrorist attacks, homeland security and emergency management have evolved in response to the changing threat landscape. This course will address the all-hazards approach to homeland security and the numerous components that encompass this vast and ever-changing field.

This class investigates the primary issues and problems in educational psychology, including those related to development, cognition, behavior, emotion, and culture. The course explores the major theories in these realms and how we can apply them to become better teachers and learners.

Upon successful completion of the learning experience, students will be able to describe and discuss the methods used in most psychological research including experimental, correlational, and naturalistic approaches; locate research literature in the field of psychology; identify the appropriate statistical analysis for different research designs; evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the methods employed in selected studies in terms of internal and external validity; describe the logic of experimentation; and describe the main themes of the American Psychological Association (APA) guidelines on ethics.

This course focuses on processes, procedures, and available resources in responding to and guiding recovery from disaster events. Topics covered include planning, leadership, technology, information gathering, coordination, communication, and other issues relating to response and recovery from disaster and terrorism scenarios.

Upon successful completion of the learning experience, students will be able to define and discuss the concept of career development from several theoretical perspectives; articulate how career counseling can enhance career development; be able to work with small groups of students for the purpose of career development; support the role of the school counselor in assisting individuals achieve some understanding of how career development can enrich a person’s life; advocate for the role of the school in helping students receive career counseling and career information; understand changes in society and stress the importance of a comprehensive career development plan; discuss and justify the need for career education in our nation’s schools and curriculum advising students on careers from grades K-12; describe challenges minority students may face in trying to secure a career path and recommend several strategies for successfully meeting these challenges; and discuss the role of technologies, personality factors, values, and attitudes that may influence career development and assessment.

This course focuses on how strategic planning, incident control systems, and intelligence techniques combine to provide the necessary foundation for anti-terrorism and emergency preparedness. Topics covered include infrastructure protection, National Incident Management System, threat and vulnerability assessments, information sharing, resource planning, and other issues relating to terrorism prevention and deterrence

This course offers an overview of critical thinking and its applications in the homeland security context. The focus is on essential elements of thought, asking the right questions, uncovering fallacies in reasoning, and statistical misrepresentations. Evidence evaluation in a homeland security setting is featured with several examples interpreting real-world information.

This course explores the evolution of homeland security as a concept, a legal framework, and a redirection of national policies and priorities. The political, economic, and practical issues of implementation are examined. The course provides an overview of the history of the terrorist threat, United States responses, and an introduction to fundamental policy legislation and documents, such as national security strategies, homeland security decision directives, the National Response Plan, and National Incident Management System. The Department of Homeland Security model of planning, protecting, responding, and recovering from a natural disaster and terrorist attacks is also described.