Development of an Outcomes-Based Undergraduate Curriculum in Homeland Security

INTRODUCTIONThe homeland security construct has become a large, complex, and dynamic enterprise, consisting of multiple professions, skill sets, and expertise. Homeland security is large in that it consists of several public sector agencies, organizations, and many hundreds of thousands of employees. Homeland security is complex in that it includes dozens, if not hundreds of job descriptions which count a plethora of duties, skills, and behaviors among their employees. Finally, homeland security is dynamic in the sense that it is a process, not an end point; a process which requires constant innovation and undergoes unrelenting evolution. These forces operate from strategic to tactical levels in order to meet often asymmetric and irregular threats (natural, man-made, or technological). As the current homeland security workforce ages, there exists an anticipated need throughout the U.S. for competent, educated homeland security professionals, in both public and private sectors. Hence, there has been both opportunity and pressure in higher education to quickly develop degree programs that will produce the next generation of homeland security practitioners. 1 In addition, the commitment by the U.S. to continue development in the areas of homeland defense and homeland security is expected to continue. 2 It is estimated that over 300 programs now exist which claim to offer some sort of homeland security education; that is, either an associate's degree, an undergraduate degree, a graduate degree, or a certificate. 3 This is in stark contrast to the known thirty-five dedicated undergraduate homeland security programs that existed in 2007. 4 As rate of rapid growth continues, academic program development has to date produced irregular and inconsistent core curricula.Given the scope of the homeland security enterprise, it is perhaps understandable that standardized core curricula are either absent or inconsistent. However, the issue of inconsistent core curricula exists, at least in part, due to the fact that no professional association has been established that can offer a vetted or even published set of program-level student learning outcomes (i.e., those outcomes that describe the curriculum in terms of knowledge, skills and abilities that students acquire at the program level), that can guide or provide model curricula to emergent homeland security programs. 5 Nor is there an organization that has itself been recognized or certified by either the United States Department of Education (USDoE) or the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) to perform accreditation for academic homeland security programs. Although this study is not a defense of whether accreditation should or should not occur in academic homeland security, the authors point out that when accreditation does exist in professional curricula such as medicine, law, engineering, nursing or dietetics, etc., program-level accreditation provides a de facto template for emergent programs to model their own core curriculum development.As a professional practice, homeland security is a complex and dynamic enterprise. It follows that academic homeland security must stay abreast of the nuances, complexities, and changes that describe and constitute the homeland security construct. The first organization to attempt to identify, collect, and examine academic programs for shared research and discussion was the Homeland Security and Defense Education Consortium, or HSDEC. Since HSDEC's inception, growth in the academic field of homeland security programs has been phenomenal. As interesting as such growth may be, it leads to particular challenges. These challenges are largely the same as those faced by all other occupations that have matured into proper professions. Namely, what does it mean to be a homeland security professional? Who can or cannot be a homeland security professional? …