In so doing, students and professionals can share experiences, ideas, and challenges and collectively develop solutions that answer some of industry and government’s biggest homeland security challenges. Fostering this interaction in an academic setting can help produce new approaches, and online degrees and certificates make it possible for working professionals to take part in homeland security education, regardless of their physical location.

Water security expert Vance Taylor earned his master’s in homeland security leadership from the University of Connecticut online. He studied while also working as a director for security policy at the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies.

“I was able to take what I was learning, apply it to my job, and craft the discussion about what homeland security meant for infrastructure protection and waste water,” he said.

As a professional already working in security, his study allowed him to take part in defining the homeland security field, both in theory and practice. The online component, however, was critical.

“The hardest part was managing the schedule,” he said. “I was working full time, trying to be a good husband and father. The schedule was very challenging, and yet if it wasn’t an online program, I wouldn’t have been able to do it.”

Providing digital access to a wide network of professionals facilitates discussions and ideas that might not otherwise occur. Using online capabilities to bring together professionals from industry and government offers working professionals the opportunity to gain credentials for their homeland security expertise. Drawing on their classmates’ diverse backgrounds, students better understand the homeland security mission and the tools and approaches available to tackle current and emerging threats. Without the online option, these revelations might not be had.

There are some drawbacks to online study, one being the absence of face-to-face interaction. Integrated homeland security efforts are built on personal connections with other professionals. Online study does not necessarily prevent this. Taylor noted that many of the connections and relationships he established with other students during his online study continue to be important contacts, advisers, and friends. Noriega-Ward’s courses in geographic information systems are also all held online.

“You do lose that in-person networking,” she said. “But I think they try to get around it. My classmates are from all over the country, and you cast a networking web very wide that way.”

 

The Emerging Homeland Security Profession

Professions are created, in part, through the study of their own subject matter. Through research and debate, students and experts develop a shared body of literature and perspective. The study itself earns students certificates and degrees, which offer legitimacy for those claiming homeland security expertise. And throughout, the dialogue between experts in different fields – spurred on by homeland’s inherent interdisciplinary nature – is driving how homeland security is understood and advanced.

Philip J. Palin, a research fellow with the Pace University graduate program in Management for Public Safety and Homeland Security Professionals, wrote in Homeland Security Affairs: “Homeland security is emerging. It is changing. Homeland security is of the class of knowledge in which change is continuous.”

It would seem that homeland security is in the midst of becoming a profession, though it may never stop the process of becoming. The canon of homeland security knowledge cannot be closed, as the threat and challenges are always in flux. Yet, the concept has certainly taken shape, in no small part guided by discussions and study of students, experts, and professionals preparing for this ever-changing field.

This article was first published in The Year in Homeland Security: 2011/2012 Edition.