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Students learn to combat global terror
Kevin Howe
KRT
MONTEREY, Calif. � The war on terrorism is going to be a long one. So why not major in it in college?
The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 opened up a number of career paths in defense, research and security fields for students and professionals on the Monterey Peninsula.
You now can get a master's degree in homeland defense or computer systems security at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey or an associate of arts degree in any one of scores of languages at the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio of Monterey, or study trafficking in weapons of mass destruction at Monterey Institute of International Studies.
"We're finding a larger number of students who want to specialize in nonproliferation studies, and a huge surge of focus on weapons of mass destruction and terrorism," said Dr. William Potter, founder and director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at MIIS.
A course in the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons taught by the center's Amy Sands "is bursting at the seams," Potter said. "There is no doubt the topic resonates with young people."
All students at Monterey Institute speak at least two languages and nearly all are dual majors in a language and another field�business, international relations or management.
Their language skills, coupled with global databases on missile traffic and nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, have made the Nonproliferation Center a world authority on weapons of mass destruction�who makes them, who sells them and who has them.
Across town at the Naval Postgraduate School, the Center for Homeland Security is offering a master's program beginning in November, said Dr. Ted Lewis, academic associate for the program.
Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice, the course covers a wide range of subjects related to terrorism, security and civil-military relations. It is aimed at managers in local, state and federal government agencies.
Supporting courses are drawn from the Navy school's national security affairs, computer security, operations research and international security affairs curricula.
The Homeland Security program also fields mobile education teams to support state governors and senior state officials with information on countering potential terrorist threats.
"We're aiming at policy- and decision-makers," Lewis said. 'We want to create a cadre of professionals we can grow over time."
The Justice Department chose the Navy school for the program, Lewis said, because "a lot of skills for dealing with these problems exist in the military that don't exist in civilian institutions."
"The Department of Justice came here because of the unique things going on at the school," said David Netzer, associate provost and dean of research at NPS.
"We already had courses on terrorism in the national security affairs program, civil-military relations, defense analysis, computer security, operations research and the MOVES (Modeling Virtual Environments and Simulation) Institute."
Last year the National Science Foundation selected the Naval Postgraduate School as one of six universities for its federal Cyber Service Corps scholarship program. The first class of 10 students is eight months into the course, said Dr. Cynthia Irvine, director of the school's Center for Information Security Studies and Research.
The program offers students fully paid tuition, a housing and meal stipend of about $30,000 a year and placement in paid summer internships with government agencies, Irvine said.
Graduates will be expected to serve two years with a U.S. government agency as specialists in safeguarding computer systems.
The program was developed by the National Science Foundation before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon because of an already-perceived threat of cyberterrorism, Irvine said.
It has since expanded to 13 colleges and universities nationwide.
Interest in the scholarship program is high.
"We had to turn down a lot of qualified applications for the October class" because of limited funding, Irvine said.
Retired Air Force officer Paul Schoberg, a student in the scholarship program, commented that "after bin Laden did his number, I wasn't eligible to go on active duty, so I heard about this and wanted to make a contribution."
He spent 15 years outside the Air Force as a computer programmer and data processor. The security courses are a new experience for him.
"What we did in undergraduate studies about security was not much."
The center was involved in a computer war game in April that involved NPS, the service academies and other universities, in which opposing sides ran 'cyber attacks" against one another's computer systems, said J.D. Fulp, lecturer and research associate.
He likened the computer exercise to "sparring practice," where the combatants become used to cyber conflict and can coolly develop strategies while under attack, the way a professional boxer can outthink and outfight an untrained street brawler.
"I'd like to see us get so good that we're bored."
Richard Clark, adviser to President Bush on cyber security and infrastructure protection, asked the Center for Information Security Studies and Research to prepare a report on "trusted" computer systems _ those that have no outside functions that would allow them to be contaminated by computer viruses or hackers. That report has been incorporated into the national cyber security strategy, Irvine said.
The 3,000 students at the Defense Language Institute are nearly all military personnel, with some from federal law enforcement or diplomatic agencies thrown in.
"Talking to the students, there have been a lot who joined right after 9-11," said language school Provost Stephen Payne, "and there were a lot in the pipeline already in Arabic and Persian Farsi."
Arabic is a 63-week course; Farsi takes 47 weeks.
"We feel they should be a little longer, but we're getting the job done," Payne said.
During the Gulf War, the language school's already substantial Arabic department took a substantial jump in enrollment as the Department of Defense sent out requests for more Arabic linguists.
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