Majoring in the next big threat
Ualbany students seek out courses to prepare them for a dangerous new world
You might call it Apocalypse 101. A group of 14 freshmen in Robert Griffin’s Homeland Security course were discussing good and evil on Thursday. Specifically, their task was to brainstorm and list the potential benefits and threats posed by the emerging field of gene-editing technology.
It can be harnessed to help cure disease or increase crop yields. Or it can be used to create bioweapons or to breed harmful insects that would devour an enemy nation’s croplands.
This is the sort of thing that emergency responders need to think about, said Griffin. “If you are at the Centers for Disease Control what do you change about how you think about your job?” he asked the students.
The freshmen were among the 600 who have signed up for majors in the University at Albany’s new Homeland Security program this fall. The school had initially expected about 110.
The memory of 9/11, global warming, worries about an unstable world and the prospect of a good job market are prompting students to study topics
such as cybersecurity, emergency preparedness, intelligence gathering and the psychology of terrorism.
Those are among the offerings at Ualbany’s College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity. Started in 2015, the college’s total enrollment has mushroomed to more than 2,000, counting graduate and online students, as well as those focusing on cybersecurity.
The gene-editing ideas that students in Griffin’s class tossed out were wide-ranging. Genes could be harnessed to restore extinct animal species like woolly mammoths, or to spark an outbreak of plague. They could someday change a person’s genetic characteristics to ward off heart disease, or could be used to create a race of superhumans intent on world domination.
“Captain America vs Dr. Evil,” Griffin said. Griffin urged students to think about how a local community would respond to something like a bio-attack.
“You’re going to have to have capacity at the local level,” he said.
Griffin should know. He worked for years in local emergency services in Virginia. When terrorists crashed a hijacked plane into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, he was the fire chief in nearby Loudoun County, Va., and was among those who responded to the attack.
He later served as the Under Secretary for Science and Technology at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, where he oversaw $1.1 billion in research initiatives.
Griffin was hired as the new college’s founding dean in 2017. While he still teaches a class, Griffin has spent much of his time working to meet the demand for courses.
They’ve recently hired faculty from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, and the University of Delaware. Another recent hire came from Turkey’s National Computer Emergency Response Team.
Cybersecurity courses are proving particularly popular, and that extends beyond Ualbany.
Albany Law School, for example, has an online master’s degree in legal studies degree with a concentration in cybersecurity and data privacy. “We expect the class to grow considerably next year,” said Albany Law spokesman David Singer.
Ian Mcdonald, the interim math and science dean at the College of Saint Rose, also in Albany, said there will be more than three million cybersecurity jobs open in the next few years.
The jobs will be global and they are more than technical or programming positions. Saint Rose started offering a cybersecurity bachelor’s degree this fall, with 21 students enrolled so far.
Students in the Ualbany Homeland Security program offered a variety of reasons for their interest.
“Every day is different,” said Andrew Flynn, who would like to get into foreign affairs. Katie Latko was impressed when an FBI agent visited her Suffolk County high school and spoke about her work. She’s also taking cybersecurity and, like Flynn, is studying Arabic as well.
James Mossman said he was motivated by his family. The Nassau County native said his uncle and grandfather were firefighters, with his uncle responding to Ground Zero on 9/11. He was a year old at the time but the family lore has stuck with him.
“It’s very new,” he said of the Homeland program. “It’s unique.”