Homeland Security Courses at Texas A&M

Bush School of Government and Public Service

• BUSH 614. Protection of the Nation’s Critical Infrastructure.  Survey an overview of the Nation’s strategies for Critical Infrastructure Protection and securing cyberspace and the definition of critical infrastructures as it exists today. This master’s level course is intended for individuals preparing for professional careers in the conduct of international affairs.
• BUSH 618. Government and Homeland Security.  Focus on how government is structured to combat terrorism, essentially a course in federalism, with a concentration on issues related to homeland security. Topics will include governmental structure and jurisdiction, political, fiscal and administrative. This master’s level course is intended for individuals preparing for professional careers in the conduct of international affairs.
• BUSH 619. Weapons of Mass Destruction.  Comprehensive study of weapons of mass destruction and their potential use by a terrorist group. The course will consider both political and technological issues associated with WMD terrorism. The focus will be on prevention, protection, response and recovery to WMD terrorism events. This master’s level course is intended for individuals preparing for professional careers in the conduct of international affairs.
• BUSH 651. National Security Policy.  A graduate-level seminar on national security policy that will provide a forum for developing an understanding of key concepts, players, institutions, intergovernmental processes, and contemporary issues in the national security policy domain.
• BUSH 656. Fundamentals of Homeland Security.  Overview of homeland security strategy, policy, threat,organization, budget -- at the federal, state, local and private business.
• BUSH 657. Terrorism in Today’s World.  Comprehensive survey of international terrorism from its origins to the present; emphasis on how the U.S. government has responded and how it has organized to counter the threat; all major terrorist groups studied; understanding of the nature of the terrorist threat and the implications for the U.S. Government.
• BUSH 679. Homeland Security and Business.  Study the impact of terrorism and homeland security on business in the U.S. It will examine the 10 principal functional areas in which business/companies/corporations are affected by terrorism and homeland security. This master’s level course is intended for individuals preparing for professional careers in the conduct of international affairs.

• BUSH 685.  Homeland Security Capstone Research Project.  Directed individual instruction in selected problems in government and public service. This individual study program will provide the student a concise review of program material, an in depth understanding of a selected aspect of homeland security, and a professional product and experience that may be cited later during the search for business or government employment.

• Bush 689.  Critical Infrastructure Protection.  Survey an overview of the Nation's strategies for Critical Infrastructure Protection and securing cyberspace and the definition of critical infrastructures as it exists today.

• Bush 689.  Government and Homeland Security.  Focus on how government is structured to combat terrorism, essentially a course in federalism, with a concentration on issues related to homeland security. Topics will include governmental structure and jurisdiction, political, fiscal and administrative.

• BUSH 689, sections 708 and 728.  Homeland Security and Emergency Management.  This course will examine the evolution of emergency management; the multiple disciplines involved in the disaster process, and examine future directions for this field.

• BUSH 689. Homeland Security Policies, Strategies, and Operations. This course provides an in-depth examination of the framing of homeland security before and after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Coverage will include the initiation and evolution of homeland security policies, strategies, and operations in the United States. Specifically, the examination will include the definition of homeland security problems, identification and evaluation of current and emerging policies and strategies to address those problems, and critically assessing selected operational activities (such as partnerships, program coverage, and shared accountability) to implement the policies and strategies. The United States’ homeland security approach will be contrasted with selected strategies in other democratic countries.

• Bush 689.  Law and Homeland Security.  This course is focused on the legal issues that confront the new Department of Homeland Security and its many associated agencies. It will differ from National Security Law in that it will concentrate on border, transportation, maritime, customs and infrastructure protection in addition to the legal issues that must be addressed by the FBI domestically in attempting to identify, capture and prosecute terrorists. The class will begin with an analysis of the threat to the homeland as reflected in a number of pre- and post-9/11 reports and a description of how the government agencies have been organized to meet the threat. The course will then explore border, maritime, cargo and transportation screening and search issues as well as questions related to immigration, detention and deportation. The FBI's post-9/11 focus and actions based on Patriot, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Attorney General Orders will be reviewed in detail as will the work of DOD and the rest of the intelligence community in handling enemy combatants. The course will conclude with a look at the legal challenges faced by the state and federal governments and private industry in attempting to protect the nation's critical infrastructure and responding to critical incidence.

• BUSH XXX. Homeland Security Strategic Planning and Budgeting. This course provides an introduction to strategic planning and budgeting in the homeland security context. It will cover the underlying fundamental principles and concepts of strategic planning and budgeting and how they are related; homeland security strategy formulation to determine specific organizational goals and expected results; risk management approaches; and planning and budgeting tools.

College of Architecture

• ARCH 622. Sustainable Building Design Technology.  Fundamentals of sustainability in building, including social, political and economic issues—focusing particularly on conservation of natural resources; design and construction of earth integrated solar buildings, including cooling, heating, lighting and habitability assessments.  Prerequisites: Graduate classification.
• LDEV 673.  International Development Planning.  International variations in urban growth and land development strategies: savings, aid and trade policy options for cities and regions; international co-development programs; application of planning and urban land development professions in contemporary global context.  Prerequisites: Graduate classification.
• PLAN 614. Planning and Technological Changes. Examines the general relationships between technology and social change; examine the historical and technological roots of change; focuses on the social impact of technological change.
• PLAN 616. Analyzing Risk/Hazard and Public Policy.  Evaluation and development of risk analysis, including risk assessment, perception of risk, risk communication and risk management; the mitigation of risk, involving technology, emergency management, disaster preparedness; emphasizes the relationship with risk analysis in public policy, participation, emergency preparedness, hazard mitigation and the management of risk.

• PLAN 625. Geographical Information Systems in Landscape and Urban Planning. Provides students an understanding of GIS fundamentals; basic concepts, principles and functions; essential skills for applying GIS in various fields such as urban planning, landscape architecture, land development, environment studies, transportation and hazard management; based on learning through class projects.

• PLAN 626. Advanced GIS in Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning. Continuation of GIS in Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning PLAN 625; topics include advanced spatial analysis technology: emphasis on urban planning, landscape architecture, land development, hazard management and related applications to issues.

• PLAN 631. Health Systems Planning and Policy.  Specific health planning issues; distribution of manpower and facilities, financial resources, local-federal partnership, system’s organization and governance.
• PLAN 634. Environmental Health Policy and Planning.  Interdisciplinary perspective of environmental risk analysis methods and policy implications; federal and state agencies and programs involved in developing and implementing environmental health policies and monitoring environmental health hazards; historical and economic context of environmental health legislation; framework for policy making process and criteria to determine effectiveness and outcomes.

• PLAN 641. Problems of Environmental Planning Administration. State and federal legislation pertaining to environmental and consumer protection aspects of urban planning; review of administrative procedures; major judicial decisions.

• PLAN 647. Disaster Recovery and Hazard Mitigation. Interdisciplinary study of the impacts of environmental disasters; describes process of disaster recovery and examines methods of reducing future vulnerability; analyzes regulation, market mechanisms, and public education as methods for implementing mitigation measures. Prerequisite: Graduate classification.

• PLAN 649. Organizational and Community Response to Crises and Disasters. 3.  Introduction to the study of organized and community planning and response to natural and technological disasters and social crisis; focus upon emergency preparedness and response; practical issues, planning for emergency management and existing research literature of basic disaster at the organization and community levels. Prerequisite: Graduate classification.

• PLAN 650. Disaster Response Planning.  Mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery strategies; roles of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Governor’s Division of Emergency Management, the National Weather Service and the American Red Cross.

• PLAN 651. Planning for Coastal and Marine Protected Areas. The science, policy and politics of establishing coastal and marine protected areas (CMPAs); an interdisciplinary graduate-level seminar; the theory and practice of using protected areas to manage complex problems related to the coastal and marine environment. Prerequisites: Graduate classification.

• PLAN 656.  Housing and Community. Housing, its development, planning, marketing, designing, financing, and production; social and design history and contemporary issues of American housing development, urban renewal, neighborhood structure and community facilities.

• URSC641. Analytic Methods in Landscape and Urban Research I.  Provides students in urban and regional science with a survey of hands on experiences with advanced techniques and procedures related to conceptual measurement and operational issues, data set development and manipulation and data analysis issues critical for conducting academic research. 

• URSC 642.  Analytic Methods in Landscape and Urban Research II  Provides students in urban and regional science with a survey of hands on experiences with advanced techniques and procedures related to conceptual measurement and operational issues, data set development and manipulation and data analysis issues critical for conducting academic research.  Prerequisites: URSC 641, permission.

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

• AGRO 614. Biodegradation and Bioremediation.  Processes affecting the biodegradation of organic chemicals in the environment; assessment of the utility of various remedial procedures, including biodegradation and bioremediation; in site specific situations.
• AGRO 615. Reclamation of Drastically Disturbed Lands.  Theoretical and practical aspects of reclamation of lands disturbed during mining of lignite, uranium, phosphorous, oil shale and other minerals and disturbances due to industrial activities; emphasis on physical and chemical characteristics of disturbed materials and their impact on establishment of permanent vegetation.
• PLPA 601. Microbial Pathogenesis of Human Disease.  This course teaches about the pathogenic mechanisms of infectious bacterial pathogens, including bio-threat agents.
• RLEM 616. Fire and Natural Resources Management.  Behavior and use of fire in the management of natural resources; principles underlying the role of weather, fuel characteristics and physical features of the environment related to development and implementation of fire plans.  Prerequisites: Graduate classification and approval of instructor. 

College of Engineering

• BAEN 669. Water Quality Engineering.  Nonpoint source pollution processes including transport mechanisms and contaminant fate; design of best management practices for abating nonpoint source pollution.
• CHEN 655. Process Safety Engineering.  Applications of engineering principles to process hazards analysis including source and dispersion modeling, emergency relief systems, fire and explosion prevention and mitigation, hazard identification, risk assessment, process safety management, etc.
• CHEN 658. Fundamentals of Environmental Remediation Processes.  Fundamental approach to various remediation technologies, topics in environmental thermodynamics and mass transfer, adsorption, desorption, ion exchange, air stripping, extraction, chemical oxidation, biodegration.
• CVEN 609. Environmental Control of Oil and Hazardous Materials.  Oil and hazardous material (OHM) spills in the engineering design process; evaluation of OHM properties and their behavior and impact to environmental systems; prevention programs and documents, technology for spill containment and removal; contingency planning cycle including administrative site-specific plans and resource acquisition; response organization; restoration and documentation.
• CVEN 610. Environmental Risk Assessment.  Risk assessment of the environment and human exposure in a statistically-based approach to determine allowable levels of exposure without significant deleterious effects; the basic approach of hazard identification; data collection and analysis; toxicity assessment; risk characterization; applications in ecological and human risk assessment; risk analysis performed.
• CVEN 624. Infrastructure Engineering and Management.  Defines the infrastructure deterioration problems in the United States and describes the engineering and management approaches to arrest the deterioration.
• CVEN 669. Design of Structures for Hazardous Environmental Loads.  Introduction to wind and earthquake engineering with focus on studying the characteristics and effects of various types of windstorms and earthquakes; development of tools that can be used in specifying wind and earthquake loads on structures.
• CVEN 682. Environmental Remediation of Contaminated Sites.  Aspects of characterization and design of plans for remediation of sites contaminated with hazardous wastes; review of federal and state regulations; risk assessment; remedial technology screening and design of remedial plans.
• CPSC 665. Advanced Networking and Security.  Security aspects of various network protocols including investigation and tool development using “live” machines and networks.
• CPSC 673. Information, Secrecy and Authentication I.  Preliminaries; probability, information, entropy, signals, channels; group-theoretic view of messages; contemporary secrecy and digital signature systems; one-time pads, DES, RSA, DSS, wheels, LFSR-based systems; analog scramblers; key exchange, key management, secret sharing, access structures; measures of security.
• CPSC 674. Information, Secrecy and Authentication II.  Classical and recent attacks; login, compression, error control and genetic codes; finite and infinite codes; matrices, graphs, duals, groups, morphisms, composites, products, rates and classification of codes; the confusion/diffusion/arithmetic/calculus extension of Shannon’s two design primitives.
• ECEN 689. Topics in Network Security.  Topics covered in the course include the following: Denial of Service attacks and Impact; Buffer Overflow attacks and Worms; Rootkits; DOS-Elephant Flow containment; Measurement techniques and IP Traceback; Automatic Fingerprinting and Honeypots; Encryption; Public Key Cryptography;  IPSEC, SSL, & SET; and, Electronic Cash.
• NUEN 612. Radiological Safety and Hazards Evaluation.  State and federal regulations concerning radioactive materials; radiation safety as applied to accelerators, nuclear reactors and radioactive byproducts; rigorous methods of analysis applied to computation of biological radiation dose and dose rates from various sources and geometries; radiation effects on physical systems.
• NUEN 650. Nuclear Nonproliferation and Arms Control.  Studies the political and technological issues associated with nuclear proliferation and arms control; history of arms control treaties and verification, proliferation resistance in the nuclear fuel cycle, international and domestic safeguards, material accountancy, containment and surveillance, and physical protection.
• NUEN 673. Radiation Biology.  This course will provide an understanding of the molecular, cellular, and tissue responses of organisms exposed to ionizing radiation. Conditions that can modify these responses will be discussed. Emphasis will be placed on the most current areas of research and the molecular techniques being exploited to investigate current research questions.
• OCEN 674. Ports and Harbors.  Basic port planning including site selection, environmental factors and economic conditions; design of wharves, quays, jetties, breakwaters, terminals, navigational channels and fenders; harbor sedimentation and maintenance dredging; design of fishing, small craft and recreation boat harbors.
• SENG 655. Process Safety Engineering.  Applications of engineering principles to process hazards analysis including source and dispersion modeling, emergency relief systems, fire and explosion prevention and mitigation, hazard identification, risk assessment, process safety management, etc.
• SENG 674. System Safety Engineering.  Current system safety engineering analysis techniques; failure mode and effect and fault tree analysis. Engineering economic analysis is reviewed to develop skills for the safety engineer in presenting alternate solutions to management.
  
• SENG 677. Fire Protection Engineering.  Theory of combustion, characteristics of flammables, fire resistance, fire spread, fire protection principles, public and private fire service organization and equipment; automatic extinguishing systems. Fire protection analysis and design projects. 
  

College of Liberal Arts

• POLS 633. Seminar in Foreign and Security Policy.  Selected aspects of the formation and conduct of foreign and defense policy.

College of Veterinary Medicine

• VAPH 689-621.  Risk Analysis, Disease Detection and Surveillance.  This course draws heavily on specific subjects related to biodefense and preparedness.
• VIBS 664. Risk and Crisis Reporting.  Assessment and analysis of environmental and health risk, analytical procedures, interpretation of risk factors, reporting science crisis events.
• VTMI 647.  Viral Pathogenesis.  Virus infections in animals and humans; types of infections, mode of transmission, intracellular pathology, epidemiology, isolation and identification of inciting agents; tissue cultivation, animal inoculations and diagnostic tests.  Prerequisites: VTPB 438 or equivalent.
• VTPP 634.  Physiology for Bioengineers I.  Cellular anatomy, cellular physiology and biochemistry; systems analysis of digestive endocrine and musculoskeletal system function including information related to gross anatomy, histology and disease states; quantitative aspects of physiology and engineering applications to clinical medicine.  Prerequisites: Biomedical Engineering major or instructor approval
• VTPP 635.  Physiology for Bioengineers II.  A systems analysis of nervous, cardiovascular, respiratory and urinary function including information related to gross anatomy, histology and disease states; quantitative aspects of physiology and engineering applications to clinical medicine.  Prerequisites: VTPP 634.
• VTPP 672.  Toxic Plants and Biotoxins.  An examination of the disease syndromes produced in animals and humans by native, ornamental and introduced plants, vertebrate and invertebrate toxins and mycotoxins; field trips for plant identification.  Prerequisites: VTPP 670; approval of instructor. 
• VTPP 674.  Natural Products Toxicology.  Occurrence, identification and metabolism of naturally occurring toxicants of plant, animal and microbial origin.  Prerequisites: CHEM 628; approval of instructor.
• VTPP 675.  Industrial and Environmental Toxicology.  Fundamentals of toxicology and risk assessment; effects of selected classes of hazardous chemicals encountered in the workplace or environment on human health will be considered.  Prerequisites: Approval of instructor. 
• VTPP 676.  Genetic and Molecular Toxicology.  Mechanisms of toxicant-induced target organ toxicity with emphasis on molecular control of mammalian and cell growth differentiation.  Prerequisites: Graduate course in cell biology and biochemistry.

Mays Business School

• ACCT 644. Control and Audit of Information Systems.  This course focuses on the control, audit, and security of information systems; it is aimed at enhancing the ability of accounting professionals to deal with complex computer-based accounting systems as auditors of these systems; it covers topics such as general and application controls, audit software, and e-commerce security.
• INFO 634. Business Data Communication.  The objective of this course is to provide a basic understanding of the technical and management aspects of business data communications and networking.
• INFO 674. Business Information Security.  Explores the business, managerial, and technological aspects of information security; analysis, design, and implementation issues surrounding effective information security; authentication, authorization, availability, business continuity planning, confidentiality, disaster recovery, encryption, firewalls, fraud protection, security policy development, integrity, risk management, virus protection, VPNs and wireless security.
• MGMT 667. Multinational Enterprises.  Graduate seminar in international business; multinational enterprises (MNEs) are studied from various perspectives including economics, management, entry and expansion strategies, contractual agreements, transfer pricing, impacts on home and host countries, MNE-state relations, regional integration, public policies towards MNEs.

College of Education and Human Resource Development

• EHRD 601. Foundations of Human Resource Development.  Survey of the set of systematic and planned activities designed by an organization to provide its employees with the necessary skills to meet current and future job demands: learning and human resource development needs assessments, task analysis, designing, implementing and evaluating training programs, career development, organization development.
• EHRD 602.  Critical Issues in Human Resources Development.  Critical issues in human resource development; development of workforce through training and development activities.  Prerequisites: Graduate classification.
• EHRD 603.  Applied Theoretical Foundations of Human Resource Development.  Challenges of supervision associated with human resource development settings; how to apply theoretical foundations of human resource development to ensure employees obtain the necessary skills for current and future job demands.  Prerequisites: Master's classification.
• EHRD 607.  International Human Resource Development.  Organization, delivery, and management of human resource development programs in multinational and global corporate settings.  Prerequisites: Graduate classification.
• EHRD 612.  Training and Development in Human Resource Development.  Overview of the process of planning, implementing and evaluation training and development in a variety of settings; includes conceptual tools needed to develop and design training.  Prerequisites: Graduate classification.
• EHRD 621.  Communication in Human Resource Development.  Visual, oral, written and computer-based communication processes and their application in organizations, interpersonal interactions and small group settings in human resources development.  Prerequisites: Graduate classification.
• EHRD 636.  Working with Adult Groups.  Development of skills for facilitating productivity in task-oriented groups of adults. Issues, problems and concepts frequently encountered, and potential solutions. 
• EHRD 642.  Program Development in Adult Education.  Conceptual tools needed to develop educational programs for adults in a variety of settings; concepts of planning, implementation and evaluation.
• EHRD 673.  Introduction to Distance Learning.  Introduction to the field of distance learning; application of distance learning principles to training settings via a variety of distance learning modalities; examination of the concepts surrounding distance learning, the theories that underpin the field, and the impact that they have on practice.
• EHRD 679.  Procurement of Contracts and Grants.  Funding sources that support research and development activities; identify methods of securing funding; study state, national and private funding sources and how to become successful in submitting to each; complete a proposal to a funding agency; and a management plan for a funded project.  Prerequisites: Graduate classification.