Intelligence Analysis | Office | Website

Meeting U.S. Government Demand.
This Master's program is designed to help meet U.S. government demand for more specialists in the area of intelligence analysis to assist in the tasks of homeland security in the face of threats from global terrorism.

Border City Location.
As a major border city, one which has the highest volume of commercial traffic with a foreign country of any U.S. city, the Detroit-Windsor area is uniquely located to provide corporate, local law enforcement, and national government opportunities, issues, and situations relevant to intelligence analysis.

Forecasting Risk.
The field of intelligence analysis uses "open intelligence" information to provide forecasts of risks and benefits to guide governmental, law enforcement, and private industry decision making. These forecasts involve use of available data and news sources to analyze crime patterns, security threats, possible terrorist targets, and other relevant societal trends.

Intelligence Analysis builds on traditional courses in the areas of Criminal Justice and Security Administration, where the topics of crime foreseeability, threat analysis, crime prevention through environmental design, and offender behavior are central. The degree is a 33 credit hour graduate program.

Why get a degree in Intelligence Analysis at UDM?

Mapping Lab
Students enrolled in the program will be afforded state of the art learning resources, such as the Crime Mapping Software available through the Department's mapping lab located in Briggs 135 and its designation as a special Center for Crime Analysis and Geographic Profiling.

Ethics
A key component of course work in Intelligence Analysis is an emphasis on the ethical issues involved in this area. There are essentially two.

• What is the information being used for--is the organization that one is assisting (be it governmental or private) engaged in proper activity?
• Is the organization seeking information that can be gained through appropriate methods and is it seeking an honest assessment of that information?

A professional degree in Intelligence Analysis is a critical step for insuring that intelligence analysts understand the possible political miss-use that an analysis can be applied to and thus that they recognize the larger societal constituency to whom they are also responsible.

Location
As a major border city, one which has the highest volume of commercial traffic with a foreign country of any U.S. city, Detroit is uniquely located to provide corporate, local law enforcement, and national government opportunities, issues, and situations relevant to intelligence analysis.

Job Market
Given that both national agencies and global companies are seeking competent graduates to fill positions in this area, there is currently a lack of supply on both the national and local level.

Both national agencies and global companies are seeking competent graduates to fill positions in this area, and there is currently a lack of supply on both the national and local level. Currently, police departments and global companies must train their own personnel for intelligence analysis tasks.

The Department of Homeland Security has announced a grant program for students who want to develop skills that will prepare them for analyst jobs in that agency. There is currently a lack of such programs.

In a recent in-depth article on homeland security and training specialists for the intelligence community ("Colleges' Hottest New Major: Terror," Washington Post, April 3, A01), Steven David, Director of a Homeland Security Certificate Program at Johns Hopkins, notes, "Homeland Security is probably going to be the government's biggest employer in the next decade."

In the same article, Stanley Supinski, Chairman of the Homeland Security/Defense Education Consortium, composed of the Department of Defense, several universities and the Naval Postgraduate School stated, "It's growing by leaps and bounds."

Critical Need.
The employment opportunities noted are driven by government's assessment of intelligence as a national "critical need" and by government funding. There are several Federal scholarship programs available to fund graduate students who desire to study and work in the intelligence area. Two of these programs are the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program (PRISP Program), which provides scholarships up to $25,000/year and the Intelligence Community Scholarship Program which awards scholarships to students to prepare them for civilian careers in the intelligence community.

Outcomes:

• The Intelligence Analysis courses have been designed to meet the knowledge, skills, and abilities (K.S.A.'s) that have been promulgated by the Department of Homeland Security for those involved in intelligence analysis.
• These KSA's are also appropriate for police agency ("crime analyst") positions and for analyst positions in private security.
• Besides maintaining satisfactory progress in various Intelligence Analysis courses, the student's capstone project (thesis) is the key element in his or her portfolio that demonstrates satisfactory acquisition of the relevant K.S.A.'s.

Program structure
Intelligence Analysis is designed as a two academic year, four semester program. To complete all coursework in two academic years, the student would either take three courses per semester (except two in the final semester), or take up to three courses during the summer semester(s) while taking two per semester during fall and winter.

The Master of Science Degree in Intelligence Analysis is a 33 credit program designed to train the student to gather information from a wide variety of sources, including:

• open sources, such as published data bases and newspapers, and journals
• and also through interviewing of various human assets,
• and to analyze that information and prepare reports and recommendations focusing on the implications and applications of that information to various security and crime control situations.

The program is designed as a rigorous sequence of courses that includes a basic core of required courses and a series of supporting elective courses. The six required courses expose the students to both fundamental and advanced concepts and analytical techniques related to intelligence and crime and threat-related information; the elective courses are designed to help the student prepare for more specific applications in the fields of

• law enforcement,
• national security,
• private security (counter-terrorism),
• and competitive intelligence.

Curriculum and Courses
The curriculum in Intelligence Analysis has the following five components:

• Methodological courses in research and crime mapping;
• Background courses in the nature of conflict and terrorism;
• Courses in interviewing and threat assessment;
• A specialized track (in either profiling, physical and personnel security, or policy analysis);
• A thesis or capstone project in which the student applied what has been learned in the program to the analysis of a problem of his or her choosing.

Intelligence Analysis Masters Program - (11 Courses, 3 credits each)

Required Elective (Track)

Other Elective
1 course from INT, CJS, SEC, or MBA