On-Campus Course Schedule for Summer 2023

Advanced Analytical Techniques

This course is designed to provide an opportunity for students to explore techniques used by the intelligence community and to apply those techniques to intelligence problems. Focusing on a variety of techniques and technological tools, this course will expose students to new and useful methods for conducting intelligence analysis. Students will also refine their skills in advanced analytic techniques by completing multiple analytical projects.

Applied Intelligence Communications

This course focuses on oral and written communication skills in applied intelligence. Students will learn how to communicate information effectively to leaders and decision makers in areas of law enforcement, homeland security, and competitive business intelligence. Students will learn about practical techniques and concepts for producing reports, briefs, and infographics relevant to each of these fields within applied intelligence.

Capstone

See section description for more details

Note: Capstone proposals must be approved by course instructor before registering in the Capstone course. Program staff will manually register eligible students for capstone course following approval from course instructor. A grade of "B" or higher is needed to pass this course. Core requirement for MPS degree.

Defense, Diplomacy & Intel

This course examines the roles, applications, and mutual dependence of three key tools of national power—diplomacy, defense, and intelligence. This course will explore and analyze salient national security challenges facing the United States, including the rise of China, Russia’s growing geopolitical ambitions, Iranian and North Korean nuclear ambitions, cyber as the “fifth domain” of international conflict, transnational terrorism, and the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This course will focus on the integration and interplay of diplomacy and defense as instruments of national power as well as the ways in which national and military intelligence enable both. Students will approach the issues discussed in this course as future practitioners in training, learning to support national objectives as analysts, policymakers, and senior officials. As future intelligence professionals, students will learn the roles of various intelligence disciplines, methods of analysis, and how their work supports and shapes diplomatic and defense decision-making.

Ethics in Applied Intelligence

The Ethics course is a core course in all of SCS’s MPS programs. In the first part of this course, students are introduced to appropriate ethical methodologies, principles, values, and frameworks. In the second part of the course, students study discipline- and field-specific codes of ethics within the profession. The course explores the ethical responsibilities all intelligence professionals have toward themselves, corporations, the government, and the public. Students contrast the roles and responsibilities of intelligence professionals among other law enforcement, homeland security, and competitive business professionals. In the third part of the course, students apply an appropriate decision-making framework and gain experience in decision-making surrounding ethical issues. Course discussions will center on issues involving privacy and confidential or sensitive information. During their final project, students codify an individual code of ethics in relation to professional codes of conduct.

Global Competitive Intelligence

This course examines Competitive Intelligence (CI) as the collection and analysis of information to anticipate competitive activity, see past market disruptions, and dispassionately interpret events in a global perspective. In addition students will develop techniques to develop analysis, which provides insight into marketplace dynamics and challenges in a structured, disciplined, and ethical manner using published and non-published sources.

Info Management for Comp Intel

This course examines how organizations can use information to create competitive advantage. Students will learn how organizations can become data driven by having the proper elements in place, such as strategy, data governance, and leadership. They will also gain knowledge on security and privacy requirements for information and how to monetize information for competitive advantage. Finally, the course covers best practices for sharing information within organizations and among organizations, and how to convert tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge.

Information Security

This course provides theoretical and applied foundations of information security and assurance. Students will study various types of cyber-crime and vulnerabilities of government computer systems and information networks and learn about strategies for the protection of information and computer systems and how to mitigate and respond to breaches of those systems.

Introduction to Applied Intelligence

This course provides a thorough understanding of intelligence analysis as a field and the tools and techniques associated with intelligence as related to law enforcement, homeland security, cybersecurity, and competitive business intelligence. Students gain a solid grounding in fundamental intelligence concepts and learn how to develop an intelligence strategy, select frameworks and tools for gathering and processing relevant data, and present findings in an effective manner. Assignments include case study assessment and the creation of a strategic intelligence plan.

Introduction to Homeland Security

This course is designed to provide foundational knowledge about policy, organizations, legal issues, crisis communications, fear management, and current management approaches related to homeland security.

Psychology of Applied Intelligence

This course examines the mental machinery behind intelligence analysis and focuses the learner on understanding the fundamental thought processes behind how our mental machinery works in an analytical setting. With specific focus on critical thinking and understanding and moving beyond biases, the course provides students with an opportunity to examine cases in which objectivity and critical thinking have not been present and allows students to explore how those case studies would have been different with an understanding of the psychology behind intelligence analytics.

Unconventional Threats/Counter-terrorism

This course will build students’ analytical skills to examine policy issues in strategic counterterrorism planning, particularly in the use of applied technologies within the context of civil jurisdiction and rule of law. Students will discuss policy issues that address the balance and tension between security and civil liberties to effectively counter terrorism.