Embry-Riddle's Growing Role in Security and Safety

Embry-Riddle's longstanding involvement in aviation security and safety has been growing since Sept. 11, as the nation's law enforcement community, legislators, and news media learn of the university's expertise in the area. Most of the attention has focused on the expertise in the bachelor's degree program in science, technology, and globalization (STG) that has been offered at the Prescott, Ariz., campus since 1997.

Students in the STG program specialize in the global aspects of one of three areas: environment, security, or technology management and policy. In the environmental area, students learn to address legal, regulatory, and policy aspects of noise and air pollution, environmental issues in space, deicing runoff, and other aviation environmental issues.

In the technology management and policy area, students learn to understand how corporate strategies and technological innovations interact and how they affect labor, management, corporations, policy, and work.

The security area gives students the skills to analyze the interactions among science, technology, and security phenomena in the context of globalization. Operations, communications, and personnel security are treated in depth for combinations of political, military, economic, cultural, social, medical, and psychological opportunities and threats.

For the university's new master's program in safety science, STG faculty also teach a course in aviation security dealing with risks, threats, and countermeasures. Topics include intelligence theory and operations; organized crime; industrial espionage; riots and disasters; terrorism; sabotage; hijacking; internal security; legal and ethical issues; roles of governments, international agencies, and other organizations; and social and cultural factors.

An outgrowth of the program is a global intelligence-monitoring center created in partnership with Air Security International. Embry-Riddle students are conducting sophisticated risk assessments for ASI clients that are considering investing and operating in foreign countries.

On the drawing board is a two-week aviation security certification program that would provide training in topics ranging from terrorism-related intelligence strategies to tactical techniques for weapons deployment in aircraft and airports. The market will include local, state, and county police departments, selected federal and aviation security personnel, and general aviation.

The linchpins of the STG program's security component are professors Richard Bloom and Philip Jones.

Bloom is director of the School of Arts and Sciences on the Prescott campus and director of terrorism, intelligence, and security studies. He received a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Kent State University. His area of expertise is in aerospace safety and security; political and clinical psychology; antiterrorism and counterterrorism; intelligence and counterintelligence; information warfare; psychohistory; psychobiography; international organized crime and weapons proliferation; international security policies; profiling systems; personnel security management systems; and detection of explosive devices.

Bloom had a 20-year military career in aerospace clinical psychology, intelligence analysis and operations, special operations planning, low-intensity conflict, crisis-response management, and humanitarian operations. Since 1996, he has edited the International Bulletin of Political Psychology (http://security.pr.erau.edu), a weekly online scholarly journal that publishes articles analyzing security and intelligence policies.

Jones, an associate professor and director of the global security and intelligence studies program, has a Ph.D. in international politics from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. His expertise is in religious militancy, terrorism, corporate security, intelligence, Islam, and South Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Kashmir, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka). Before joining Embry-Riddle's faculty, Jones worked as a consultant, a teacher, and a CIA intelligence analyst.

Since the terrorist attacks, Bloom and Jones have given countless interviews to news reporters seeking their expertise, and they've consulted on security and intelligence legislation with congressional staffs in Washington, DC. They're also consulting on terrorism intelligence techniques and the basics of aviation security with several police departments that are expecting to be more involved with aviation security.

In addition, they've been providing policy analysis for state legislators who are interested in developing state homeland security operations.

Other Embry-Riddle involvement:

More than 350 faculty members teach at least one safety or security course on both residential campuses and through the Extended Campus.
Aviation safety courses cover aircraft accident investigation; emergency and safety program management; human, mechanical, and structural factors; survival analysis; and system safety.
Students in the cooperative education program serve as interns in safety and security for the NTSB, FAA, airlines, airports, and manufacturers.
Embry-Riddle offers a course in aviation safety and security in its management certificate program in conjunction with the National Business Aviation Association.
The respected Center for Aerospace Safety Education on the Prescott campus offers aviation safety education programs. The campus also hosts the Robertson Aviation Safety Center, which includes a field laboratory with wreckage from actual crashes, where students learn how to investigate aircraft accidents.
It also houses the Safety Information Center, a repository and technical library of aviation safety materials including aircraft accident reports from the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and New Zealand and research and conference proceedings.
The National Center for Simulation, to which Embry-Riddle belongs, and Leapfrog Smart Products Inc. are proposing the use of a smart card with fingerprint capability to improve aviation training record and certification methodology and to protect pilots from identity theft.
The university is a founding member of the National Safe Skies Alliance, which focuses on aviation security issues, including airport security, and which is funding research by faculty members. One project will develop interventions to improve airport-screener performance and simulation techniques to train and assess screeners. Another project will develop security solutions featuring the integration of information from distributed airport sensors and the effective presentation of this information to security personnel.
In October 2001, the university cosponsored the 20th Digital Avionics Systems Conference, which included a special session on the design of electronic aviation security systems to thwart hijackers. Meeting host Albert Helfrick, professor of engineering technology, accepted an Avionics Distinguished Institution Award for Embry-Riddle at the meeting.
The university's degrees in air traffic management, human factors psychology, safety science, and science, technology, and globalization have strong safety and security components.