2024-2025 Undergraduate Catalog 
    
    Nov 23, 2024  
2024-2025 Undergraduate Catalog

Homeland Security, B.S.


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Homeland security is a broad, interdisciplinary field that deals with protecting the homeland and responding to and recovering from human-made and natural disasters. The objective of the homeland security major is to provide an appropriate education and skill sets to individuals planning careers in homeland security at the federal, state, or local level. This includes those agencies that protect the country from the threat of terrorism or criminal activity involving the movement of persons and goods across borders. The homeland security major also provides skill sets in addressing potential threats to the nation's critical infrastructure.

Program Learning Goals

  1. Develop the missions and goals of the Department of Homeland Security and its agencies responsible for these missions and goals.
  2. Establish threats of terrorism, hazards, and other natural and human disasters to establish strategies to respond, recover from, and counter these threats.
  3. Apply knowledge of threats and vulnerabilities to major transportation systems in the US, critical infrastructure, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), and illegal activities by transnational criminal organizations in the movements of people and goods across air, land, and sea borders.
  4. Investigate and collect evidence dealing with Homeland Security threats and incidents.

Program Learning Outcomes

  1. Identify the missions and goals of the Department of Homeland Security and its agencies responsible for these missions and goals.
  2. Develop a strategy to respond, recover from, and counter these threats to the homeland. 
  3. Develop a critical assessment plan to address infrastructure protection and vulnerability of domestic and transnational criminal and terrorist organizations.
  4. Complete the investigative process for Homeland Security threats and incidents.

University Core Curriculum


The completion of 40 credits of University Core Curriculum with the following restrictions is required:

Tier 1 Requirements:

  • C1T1: ENGL 1112  or ENGL 1113  or ENGL 1114   - Seminar in Academic Inquiry and Writing
  • C2T1: COMM 1130   - Principles of Communication
  • C3T1: MATH 1108  or higher - College Mathematics or higher
  • C4T1: Any Tier 1 science course with laboratory
  • C5T1: UNIV 1125  - The UNCommon Course
  • C6T1: HIST 1122  - The Meaning of Modern America
  • C7T1: PSYC 1111  - Introduction to Psychology
  • C8T1: Any Tier 1 Spanish level language course
  • C9T1: Any Tier 1 course from Perspectives on Creative Arts


Tier 2 Requirements:

  • C1T2: ENGL 2220  - Writing for Business and Industry 
  • Plus 9 credits of additional Tier 2 courses

Required Major Courses


Students earning the B.S. degree in Homeland Security are required to complete at least 121 credits, including the University Core Curriculum as defined above and the following courses:

Free Electives


  • Plus 39 credits of free, unrestricted electives

Minor in Spanish (recommended but not required)


For those students considering employment after graduation with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Border Patrol, or several other agencies within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a fluency in a foreign language, especially Spanish, would be useful and potentially career enhancing. A minor in Spanish requires 15-hour requirement, to include:

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