IU is playing host to a three-week course for Army officials for the first time.
The Institute for Defense and Business is coordinating with IU to offer a course about national security, strategic planning and crisis management. The course will be taught by IU experts for officers, warrant officers and senior non-commissioned officers from the U.S. Army. This is the first time the IDB has provided the course outside its base in North Carolina.
The Center on American and Global Security in the IU School of Global and International Studies and the Kelley School of Business are course partners for the three-week IU-IDB Strategic Studies Fellows Program, according to an IU press release.
Participants arrived Sunday for the program. The course runs from May 16 to June 4 and is a graduate-level seminar centered on giving U.S. Army officers leadership skills to understand the foundations of national security and decision-making, the origins of international conflict, cybersecurity, strategy and communications presented from a non-military point of view, according to an IU press release.
“This short but intense course is designed to introduce the officers and enlisted personnel to certain foundational concepts in national and international security,” Sumit Ganguly, director of the IU Center on American and Global Security, said in a press release . “It will also focus on some global flash points and security challenges ranging from the fraught situation in the South China Sea to the emergence of the Islamic State in the Middle East.”
Throughout the three weeks, the participants will be working in teams on a capstone project. At the conclusion of the program, they’ll present their final projects to a panel of Army representatives, IU faculty and the IDB.
The session includes presenters such as SGIS scholar Lee Hamilton, lecturing about national decision-making structures. Idie Kesner, dean of the business school and the Frank P. Popoff Chair of Strategic Management, is presenting dual courses on strategic planning and crisis management. Bradley C. Wheeler, IU vice president for information technology and chief information officer, will teach and discuss cybersecurity issues.
Classes are offered by faculty from other SGIS departments, the Department of Political Science in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Maurer School of Law will concentrate on numerous issues, including biological weapons, U.S.-Russia relations, climate change and counterterrorism strategy, according to an IU press release.
In 2013, IU expanded a partnership with the IDB. In a five-year agreement which continues a standing collaboration through which the Kelley School of Business and the IDB offer degree programs and training tailored around global business, logistics and tactical management.
“This partnership creates an extraordinary opportunity for Indiana University to help meet the educational needs of professionals in the military, government and the private sector,” said Lauren Robel in an IU press release.
Leo Smith
