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Last updated on Tuesday, May 24, 2016
(BLOOMINGTON) - Warrant and senior non-commissioned officers from the U.S. Army are on the Indiana University Bloomington campus to learn about national security, strategic planning and crisis management from IU experts as part of an ongoing partnership with the Institute for Defense and Business.
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.
The program, being offered through June 4, is a graduate-level seminar focused on providing U.S. Army officers a broad set of 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.
This is the first time the Institute for Defense and Business has offered the program away from its flagship base in North Carolina. The Kelley School has previously collaborated on the Strategic Studies Fellows Program.
"This short but intense course is designed to introduce the officers and enlisted personnel to certain foundational concepts in national and international security," said Sumit Ganguly, director of the IU Center on American and Global Security. "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."
Participants arrived Sunday and began coursework Monday morning.
Among the session presenters are former congressman and current School of Global and International Studies Distinguished Scholar Lee Hamilton, teaching about national decision-making structures. Idie Kesner, dean of the Kelley School and the Frank P. Popoff Chair of Strategic Management, is presenting two sessions on strategic planning and crisis management. Bradley C. Wheeler, IU vice president for information technology and chief information officer, will discuss cybersecurity issues.
Sessions presented by faculty from other School of Global and International Studies departments, the Department of Political Science in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Maurer School of Law will focus on numerous issues, including biological weapons, U.S.-Russia relations, climate change and counterterrorism strategy.
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 Institute for Defense and Business.
"The students will examine a range of national security issues with specific emphasis on the added complications related to cyber-attacks," said retired Maj. Gen. Jim Hodge, retired president of the Institute for Defense and Business. "This is an exceptionally bright group, and I'm excited to see their approaches to solving these issues."
Since 2001, the Institute for Defense and Business and IU's Kelley School of Business have collaborated with the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina to offer a two-year MBA program, called IU-UNC LogMBA, with most instruction delivered online. IU faculty have taught in other institute-sponsored programs and participated in institute events. In 2013, IU Bloomington signed a five-year agreement building on the previous partnership with the Kelley School.
The Institute for Defense and Business is an independent 501 (c)(3) nonprofit research and education institute in Chapel Hill, N.C. Since 2000, it has established a suite of executive education programs, bringing together disparate groups in the defense and nondefense sectors into a classroom to teach best business practices in an academic and neutral forum to build networks and openly discuss difficult and timely topics.
The institute has developed programs in enterprise-level logistics, disruptive technologies, leadership, defense industrial base management, post-disaster and post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction, strategic studies, life cycle sustainment, supply chain, medical logistics and related fields. The Institute for Defense and Business frequently collaborates with leading military and civilian academic institutions, including the Defense Acquisition University, Army Logistics University, the 17 campuses of the University of North Carolina, Indiana University and Duke University, among others.
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