NS4081 Research and Thesis Development for Homeland Security Professionals

Offered through the Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS) NS4081, is designed to advance students’ critical thinking, research and inquiry, and all other competencies required to produce a strong thesis proposal (in this course sequence), and then later for the final thesis. As its main thrust, this course sequence identifies and practices, with the sustained individual guidance of the instructors, the main steps and modalities of good research: the construction of research questions; literature review; proper handling of arguments, claims, and evidence; problem statements; research design and planning; research methods. In addition, targeted workshops in both the in-residence and distance-learning phases of the course serve to keep students researching, writing, drafting, and thinking at an advanced level.

Prerequisite

NS3180

Lecture Hours

4

Lab Hours

0

Course Learning Outcomes

• Refine and advance hands-on familiarity with relevant Center and university systems and templates, particularly (but not exclusively) related to thesis work.
• Gain practice and proficiency in university style and standards for original, advanced study (thesis).
• Devise and assess complex questions of policy and practice in homeland security.
• Identify, evaluate, and synthesize relevant scholarly and expert literature.
• Analyze the relative merits and modalities of multi-disciplinary homeland security research, that is, diverse approaches to answering complex questions of policy and strategy.
• Design a graduate-level research proposal/agenda to drive an advanced-level contribution to the study, discourse, and practice of Homeland Security.