ATLANTA
Next year, Justan Holloway’s class schedule will look like the plot of an action movie: The college student will study international terrorism, disaster planning, criminology, social psychology and Arabic.
Holloway plans to be among the first to enroll in Savannah State University’s new degree program in homeland security.
The program is among a growing number of its kind as U.S. colleges try to meet rising demand for specialists trained in national defense and emergency management.
Graduates are finding themselves attractive to government agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as to defense contractors and other companies, where they do such things as create emergency management plans and design gas masks.
Some programs focus on terrorism and manmade threats. Others, such as Savannah State’s, also train students to help with natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged the U.S. Gulf Coast last year.
“After the Katrina situation, I didn’t like the way FEMA handled it,” sys Holloway, 19. “I was like, ‘Maybe I can make a difference.’”
