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Issue Number 10
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November 2015
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Of Note:
New Research
Professor Frederic Lemieux, Director of Cybersecurity Strategy and Information Management and Security & Safety Leadership programs at CPS, and two Australian researchers have published an article titled "Mass Shootings in Australia and the United States, 1981 - 2013" in the latest issue of the Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice.
The purpose of the paper is to compare the incidence and main characteristics of mass shooting events in Australia and the USA in the period 1981-2013. Findings: for Australia, the study identified 13 mass shooting events and 104 fatalities from gunshot wounds. For the USA, there were 73 events and 576 victims. All the cases in Australia predated the implementation of the restrictive 1996 National Firearms Agreement. In the USA, a small decline was evident during the 1994-2004 Federal Assault Weapon Ban. Both incidents and fatalities increased after 2004. The findings lend support to policy considerations regarding regulating access to firearms.
New Program
Leaders around the globe are becoming increasingly concerned with cyber security issues. Attacks, like those on Target, Sony and the US government's Office of Personnel Management, are multiplying and becoming more sophisticated. Companies and government agencies need to prevent financial loss and identify theft, as well as protect their public images when breaches happen.
These trends are stimulating an increased demand for skilled cybersecurity professionals among private employers, governments and non-profits. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts an increase of almost 650,000 cybersecurity jobs by 2022. To keep pace with this trends CPS is offering a new bachelor's degree completion and second bachelor's degree program in cybersecurity. The Cybersecurity bachelor's degree is intended for students with associates or non-technical bachelor's degrees who are looking for entry-level positions and advancement in the field of security. Read more.
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Students and Alumni Honors
Traci Armani, a master's candidate in the Paralegal Studies program, has been elected to the George Washington University Student Senate. Ms Armani, a mother of two, currently works for the United States Postal Service in Merrifield VA and hopes to serve as a role model for her children and others in her community and plans to work as a paralegal upon graduation.
GW Paralegal Studies student
Christopher Paul Queen was named as one of
LEX is Lambda Epsilon Chi, the national paralegal honor society. Sustainable Urban Planning student Dulce Naime made a compelling and heartfelt speech at the GW Graduate Student Welcome Ceremony that was held in the Lisner Auditorium in August. In front of an audience composed of incoming graduate students and senior GW officials, Dulce spoke with passion and excitement about being a student at GW. Lillian McAnally, managing editor at the Institute of Internal Auditors Research Foundation and an alumna of the GW Publishing Program, has won an APEX Award for Publication Excellence for her work on the digital version of Lessons Learned on the Audit Trail by Richard Chambers. The APEX Awards for Publication Excellence is an annual competition for corporate and nonprofit publishers, editors, writers and designers who create print, web, electronic and social media. This is a second win for Lillian. Earlier in the year she had won the Digital Book Award for the same book at the Digital Book World Conference.
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A Man of His Words and Deeds: Putting Knowledge into Practice
Ofer Barpal is a CPS student who is taking this semester off to serve as senior architectural consultant on a low-income housing project in Haiti. The project involves planning and development of a 148 unit residential community for families who lost their homes in the devastating earthquake of 2010.
Ofer is a licensed architect with over 20 years of experience who after a life-changing year spent in Zimbabwe in 2013, signed up for the MPS in Sustainable Urban Planning in order to expand his expertise to sustainable development which is a critical field of study and practice all over the world. In Zimbabwe he managed the construction of a community center and an associated soccer field and the experience provided him with an opportunity to do something that directly affected people's lives and also gave him a glimpse into another culture and society. He was impressed by the natural beauty of the country and the local people who faced many challenges in their daily lives such as frequent loss of electricity and water, inefficient and unresponsive government and limited services, and yet were extremely nice and appreciative of what this stranger was doing for them.
The Haiti project is run by a small but growing non-profit organization called Urban Collaborative which is led by DC native Nancy Doran. It includes residential units, a community center, a sports field, and a so-called "water kiosk" for sale of water-related services such as drinking water and the use of showers and toilets. Street lights will be solar powered.
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Artist's Rendering of the Finished Project in Haiti
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Residential units will include detached houses, duplexes and two-story apartments some of which will have commercial space on the street level. The target budget is $12,500 for the average (35 square meters) two-bedroom unit.
"While my role is primarily architectural, my education at GW has helped me provide valuable input regarding sustainable water management, renewable energy options and other environmental issue." Ofer said in an e-mail interview with CPS Leads. He plans to return to the United States upon completion of the design phase of the project in mid-December and restart his SUP coursework in January.
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Big Research on Big Data:New Center for Data Analytics at VSTC
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GW's Virginia Science and Technology Campus
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GW and Telos Corporation have signed a five-year agreement to provide funding for research and development in big data and data analytics at the Virginia Science and Technology Campus (VSTC). This industry-academic partnership will support R&D projects that use high-performance computing to focus on key issues of national significance such as cyber security and algorithms and analytic tools that can solve some of the major challenges facing the United States.
According to CPS and VSTC Dean Ali Eskandarian, "The partnership with Telos demonstrates how academia and a leading industry corporation can come together to address issues that affect so many in our society."
As part of the agreement, GW will establish a data analytics research center at VSTC and will hire research specialists who will collaborate with Dr. Eskandarian and Richard Robinson, chief technology officer of Telos, to conduct research to develop and test security threat models, risk modelling and enterprise impact assessment. Mr. Robinson, former chief information officer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, will lead various projects focusing on algorithm development for contextual and predictive analytics.
"The American experience clearly shows that collaboration between academia and industry helps to promote more rapid technological advances, which in turn spur economic growth and development." says Telos CEO John Wood.
The partnership is the latest development in a well-established relationship between GW and Telos Corporation which serves as an industry partner in GW's annual Teachers in Industry Project. Additionally, Mr. Wood serves on the advisory board of VSTC.
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If It's Lara, Matt or Mark, It Must Be the Presidential Campaign Season
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| | Lara Brown, Matthew Dallek, and Mark Kennedy |
You know the presidential election season is upon us when you see GSPM professors being interviewed and quoted with some regularity in the Washington and National media and when you read opinion pieces penned by these engaged and engaging academics.
Lara Brown, program director for the Political Management Program at the Graduate School of Political Management, is a regular contributor to U.S. News & World Report's Thomas Jefferson Street blog and a prolific writer on presidential politics. In her typical matter-of-fact and no-nonsense style, she authored a piece titled " Time to Take Down Trump" where she says: "A one-trick pony, this bullying tactic allows him to appear in control and powerful, even when he's completely clueless and without any substance......Frankly, I'm surprised that the shock value of his stunted adolescent psyche's brag and bluster haven't yet become a bore. I've always believed that while Americans enjoy shiny new objects, they are able to tell the difference between pyrite and gold."
In a more recent piece with the title of "Politics Isn't Broken," she writes: "The system isn't broken. We are merely experiencing another period of public restlessness. Representative government means elected officials are tasked with representing - giving voice and acting on - their constituents' concerns. Hence, the problem is not who is serving as a representative, but who they're representing.
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| Said another way, Washington only seems broken because we, the people, don't agree on either what ails us or how best to fix it. Further, about the only thing we do agree on is that Washington is not to be trusted."
Matthew Dallek, Assistant Professor of Political Management, whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the NYTimes.com, the Los Angeles Times, POLITICO and the Atlantic, among other outlets, authored a piece for Yahoo! News titled "Trumpalooza: We've Seen This Show Before" where he writes: "But, if you look closer at the historical record, Trump is not such a novel phenomenon; in fact, his outsize personality, outsider status, conspicuous wealth, gift for exploiting a hot-button social issue and TV fame have a long and checkered lineage in our national politics. He is following in the steps of such actors turned politicians as Ronald Reagan and Sen. George Murphy, R-Calif.; business executives such as Ross Perot and Meg Whitman, who claim nobody can buy them because they're so rich........and other voices of protest who style themselves as political outsiders vowing to fix what's wrong and "make America great again," to use Trump's slogan."
On August 24, in a column for The New York Daily News, Dallek wrote: "This has been the summer of the unexpected in presidential politics: the summer of Trump, and now the summer of Joe. Everybody's wondering whether Vice President Biden, who recently lost his son to brain cancer, is going to enter the Democratic primary. If he does, Biden must run what is, in effect, a billion-dollar startup."
Hon. Mark Kennedy, Director of the GSPM and a former (2001-2007) member of Congress (R-MN), also maintains an active media presence and writes regularly for Huffington Post, The Hill and Foreign Policy (FP), to name a few. In a recent opinion piece for FP entitled "Is Donald Trump the Heir to Teddy Roosevelt's Legacy?" he writes: "A Manhattan millionaire with a personality bigger than life bursts onto America's political scene with a populist message that the system is unfair to the little guy, the moneyed interests are in control of Washington, and that no one but he can address the sorry state America finds itself in. He sucks all the oxygen out of his opponents' campaigns. He confounds the establishment and seems to be an unstoppable force. I, of course, speak of Theodore Roosevelt. We sometimes forget that Roosevelt was the rebel of his time. He did not toe the party line. Roosevelt challenged the status quo."
In another FP article called "It's Time to Ditch Trump, Not the TPP" Kennedy writes: "While some were celebrating that, after years of negotiations, the United States and 11 other nations had finally reached an agreement on the Tran-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump took to Twitter to malign the trade pact as a "terrible deal." The move was further proof, for those who still need it, that Trump is rich in negative bluster and bankrupt on positive ideas. If Congress heeds his populist pandering on TPP, it would weaken America, abandon our allies, harm American workers, and escalate tension with China. By supporting TPP, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio reflect their prioritizing sound policy over demagoguery."
Lara, Matt and Mark are not the only GSPM professors whose opinions and views are sought by the media. For a full representation of GSPM faculty's media activity visit them online.
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Everything You Wanted to Know About the 2015 Supreme Court Decisions
by Amy Cushman, J.D., M.P.S.
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| Sarah Coates, RP and Prof. Lawrence Ross, JD
(Photos: Cody House) |
The College of Professional Studies and the GW Paralegal Program held their 2015 Supreme Court Review on September 16th. Current students, alumni and faculty were treated to a lively and informative discussion of the consequential Supreme Court decisions from the 2015 term, statistical information and a preview of cases of interest in the upcoming term. Lawrence Ross, J.D., GW Paralegal Studies Professor and Jacob Burns Law Librarian and GW Paralegal Studies alumna and United States Supreme Court Staff Assistant Sarah Coats, R.P. provided knowledgeable analysis and commentary in their discussion of the major 2015 term decisions.
Perhaps the most publicized decision of 2015 was King v. Burwell where the Supreme Court upheld one of the main tenets of Obamacare law, ruling that millions of Americans are entitled to keep the tax subsidies that help them afford health insurance. Professor Ross and Ms. Coats gave an overview of this unsuccessful challenge to the Affordable Care Act. This was a challenge arguing that the Virginia Federal health insurance exchange did not comply with Act. The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, ruled that it did.
Almost equally as consequential was Obergefell v. Hodges where the justices ruled that the Fourteenth Amendme nt requires a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex and to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-state. Ms. Coats described Justice Kennedy's opinion in this Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Equal Protection guarantee case as "a beautiful piece of writing." She remarked that the opinion referred to Loving v. Virginia fourteen times (this is the decision that overturned state laws against inter-racial marriages that were prevalent until the 1960's). Professor Ross commented that this case represents a battle between living constitution theory and originalist theory.
The speakers also provided some statistics regarding the term. The role of Justice Kennedy seemed to be that of the swing vote. In the Court's many 5-4 decisions, Justice Kennedy was often the fifth vote. In fact, of 19 5-4 decisions, Justice Kennedy was the swing vote in 14. Justice Kennedy sided with Justices Ginsberg, Breyer and Sotomayor 8 times. He sided with Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito 5 times and once with Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Breyer and Sotomayor. Justice Breyer was also in the majority of the 14 of 19 5-4 decisions with Justice Kennedy. In this term, the liberal side of the Court won 65% of the time. That number was 38% in the prior term and 67% in the term before that.
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The "Online Enabler" and the University
American universities have dramatically expanded their online program offerings over the past five years and there are indications of continuing strong growth through 2020. One of the reasons is the emergence of a new kind of service provider: the "online enabler" or online program management (OPM) provider.
As the following figure illustrates, the OPM market in the US has grown to $1.1 billion this year, representing nearly a tripling revenues for the segment since 2011. A recent survey by the research firm Eduventures found that about 12% of US universities - or 350 institutions - are engaged in OPM partnerships in the United States. The firm projects that by 2020 the OPM market will more than double again to reach US$2.5 billion in revenues. At that point, nearly one in five US universities will be engaged with an OPM provider.
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Actual and projected growth of the OPM market in the US, 2011-2020.
Source: Eduventures
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OPMs typically offer a broad basket of services - everything from strategic advice and instructional design to technology and systems to recruitment, retention, and student support. Universities remain responsible for core academic functions - notably admissions, teaching, and curriculum - in such partnerships, but OPMs bring expertise to the table to help institutions get their programs online more quickly.
They also bring money. Launching an online program is expensive requiring as much as $5 million to $10 million to move an institution through design and development phases and on to the point at which the program can operate profitably. In many partnership deals, the OPM provider covers those costs and takes a significant share of the resulting tuition revenue. That revenue share typically ranges from 40% to 65% but most arrangements are currently based around a 50:50 revenue split between institution and OPM.
Respondents to this year's Eduventures survey cited "increase enrolment" and "reach a new type of student market" as their top institutional priorities for an OPM partnership.
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Top institutional priorities for an OPM partnership. Source: Eduventures
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The flipside of this survey finding is that institutions may also bring overly optimistic enrolment targets to an OPM partnership. With so many new OPM deals in US higher education, it is not surprising that some fall apart. And when they do, it is often a failure to reach early enrolment targets that is at the root of the breakdown.
The latest high-profile example of this arrived just this month in the form of the University of Florida's decision to cancel its deal with Pearson Embanet. The partnership was less than two years old and head-count enrolment targets had been met. However, there was a significant shortfall on a more specific target for out-of-state students - an important driver of overall programme revenue in this case - and this appears to have been a factor in the university's decision.
As the University of Florida example illustrates, universities often open OPM deals with the goal of reaching beyond their traditional prospect segments and catchment areas. For some, that may mean growing out-of-state enrolment. For others, it may mean a focus on non-traditional segments, such as adult learners that have some post-secondary credits but not yet a full degree (the "degree completion market"), and a third group may be interested in increasing its international enrolments. Or, it may be a case of "all of the above".
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