The Citadel

A Program for Those Aspiring to Work in the Intelligence Community

At The Citadel, deep connections with the Intelligence Community offer students career opportunities they may not get from more purely academic programs, says Pat Hendrix, assistant professor of Intelligence and Security Studies at The Citadel.

“Over the years, we put an astounding number of people in the field,” Hendrix says.

As a military college, the school places many graduates into defense jobs, and Hendrix notes that the Department of Defense is “the largest consumer and producer of intelligence in the world.”

Hendrix notes that understanding intelligence is an important career skill. “In the past, information was one of the hardest things to acquire,” he says. “Now, it is the exact opposite. Information moves like a river, and there are rivers of information flowing at all times. And our program is designed to help students not just collect that information and not only analyze that information, but just as importantly, to communicate that information in a way that is understandable and clear and gives the bottom line up front to the consumer. We put a heavy emphasis on communication—not just how to analyze and collect intelligence, but how to communicate intelligence.”

Hendrix notes that intelligence is no longer “strictly the domains of nation states.” The Citadel’s program focuses on the “sheer volume of information” coming from a range of sources, and how to make sense of it. It helps students “sort out what is real and what is fake from the firehose of misinformation and disinformation,” Hendrix says.

“We bring real-world threats and challenges into the online classroom,” he says. “We are not just an academic program rooted in theory, but we are helping develop skills and subject-matter knowledge that graduate students can utilize throughout their careers. Our students learn to think, analyze and write like an intelligence professional. Our expanding graduate course offerings—such as Russian Influence Operations last fall and Space and National Security, planned for fall ‘22—are just a couple of examples of timely courses.”

In addition to placing students throughout what Hendrix calls the “three-letter” intelligence agencies, The Citadel helps students find jobs in companies as diverse as JPMorgan Chase, Disney, Exxon Mobil, Amazon, and Google. Last year, even the National Basketball Association was offering an intelligence analyst position with its headquarters in New York City.

“So, government service as an intelligence professional is far from being the only opportunity,” he says.

In addition, “cyber-threat analysts are in really big demand right now,” Hendrix observes. “Companies like CrowdStrike are hiring. Students who have experience with open-source intelligence and social media intelligence skills are particularly employable.”

Contact
https://www.citadel.edu/root/intelligence-and-security-studies-program
[email protected]
843-953-6886