University of North Georgia (UNG) faculty member Dr. Edward Mienie helped craft a course that will allow high school juniors and seniors to gain an introduction to the intelligence field. The course will be one of the first of its kind in the nation, according to Justin Hill, associate superintendent for curriculum and instruction at the Georgia Department of Education.

Hill, who is an information warfare officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve, hatched the idea thanks to his two decades in military intelligence, and Mienie was grateful to help make it a reality.

"I'm enthusiastic about the subject matter. It's very appropriate for this day and age," Mienie said. "It's a wonderful way to pique the interest of high school students for intelligence as a possible career."

Dr. Christopher Jespersen, dean of UNG's College of Arts and Letters, was glad to see this outreach from Mienie.

"Dr. Mienie's class will provide some of Georgia's high school students an opportunity to get an early look at the intelligence field and see if it might be a career path for them," Jespersen said. "It's exciting, and it fits with UNG's mission to serve our communities."

Hill said plenty of connections were already in place to create such a class due to the expansion of the cybersecurity industry in the state.

Seeing the way Mienie helped start the strategic and security studies program at UNG also excited Hill.

"He brings a unique perspective because he knows how to build something from the ground up," Hill said. "We're trying to do the same thing here."

UNG is one of the nation's six senior military colleges, and nine cadets have graduated with strategic and security studies degrees since the program launched in in August 2015. Of the 124 students currently seeking the degree, 87 are cadets.

Mienie appreciates the interdisciplinary nature of UNG's strategic and security studies program, which he believes can gain more interest from the high school classes studying intelligence.

"It gives them greater awareness of this type of skillset we desire out of our students," Mienie said. "UNG is a great conduit to bridge them from high school into intelligence or multinational corporations, where they would be interested in risk management."

Hill said one emphasis of the course is the need for students to maintain good financial standing so they can receive the security clearances needed for their desired careers. Another is to highlight to students that there are meaningful and lucrative careers associated with a social studies education.

Mienie has more than 20 years of experience working in international relations and business, media relations, and coalition building. He served four years in the South African National Defense Force, where he was deployed to the Angolan War in the 1980s and was awarded a Pro Patria medal in 2019 for his service.

Original article by Clark Leonard

Dr. Joe Bock has been working with a team of skilled professionals in the use of technology to de-escalate tension and prevent violence. They formed Election Incident Reporting USA and then reached out to organizations interested in conflict early warning and early response. They, along with Mediators Beyond Borders International and the National Association For Community Mediation, created a nonpartisan umbrella entity, The Trust Network.

They are conducting a series of training sessions on conflict early warning and early response.  If you are interested, please sign up.

Most importantly, if you want to help in one of these ways explained below, please join as a volunteer:

• Geographic Information System/Map Creation
• Geolocation (finding the latitude/longitude of incidents to the street or neighborhood level)
• Media Monitoring (finding deeper information, creating reports)
• Technology (ensuring the platform and interfaces are running smoothly)
• Research and Analysis (analyzing information and creating situation reports, conducting statistical analyses, etc.)

These roles are focused on processing information sent to us via SMS or a form filled out on-line regarding conditions in specific locations.  That information will be used in trend analyses and will be placed onto their digital map. Once a warning is evident, it will be communicated to people in that location who they know and trust.

For those current students interested in this kind of approach, Dr. Bock will be teaching INCM 9530 – Information & Communication Technologies this coming Spring semester and is open to allowing graduate students outside of the School of Conflict Management, Peacebuilding and Development to enroll.

Dr. Joseph Bock hosted a training as part of The Trust Network that is available online. This training briefly summarizes the risk of election-related violence in the US and the methods to stop the spread of violence. The training looks at the current situation in the US, areas of greatest risk, and the longer-term trends that brought us here, and examines this context through the lens of violence as a contagious problem. The training summarizes the main ideas and principles in how to avoid violence, stop yourself from getting caught up in violence, and respond if confronted with aggressive people, including going over a few scenarios such as polling places and protests.

Here is the recording from CVG's training on 10/16 broken into short segments - https://training.cvg.org/offers/3gostJp5/checkout

Here is the training from 10/25 up at – (full training, 1+ hour) - https://youtu.be/XXt_Vs_Op0Q

Further resources for election here – www.cvg.org/election