Ebrar Mohammad, a recent Syracuse University graduate, wants to work for the FBI. 

The FBI places employees based on need, but Mohammed hopes to stay in Syracuse. She wants to pursue an additional degree through a new SU program that promotes diversity in the intelligence field. 

“If I eventually get an interview with the FBI, I plan to ask if it’s something they’d be willing to support,” she said. “Getting an advanced degree from a program like this would be an amazing opportunity.” 

In June, SU was named an Intelligence Community Center of Academic Excellence. This designation includes a $1.5 million grant to increase diversity through intelligence field education initiatives and recruitment.

SU’s program is called the Partnership for Educational Results/Syracuse University Adaptive, Diverse and Ethical Intelligence Community Professionals, or PER/SUADE. It will partner with four other universities, one of which is a historically black university.

“Just the fact that we have students from all around the world, where else can you find that much diversity with people that are academically minded?” Mohammad said of SU.

In 2004, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act mandated increased diversity in the intelligence. A year later, the national Intelligence Community Centers of Academic Excellence program began, which focuses on students from underrepresented groups, women, students with disabilities, rural students and military students.

According to a 2018 report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, racial minorities make up about 26% of intelligence community employees. Women make up 39% of intelligence community employees, and people with disabilities make up 11%.

“The goal of the grant is to diversify the pipeline going into the federal government and the national security fields,” said Corri Zoli, director of research at the Institute for National Security and Counter Terrorism. “We looped in diversity in very cutting edge and innovative ways, so that diversity is not just ethnicity or demographic diversity.” 

Over the course of five years, the SU program will add a major, minor and certificate of advanced study, as well as graduate and doctorate degrees, said Vice Admiral Robert Murrett, deputy director of INSCT. Two of the program’s classes will be available for undergraduates in spring 2020, said Murrett. 

SU’s program includes 10 “work streams,” or disciplines, related to the intelligence field. About 20 faculty and staff from different schools, colleges and offices across campus will be part of the program’s education initiative.

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“The goal is curricular,” Michael Marciano, associate director for research for the Forensic National Security Science Institute at SU, said. “It’s to educate future employees of the intelligence community, and the real focus in that is diversity.” 

There are currently 28 schools with intelligence community designations. Eight universities, including SU, received the title in the past year. SU is one of the few private universities with the designation.

Zoli said a key part of SU receiving the intelligence community designation is the university’s military population and the Institute for Veterans and Military Families. Veterans make up more than 5% of the SU student body. 

“A lot of our military veterans on campus have already committed a portion of their life to public service, and they’re already primed for positions (in the intelligence field),” Zoli said. 

Each year, as part of SU’s program, at least 10 students will be chosen for Downey Fellowships. The fellowship will include financial awards and opportunities to attend sponsored events through the national intelligence community program office in Washington, D.C., Zoli said. Through the fellowship, students will have the chance to network with major national security professionals.

Students will be able to join the fellowship starting this fall. The fellowship will eventually include students from the four partnering schools but will only include Syracuse students for the first few years, Murrett said. The partner schools are Wells College, the Grove School of Engineering, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Norfolk State University.

“We have to go through the process of selecting people affiliated with the program and the fellows, who are going to be a very diverse population,” Murrett said.

Loren Reichsfeld, a third-year student in the SU College of Law, said in an email that she hopes to be an affiliate with the PER/SUADE program and plans to apply for the Downey Fellowship. The program is a “natural complement” to her degree in national security law and would be a good way to indicate her interest in the intelligence field to recruiters, she said.

Reichsfeld said the intelligence field’s strength is its diversity, but there is always room to diversify it further. 

“In intel, you need people that understand various cultures and languages as well as sciences, law, and so much more,” Reichsfeld said. “This need for such a wide talent base requires diversity in every sense of the word.” 

Published on September 16, 2019 at 2:02 am

Contact Natalie: nrrubiol@syr.edu