Class teaches students to think like spies, leaders

With the sound of wailing babies and jeopardy music blaring in the background, sophomore Connor Sebastian frantically tried to read the articles in front of him while yelling to his teammates about how they should prepare a report on the situation.

The students were given 30 minutes but were cut off at 20. Then, they had to brief Mike Boston, a former officer in the army, and Louis Young II, a former member of the U.S. intelligence community, on what each defense or intelligence agency’s view on the crisis was and what measures it would take in response.

“In the beginning, no one really knew what to do,” Sebastian said. “People, at that point, did what they would do in any other class, where they would try to kind of bluff their way through it and try to talk on an academic level.”

However, Sebastian said students who did so were called out on their mistakes and met with incisive questions like, “Do you know what you’re doing?”

This exercise was repeated weekly for “U.S. Intelligence Community: Theory & Practice,” a class which aims to inform students about the function, organization and operational elements of the U.S. Intelligence Community. After a lecture, students are divided into groups of fiveor six, in which they have to prepare a brief on a crisis under a time limit with the articles they are given.

The class is offered through the Department of Military Science as a result of a partnership with the Asymmetric Studies Institute, a nonprofit research and education organization, of which Boston and Young are chairman and vice chairman, respectively.

First offered during Intersession in 2012, the class was designed with ROTC cadets in mind; Lieutenant Colonel Paul Carroll, director of the Department of Military Sciences, said junior and senior cadets had expressed a desire to learn how the intelligence community works with the military.

Briefing is also an integral part of a military officer’s duties. Carroll said that one of the first duties as a junior officer is to brief senior officers.

“It teaches a different skill set that’s probably not taught in a lot of other classes on campus,” Boston said.

U.S. Intelligence Community: Theory & Practice has been offered every semester since Spring 2012.

Although the class initially began with mostly ROTC cadets, Boston said it now includes many non-ROTC students.

“Really, no matter what you do, your ability to take information, critically think about the information, distill it, and then deliver it is a valuable skill to have,” Carroll said. “By working in the small groups as well, they learn the most difficult form of leadership: peer leadership.”

Now, there are also two independent study classes through which students can delve deeper into related topics of their choice.

Sophomore Will Marcus said the instructors’ backgrounds in the intelligence and defense community created a “completely different dynamic” between them and the students.

“There was an almost tangible aura of fear after they revealed some details about their past careers,” Marcus said. “I was just completely in awe of them.”

Marcus also said the professors did not answer questions directly, which made the students wonder if the instructors were secretly reading their text messages.

However, sophomore Staley Smith said they became more approachable over time.

“They were genuinely interested in our lives, which was rare, especially at this University,” Smith said.

Smith also said that U.S. Intelligence Community: Theory & Practice presented different challenges than the classes she had taken before.

“It’s the first class I’ve taken that wasn’t just memorization and regurgitation,” Smith said. “We had to take the information that we were given ... and come up with your own conclusion and analysis rather than just regurgitating information.”

Another aspect of the course Connor enjoyed was the significance of current events.

“You would not do well unless you could supplement [the information given by the instructors] with outside information, so the most important reading you were doing was reading the newspaper every day, which was kind of cool, because that gets overlooked,” Sebastian said.

Smith said that as the class went on, she also viewed the news differently.

“I didn’t realize that there was a much more complicated and intricate dynamic than what it seems to be when you watch it on the news,” Smith said. “It’s so much more complex.”

“Now I’m always curious what the full story is,” Smith added. “[News outlets] like to report it right when it comes out, and that’s not always the most accurate. The details aren’t fully exposed. Even though we weren’t shown anything that other people couldn’t find, we could see the obstacle for the normal person to try and fill the blanks in order to find the most accurate and full story.”

Senior Ollie McNeely said it was exciting to see how the government agencies’ responses compared to how he and his classmates had reacted during their situation reports.

In addition, the class has involved high-profile guest speakers, like former FBI operative Eric O’Neill, who was responsible for the high-profile arrest and conviction of Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent and spy for the Soviet Union.

“I looked forward to my three [two and a half] hour night time class every Wednesday,” Marcus said.