The Texan Explains: UT reshaping national security education – The Daily Texan

Welcome to The Texan Explains, a weekly news podcast featuring reporters from the news department explaining the biggest stories that are impacting students at the moment. In this episode, Associate Audio Editor Natalie Gonzalez sat down with News Desk Editor Amanda Brantley and Senior News Reporter Noah Braun as they talked about UT reshaping national security education. 

Narrated and edited by Natalie Gonzalez. Cover art by Yesenia Davalos. Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

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Gonzalez: I’m your host, Natalie Gonzalez, and this is The Texan Explains. In today’s episode, we will be diving into a story about how the University is reshaping national security education. I’m excited to start today’s conversation with one of our news desk editors and one of our senior news reporters, whose recent reporting examines how UT’s new initiatives are connecting students to emerging careers in cybersecurity and defense technology.

Brantley:  Hi, I’m Amanda. I’m a news desk editor.

Braun: I’m Noah. I’m a senior news reporter.

Gonzalez: Okay, Amanda, Noah, thank you so much for joining me. Let’s dive right into it. Can you walk us through the major changes UT announced in August and what prompted this expansion across so many colleges?

Brantley: Um, Yeah. Well, so this August, the UT welcomed its first fellowship class for the Defense Technology Fellowship, with, which is the Clements Center for National Security initiative. They also hired 20 new faculty across multiple schools, like LBJ (School for Public Affairs), College of Liberal Arts, you know, and the Clements Center. So this is kind of them expanding their offerings in national security, and this is something they’ve always had. The Clements Center has been around for a while. There’s also the Strauss Center for International Law and Security, but there’s a lot more career opportunities now in national security besides just, you know, going into the military or working for like the CIA or something. There’s a lot more civilian roles in terms of, like, advising companies or doing economic analysis. So I think them hiring more, especially in like the liberal arts fields, and also adding the STEM fellowship, which is specifically for like defense contractors, which are private entities, kind of reflects that expansion and those expanded career opportunities available to students.

Braun: Mh-mh. Uh, we should also mention there’s two new majors. This is something they announced in January, but it’s kind of coming into effect now. Is the, uh, the Great Books major and then the Strategy and Statecraft major, which were created from an NIH grant, and like I said, that was announced in January. But it was included in this big press release that was sent out on UT News near the beginning of August, where they talk about all this stuff, and they say like UT is making this big investment in national security education, and they lay out like, oh, we have this and this and this. This is like the Defense Tech. Fellowship, like Amanda said, and all the new hires and stuff are all part of that. So it’s all part of an effort.

Gonzalez: And then, um, the story had mentioned more than 20 new faculty hires. What kind of expertise are these hires bringing into UT’s national security ecosystem?

Braun: A lot of them, uh, come from, at least in my experience, from the people I talked to, a lot of the new hires come from a military background. Um, at some point, a lot of these people, not necessarily served on the ground, although some of them did. Um, but some of them were part of, like the, the military’s, um, education apparatus that they have. You know, the military has its own schools and stuff for soldiers. Um, a few people served there. A lot of people from other universities as well, who have been teaching national security, uh, topics for many years, who UT has just now recently recruited.

Brantley: So a lot of them obviously are also academics. So with PhDs and, like, are experts in kind of like international relations theory too. So a lot of that- a lot of the new hires are coming to like the history and government departments, are going to be teaching students in the IRG (International Relations and Global Studies) major as well. So there’s a combination of like practical, like, experience that they can bring and also a lot of, you know, theoretical kind of academic backgrounds in this field also.

Braun: Mh-mh, and a lot of these people are, you know, have a bit of both.

Gonzalez: And then, what new degree programs or fellowships stood out to you as particularly significant in reshaping UT’s national security curriculum?

Brantley: I think the collaborations with the School of Civic Leadership, I think, are something to take note of because as UT builds up, um, the School of Civic Leadership, they’re clearly kind of taking it in, like, this direction, um, which (the School of) Civic Leadership is very new it’s only, what, like two years old, I think. And one of the first- they’ve only got a few majors, and one of those is like a direct collaboration with the Clements Center- that Strategy and Statecraft major. Um, I think also they just launched a new master’s program at the LBJ School for, um, national security.

Braun: Um, and also the, of course, the Defense Tech. Fellowship that the Clements Center just welcomed their like first group of students to in the fall, that’s another big thing. What the Clements Center does is it focuses on bringing in students from other, you know, academic units at UT, like um, a lot of College of Liberal Arts students, previously have been like the target for a lot of their programs. Um, but for this one, they were focusing on bringing in STEM students to learn about national security as it applies to like, you know, engineering and other, you know, STEM fields like that, and they- what they do is they network these students with established, like, professional groups and, like, companies. Like, a lot of the- the companies that are being targeted by the the STEM fellowship are, like, defense contractors like uh Northrop Grumman, or like Raytheon, or companies like that, where they- they take students and they connect them to people, um, in these companies and in these fields to sort of show them what they can do, uh, from a national security angle with their education that they’re getting from somewhere else in the University.

Gonzalez: These programs span liberal arts and business, STEM. How might students in different colleges experience these changes differently?

Braun: So I think it’s going to differ, um, depending on, you know, where at the University you are, how these changes, uh, are going to be, like, exposed to you, and I think a lot of students aren’t going to be directly affected by this stuff unless they seek it out for themselves.

Brantley: Yeah, I would also say in McCombs (School of Business), there already exists a minor that’s like International Business. So they have – McCombs also has a curriculum for business students specifically. So this is something that has existed, like, across colleges, but they’re clearly investing more in it with the fellowship and with the faculty.

Gonzalez: Um, when you spoke to Matthew (Fuhrmann, a new security studies professor in the LBJ School), he emphasized that national security literacy is important even for students outside of the field. How did that perspective sort of shape the story?

Braun: Well, when we were writing the story, there was kind of this question, this overarching question of, um, I guess, like why now? Um, why is this push being made now? Of all the times that the University could, you know, dedicate all this, um, time and effort to expanding national security education, and the answer that we got from a lot of faculty was that they believed that it was just an important subject for them to focus on in general. They argue that it wasn’t necessarily about the timing of the expansion, but rather the fact that it had to be- they believed it had to be done at some point, and they thought that, you know, now is the time to do it.

Gonzalez: So then later on, would y’all want to revisit this story and sort of get the students’ perspectives?

Brantley: Yeah, I’d be curious to talk to the students in the Defense Tech. Fellowship as, you know, the program goes on. I’d also be curious to talk to more faculty once they’ve been here a little bit longer, and also to see, like, where this goes if they continue investing in it, if they’re- we start seeing more speakers, more, um, new courses, maybe even more new like minors or degree programs. I think also especially watching the School of Civic Leadership and what they announce next, because like- because they’re so new, they’re going to be announcing new things pretty frequently. So yeah, I think it’d be interesting to kind of see where it goes. But for now, I think this kind of gets at the heart of it that they’re just- this is something that’s existed at the University for a while, and they’re just beefing it up, I guess, because there’s clear career opportunities and ways. This is a way that UT can directly connect students from, like, many different academic backgrounds to direct career paths, which is something the University has been very- they’ve been prioritizing lately, which is employability for their graduates.

Gonzalez: This interview is a production of The Daily Texan Audio Department. If you like this episode, make sure to subscribe to The Daily Texan on your streaming platform of choice, and follow us on Twitter @texanaudio. To read news stories and see more from the Texan, head on over to www.thedailytexan.com. Thank you so much for listening.

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