Intelligence and Security Studies Major

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The Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Intelligence and Security Studies (ISS) is designed to meet the national security and intelligence needs of military, federal, state, and local governmental agencies; private corporations engaged in the intelligence and security fields; and others who are interested in gaining greater knowledge about the field. The BA consists of 15 courses (45 credit hours) offered by various academic units at The Citadel. In order to provide students with a broad-based liberal arts education, the major is highly interdisciplinary.

Major Academic Map

Click here to view the Academic Map for this major, which shows the courses and sequence.

Core Curriculum

This ISS major seeks to develop students’ capabilities for critical thinking and systematic analysis and increase their knowledge of effective leadership for national security. Each student completes a required core curriculum consisting of the following courses:

INTL 201 - Introduction to Intelligence Studies Credit Hours: 3
INTL 210 - Homeland Security Credit Hours: 3
INTL 301 - Advanced Analytics I Credit Hours: 3
INTL 310 - Intelligence Collection Systems Credit Hours: 3
INTL 401 - Intelligence Support to Military Operations Credit Hours: 3
INTL 403 - Intelligence Capstone Credit Hours: 3
CSCI 227 - Principles and Practices of Cybersecurity Credit Hours: 3

Concentration Areas:

In addition, students must complete one of the following concentration areas:

Foreign Language

Students majoring in ISS take up to twelve hours of foreign language instruction that may or may not build on high school study:

Students who wish to study the same language at The Citadel that they studied in high school will take a placement test in that language. There are three possible results of that test. If the student places into the elementary level of the language, he/she will be required to take 102, 201, and 202. If the student places into the intermediate level of the language, he/she will be required to take 201 & 202. The other class or classes in the twelve-hour requirement may be upper-level language electives or general electives. Students who place beyond the intermediate level will have satisfied the language requirement. They will simply take twelve hours of general elective classes; these classes may be upper-level language classes.
Students who wish to study a different language than what they studied in high school will be required to take 101, 102, 201, and 202.
All undergraduate courses taken at The Citadel with a subject prefix of ANTH, CRMJ, INTL, and PSCI will count towards the major GPA.