In recent months, we have witnessed major terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, deadly flooding in Texas and Oklahoma, mega data breaches in the American health-care industry, and a tanking Chinese stock market.
All of these events were preceded by warning signs, signals that would indicate a certain likelihood of occurrence.
So, how do you separate the signals from the noise and reach some understanding of what they mean so that we are not continually surprised and, therefore, less competitive, less safe and less secure?
At Mercyhurst University’s Ridge College of Intelligence Studies and Applied Sciences, a new intel hybrid is connecting the dots, explains Mercyhurst President Michael Victor, who is dedicating his administration’s support to expanding existing and scripting new “niche programs.”
The Ridge College, Victor notes, takes an interdisciplinary approach in merging the skill sets of the intelligence professional, the mathematics and computer systems expert, and the communications specialist to produce a career professional comfortable in all three domains.
The mix of disciplines is in direct response to the extraordinary volume, complexity and variety of data in the world today. There is a compelling need to extract, assimilate and analyze data to assist corporations, government and law enforcement in making critical decisions.
As such, Mercyhurst is pioneering programs to make sense of this information avalanche, with everything from baccalaureate and master’s degrees to certificate programs. In fact, going forward means being ever nimble and responsive to the changes impacting the university, the region and the world — and, better yet, anticipating those changes.
Victor, who became Mercyhurst’s 12th president on Aug. 1, 2015, is ushering in this new era by applying his background in business as the former chief executive officer of Pyramid Industries and his academic background as the former dean of Mercyhurst’s Walker School of Business and president of Lake Erie College.
“It has been said that ‘a modern university has become like a city-state in its scope and complexity’ and, because of that, private education can no longer be business as usual,” he says. “At Mercyhurst, we have put in place a model that demands institutional effectiveness at all levels, in particular, the effective use of data to inform decisions, planning and improvement.”
Read more in the June edition of the Business Magazine.
