Emergency Management and Homeland Security Fall 2015 Outstanding Grads: Andrew Hall

Deputy Sheriff Andrew Hall decided to earn his emergency management and homeland security degree in a place where many people might not expect: online.

“Going into it, I was very skeptical,” Hall says. “As an undergrad, I thought online schools were silly. I thought you had to be in the classroom. Now, working full-time, I realize that online schools can be just as good, if not better, than teaching in a classroom.”

Working in the Contra Costa County’s Office of the Sheriff, Hall wants to join his department’s Homeland Security Unit.

“I work in law enforcement, and, especially nowadays with terrorism hitting in America, homeland security is a huge subject I want to get into,” Hall says.

Within the sheriff’s office, Hall currently works in the Mutual Aid Mobile Field Force that resides under the office’s emergency management unit. Hall plans to move up to this unit and thinks he will most likely be able to do so with his new ASU degree.

The Master's Degree in Emergency Management and Homeland Security, offered through the College of Public Service and Community Solutions and ASU Online, blends together concepts of public policy and management, criminal justice, science, and technology to teach professionals how to handle emergency and terrorism-related situations.

For Hall, one of the advantages of the online graduate program was the flexibility of being able to earn the degree in either one, two or three years. “So depending how busy you are at work, if you have a family, or whatever your needs are–anyone can finish on any timeline,” he says. “I was able to do it quickly, but it wasn’t at the cost of learning.”

Hall said the program was taught by a mixture of professors and professionals who were experts in their field. “You learned exactly what you went into that class wanting to learn,” Hall said, “And I have already been able to apply it with my department.”

As part of the program’s curriculum, students were required to complete a project that applied to the real-world what they had learned in class.

For Hall’s project, he created a fictional terrorist attack on one of the main bridges in Contra Costa County. He was then able to test his department’s emergency management and homeland security policies to see if they met the standards he learned about in the ASU degree program.