APA hosted a meeting Aug. 9–10 to help officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) design curriculum recommendations for institutions offering coursework in homeland security. The group also made suggestions for topics to be covered in a two-week training program for law enforcement officers, tentatively called the "National Homeland Security Academy."

While the curricula are works-in-progress, APA participation will help ensure they include topics from the behavioral sciences, such as risk-analysis, responding to and recovering from disaster, and decision-making theory, says Geoffrey Mumford, PhD, APA's director of science policy. The courses may also cover the histories of the 22 agencies that combined to make up DHS and provide a primer on the congressional appropriations process.

--S. DINGFELDER