The University of Colorado at Boulder is one of six core academic partners in a new effort to study terrorism funded by a $12 million shared grant from the Department of Homeland Security.
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced the grant today at the University of Maryland, where the new research center will be headquartered. The new center is part of a consortium that includes CU-Boulder, UCLA, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of South Carolina and the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
The new center will be called the Homeland Security Center of Excellence on Behavioral and Social Research on Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism. The center will have three main working groups with one headed by Kathleen Tierney, CU-Boulder professor of sociology and director of the Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center.
The three groups will focus on the origins of terrorist groups, the dynamics of terrorist groups and a group headed by Tierney that will examine societal issues associated with terrorism in the United States.
"We will be working to better understand the public perception of the terrorism threat, ways of communicating that threat to the public and to public officials, and preparedness issues in schools and communities," she said.
Other CU-Boulder researchers involved in the grant include Terence Thornberry, professor of sociology and director of the Research Program on Problem Behavior; Delbert Elliott, distinguished professor of sociology and director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence; Susan D. Jones, assistant professor of history; and Lisa Keranen, assistant professor of communication.
CU-Boulder's involvement will include graduate and undergraduate education, salary support for graduate students and additional hires, Tierney said. The working group headed by Tierney also will include researchers at other institutions.
The Homeland Security Department previously established three university-based centers of excellence to examine the economic impact of terrorism, the transfer of disease from animals to humans and food security.
The CU-Boulder Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center, founded in 1976, is the nation's leading repository of knowledge on human behavior in disasters. The center is dedicated to advancing the nation's understanding of the social aspects of hazards and disasters and increasingly is studying the effects of large-scale terrorist attacks.
In terms of physical impacts and the ways in which people and organizations respond, such attacks have a great deal in common with natural disasters such as great earthquakes and hurricanes, Tierney said.
"One of the goals of the center is to ensure that lessons learned from more than five decades of research on natural disasters and other extreme events are applied to the management of emerging terrorism-related threats," she said.
The center is part of CU-Boulder's Institute of Behavioral Science and is funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, other federal agencies and private-sector funders. Center personnel include faculty, professional staff and graduate and undergraduate students.
More information on the CU-Boulder Natural Hazards Center is posted on the center's Web site at .