Master of Arts in Diplomacy and Global Security students learn from published career academics, senior government officials, and intelligence community professionals who bring their extensive professional expertise to the seminar-room and into the coursework.
HPU’s Master of Arts in Diplomacy and Global Security (MADGS) is the only graduate program of its kind in Hawaiʻi. Very few universities in the country offer the same interdisciplinary combination of diplomacy and security studies, and for HPU Professor and Director of Diplomacy and Military Studies Russell Hart, Ph.D., that distinction is only the starting point. The degree, he says, is built around a specific goal: preparing graduates for success in the knowledge economy of the 21st century.
That phrase describes a particular kind of training. Rather than preparing students for one job title, MADGS teaches transferable tools: synthesis across disciplines, critical textual and source analysis, as well as rigorous research and writing that hold up no matter what career a graduate enters.
It is why one MADGS alumnus might spend a career briefing military planners at PACOM while another builds a business in Honolulu real estate, both drawing on the same broad skillset foundation.
That same thinking is behind the degree's new name. Formerly known as the Master of Arts in Diplomacy and Military Studies, the program became MADGS to reflect where its students, and the field itself, were already headed.
"The name change reflects where the degree had already gone," Hart shared. "Our students were increasingly moving into national and international security, defense and international relations work, and the curriculum needed to reflect that. We retired some older courses and added two new courses, one on counterterrorism and counterintelligence and another on transnational security threats, to make sure the degree curriculum continues to match the professional needs of our students."
Hart says the update has widened the appeal of the program to a wider cross-section of aspiring professionals, attracting more female and minority students into a degree that offers pathways into professions connected to national and international security, defense and international relations, professions that traditionally often had barriers to entry.
The curriculum itself is built around breadth before depth. MADGS students choose from 43 courses across five humanities and social science disciplines: history, political science, international relations, strategic studies and sustainability.
Once students have surveyed that terrain, five concentrations let them specialize in one or more areas that reflect their specific professional aspirations:
- International Human Rights
- Conflict, Warfare and Society
- Homeland and International Security
- Contemporary Security Studies
- Diplomacy and Statecraft
Every path through the program converges on the same culminating capstone research experience, where students bring together the interdisciplinary methods, critical analysis, and research and writing skills the degree is built around to complete one of three distinct capstone paths.
It is also a degree built around the lives of adult learners and working professionals. Seminars meet on campus, with hybrid and online options also available. Students can study either full- or part-time, and many students complete the degree in 18 months or less. Graduates of U.S. Armed Forces military colleges and universities receive generous transfer credit, and the program is approved for VA benefits.
The classroom draws on expert educators who have extensive related professional experience.
Students learn from published career academics, senior government officials, and intelligence community professionals who bring their extensive professional expertise to the seminar-room and into the coursework. Captain Carl Schuster, who has taught in the program since 2000, was recently interviewed by NPR about intelligence gathering and high-altitude balloons, the kind of real-world relevance Hart says shows up directly in class discussion.
Where MADGS graduates land afterward is, according to Hart, the clearest evidence the degree does what it sets out to do. Some stay close to the fields the degree is named for. Recent alumni have gone on to serve as a senior Army strategic and logistics planner in Virginia, a strategic plans and policy officer in the U.S. Air Force, an intelligence officer stationed in Honolulu, a battery commander in the 1st Cavalry Division and a reserve superintendent at the U.S. Air Force Academy's Center for Character and Leadership Development.
Others have carried the degree into international and policy work further from home. Graduates have advised Lithuania's Ministry of National Defence, served as chief of staff to Slovenia's Minister of Public Administration, and worked as a program recruiter for the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu.
Still others have taken the same training somewhere else entirely, from a senior analyst role at Booz Allen Hamilton, to real estate sales in Honolulu, and to customer success management in enterprise software and health care technology in California.
"What strikes me most is the range," says Hart, "because in the same graduating class you might have an Army strategic planner, a diplomat posted overseas, and someone building a business back home in Hawaiʻi. That is exactly what a knowledge economy degree is supposed to do. It teaches people how to think, how to analyze, and how to communicate that expertise succinctly and cogently, skill sets that lay a strong foundation for professional success and that travel with them wherever their master’s takes them."
To apply and learn more about HPU's Master of Arts in Diplomacy and Global Security, click here.
