Jeremy F. Plant (Faculty Chair)
Jeremy F. Plant is professor of public policy and administration and the coordinator of the graduate programs in public administration in the School of Public Affairs at Penn State Harrisburg, where he has taught since 1988. Prior to joining Penn State, Dr. Plant taught at George Mason University and the University at Albany, SUNY. Dr. Plant graduated magna cum laude from Colgate University and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He received master’s and doctoral degrees in government from the University of Virginia. He is a Vietnam-era veteran who served in the Military Police Corps. Dr. Plant’s research focuses on the areas of administrative ethics, homeland security, and transportation policy and administration. His publications have appeared in the Public Administration Review, the American Journal of Public Administration, the Review of Policy Research, Public Integrity, the Journal of Urban Affairs, the International Journal of Public Administration, Public Works Management and Policy, and several other journals. Dr. Plant has also written/edited two books and contributed a number of chapters to multi-authored books. He has presented more than seventy conference papers on a variety of topics. He is a founding member of the American Society for Public Administration’s Section on Ethics and Section on Transportation Policy and Administration and currently serves on the executive committee of each. He chaired the Section on Transportation Policy and Administration from 1998 to 2000 and has been appointed to several committees of the ASPA and the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration.
Thomas J. Arminio
Thomas Arminio, a native of Union, New Jersey, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1977 with a bachelor’s degree in international security affairs, and from the U.S. Naval War College in 1996 with a master’s degree in national security and strategic studies. He spent nearly six years as director of emergency management services in a private-sector consulting firm and twenty-four years in a variety of challenging assignments in the U.S. Navy, retiring in 2001.
Captain Arminio’s education and training experience has spanned nearly three decades, across a wide spectrum of student ages, academic achievement levels, and academic/training environments, including K–12 (as a substitute teacher), the undergraduate and graduate levels, professional development, and community/civic volunteer training. From curriculum and program development and lecturing, to aircraft and flight simulator training, Captain Arminio has educated and trained students, professionals, elected and appointed public officials, military personnel, senior Department of Defense civilian personnel, international students, and community volunteers. As an instructor at the U.S. Army War College, he taught more than 250 senior U.S. military officers, senior international fellows, and senior Department of Defense civilians in a graduate-level seminar environment and made significant contributions to the curricular development of these courses: Implementing National Military Strategy; Advanced Warfighting Studies Program; and Sea Power—Naval Strategy and Operations. In 1998 he was awarded the Admiral William F. Halsey Chair in Maritime Studies.
As director of emergency management services for an $8 million/year private-sector consulting firm, Captain Arminio initiated, developed, led, and sustained a profitable new line of business with an annual budget exceeding $600,000 and directed a team of a dozen professionals. He was primarily responsible for identifying and assessing challenges and opportunities for resolution; developing and exploring process alternatives; analyzing costs, benefits, and impacts; developing long-range and contingency plans; effectively channeling and managing resources; and optimizing solutions to achieve organizational goals.
Peter K. Forster
Peter K. Forster holds a doctorate in political science (international relations) from Penn State and is an instructor in the Department of Political Science. He is also the associate director of Penn State Outreach’s international and homeland security initiatives. After participating on a number of working groups in NATO’s Partnership for Peace Consortium since 2001, he was asked to contribute to NATO’s Partnership Action Plan on Defence Institution Building and is the project manager for the Public Administration and Good Governance Reference Curriculum part of this initiative.
Dr. Forster’s research focuses on security sector reform, NATO policy, and terrorism. He is the co-author of a book on military burden sharing beyond NATO’s traditional area of operation (2005) and has published articles on U.S. interests in central Asia and the Caucasus, security sector reform in Uzbekistan and Ukraine, and the role of intelligence in homeland security. He serves on the AFRICOM Resource Group and has contributed to the development of the Department of Homeland Security’s Professional Development and Strategic Studies curriculum. He also serves on the Homeland Security Defense and Education Consortium’s subcommittee on curriculum development and works with the Naval Postgraduate School’s University and Agency Partnership Initiative. At Penn State he teaches courses on terrorism, international relations theory, Middle East politics, U.S. foreign policy, and war in world politics.
Steven Peterson
Steven A. Peterson is director of the School of Public Affairs and professor of politics and public affairs at Penn State Harrisburg. He received his doctorate in political science from the State University of New York at Buffalo. His research interests include American politics, public opinion and voting behavior, biology and politics, and public policy (AIDS policy and education policy).
Dr. Peterson has authored or co-authored some twenty books—among which are Darwinism, Dominance, and Democracy; The Failure of Democratic Nation Building: Ideology Meets Evolution; Political Behavior: Patterns in Everyday Life; and The World of the Policy Analyst—and more than 100 other publications. He has served as president of the New York State Political Science Association and the Northeastern Political Science Association. And he has served as an officer in the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences and Research Committee #12 (Biology and Politics) of the International Political Science Association.
James G. Pierce
Colonel James G. Pierce entered the U.S. Army in 1980, after earning a bachelor’s degree in political science, and being named a Distinguished Military Graduate in the ROTC program, at La Salle College (Philadelphia). He was commissioned in the regular army as an infantry second lieutenant and assigned to Fort Benning, Georgia, to take the U.S. Army Infantry Officer Basic Course.
In 1987, Colonel Pierce resigned his regular army commission to accept a Reserve commission and assignment as an Active Guard Reserve (AGR) soldier in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, at the Eastern ARNG Aviation Training Site. In 1998 he assumed command of the Eastern ARNG Aviation Training Site and was soon promoted to the rank of colonel.
Colonel Pierce relinquished command of the Eastern ARNG Aviation Training Site in 2001 and was assigned as the director of strategic leadership studies in the Department of Distance Education at the U.S. Army War College, where he served as a faculty member and course author. He retired from active duty in 2003.
Colonel Pierce volunteered to be recalled to active duty for a six-month tour in 2007, in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. While in Iraq, he was assigned to the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team, Multi-National Security Transition Command—Iraq, and served as senior adviser to the Iraqi Army Tactical Training Command in Baghdad.
Colonel Pierce received a master’s degree in strategic leadership from the U.S. Army War College in 2000 and a doctorate in public administration from Penn State in 2004.
Xavier Stewart
Colonel Xavier Stewart has had more than thirty years of distinguished military service. A former U.S. marine, he joined the Army National Guard in 1978. His duties with the Maryland, Georgia, and Delaware National Guard have included assignments in the Military Police, Military Intelligence, the Physical Security Program, the Military Academy, and the Medical Service Corps. Colonel Stewart has held college faculty appointments as adjunct professor for the California College for Health Sciences’ respiratory therapy program, as visiting assistant professor of rehabilitation services and natural sciences at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, and as an adjunct faculty member in biology at Wesley College.
Colonel Stewart returned to active duty (Title 32 PANG) to assume command of the 3rd WMD Civil Support Team. In this capacity he is responsible for the employment of a rapid response team to incidents of weapons of mass destruction in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Region III, which encompasses Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. He is a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Board and the American College of Forensic Examiners and is board-certified in homeland security at CHS Level V.
Colonel Stewart is director of military support to civil authorities and deputy director of intelligence and operations (J2/3) at Joint Forces Headquarters, Pennsylvania. He is responsible for managing the preparation and maintenance of contingency plans for natural disasters; military assistance for civil disturbances (MACDIS); homeland defense/security, including security against weapons of mass destruction (WMDs); military support to civil defense; national special security events; continuation of vital public services and alert of National Guard forces for homeland security/defense; and related contingency missions. He is responsible for the state security programs, classified information control, physical security, terrorism counteraction, communications security, intelligence security, operational employment of military resources, operation of the state Military Joint Emergency Operations Center and emergency communications systems, the emergency regional reporting system, WMD Civil Support Teams, the National Guard CERFP (Chemical, Biological, Radiological/Nuclear, and Explosive Enhanced Response Force Package), and the National Guard State Partnership Program.
Colonel Stewart is a graduate of the Command and General Staff College, the Joint Senior Leaders’ Chemical Corps Course, and the NORTHCOM Dual-Status Joint Forces Command Course. He has a master’s degree in education, with a concentration in health sciences, and a doctorate in public health. He is currently a resident at the prestigious U.S. Army War College, where he is earning a dual master’s degree in an eleven-month program, with an anticipated June 2009 graduation.
