Peter K. Forster, PhD

Peter K. Forster is a senior lecturer, member of the graduate faculty, and the executive director of online education in the college of IST at Penn State. He holds a doctorate in political science (international relations) and has affiliate status with the School of International Affairs, the Center for Network Centric Cognition and Information Fusion (NC2IF) — an IST–based research center —and Penn State Harrisburg. Dr. Forster’s primary areas of interest are terrorism/counter-terrorism, risk and crisis management, international relations, and national security. He is a member of the NATO/OSCE Partnership for Peace Consortium Counter-terrorism Working Group, which brings academics and practitioners together to examine the global aspects of terrorism and its impact.Forster has been involved with Penn State's Homeland Security program since its inception, including teaching courses on terrorism, crisis management, and homeland security-specific topics, such as intelligence and inter-agency cooperation.

Prior to joining the college of IST, he taught courses on international relations, war, and international relations of the Middle East. Dr. Forster has been involved in security sector reform, including defense institution building, as well as consulting on national distance education initiatives in Central Asia and the Caucasus. He is the co-author of books on NATO’s military burden sharing and intervention, including Multinational Military Intervention from Ashgate Publishing. He has also published on such homeland security topics as technology and terrorism and American policies and interests in Central Asia and the Caucasus. His current research focus is the evolution of terrorists’ use of online and mobile technologies.

Edward J. Glantz, PhD

Dr. Edward J. Glantz, professor of practice, joined the college of IST faculty in 2009. Previously, he spent ten years as a faculty member with Penn State’s Smeal College of Business, where he earned the 2008 Brand-Paiste Teaching Award recognizing outstanding faculty. Dr. Glantz brings to Penn State thirty years of experience managing technology, research, and marketing in the manufacturing and telecommunication industries, including startup work.

Dr. Glantz has developed and taught courses in business information systems, application development, decision theory, risk management, information security, intelligence analysis, and enterprise architecture. He has undergraduate degrees in mechanical engineering and liberal arts, an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of Business, and a doctorate in cognitive science. Dr. Glantz is a registered professional engineer. 

Jake Graham

Jake Graham, professor of practice, is a former Marine Corps colonel who, upon his retirement in 2007, joined the college of IST to teach in the security and risk analysis program. He is the director of the Center for Network Centric Cognitive and Information Fusion (NC2IF) and the Red Cell Analytics Lab (RCA Lab). The NC2IF conducts research that focuses on bridging two data fusion domains — hard fusion, which uses sensor information such as radar, video, and acoustics, for example, and soft fusion, which uses textual information derived largely from human observations and reporting. Jake’s academic research focuses on structured analytics, intelligence analysis, and red-team analytics. For his SRA classes, he writes and delivers analytic decision games in which students are exposed to real-life lessons of security and risk, such as extreme events, terrorism, homeland security, and cyber security. Professor Graham recently delivered the first SRA capstone course during the spring 2012 semester. The capstone is a 15-week course in which student teams compete in a command post exercise to solve problems of security and risk.

Donald Shemanski

Donald R. Shemanski, professor of practice, joined the faculty of the college of IST on June 2, 2008, after serving for 23 years as a diplomat with the U.S. Foreign Service. Previously, he served as counselor for global affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, directing the embassy office responsible for high-priority policy issues, such as counter-terrorism, nuclear nonproliferation, climate change, and international judicial assistance. He has had a number of postings in Washington and abroad, including tours in Italy, Pakistan, Cyprus, and Germany. His assignments have included serving as coordinator for State Department refugee assistance programs for the former Yugoslavia, delegate to the U.S. Delegation to the Vienna CSCE Follow-up Meeting, Deputy Special Envoy to the Afghan Mujahedin, and Alternate U.S. Delegate to the foundation, “Remembrance, Responsibility, and the Future,” which administered payments to former World War II–era forced and slave laborers of the Nazi regime.

Prior to joining the U.S. Foreign Service, Professor Shemanski was an associate attorney with the international law firm Walter, Conston & Schurtman in New York City. He was admitted to the Bar in Pennsylvania and New York. In addition to his studies in the United States, he studied German civil law at the Goethe University in Frankfurt pursuant to a Fulbright grant. His foreign languages include German, Italian, and Greek. He is the recipient of two Superior Honor Awards and three Meritorious Honor Awards from the U.S. Department of State.