LAIS Courses

Please visit the UNM Schedule for course availability and registration information.

LAIS 301 – Customized Curriculum: The Future of Degrees

Catalog Description: Students will learn to create career plans that require them to research career options and potential employers, and prepare a developmental roadmap that will lead them to success within the chosen profession.

LAIS 309 – Topics in Integrative Studies

Catalog Description: The content of this course varies by semester. It highlights topics of specialized interest in areas of multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary research.

LAIS 311 – Experiential Learning and Research

Catalog Description: This course enables students to learn their concentration areas in an applied setting, while gaining practical experience. The site becomes an experiential learning lab that makes connections between course work and the 21st century workplace.

LAIS 340 – Elements of Global & National Security

Catalog Description: Analyzes issues such as: economics, demography, ecology, energy, health, and geopolitics, with a view towards understanding their implications for global and national security.

Course overview: This course will focus on analyzing trends which are transforming the global landscape and impacting U.S. national security. The course will investigate how these changes in geopolitical dynamics will lead to shifts of power, pressure on resources, and increased potential for conflict. Some of the challenges to be evaluated include: economic growth, technology advancement, demographic pressures, natural resource scarcity, geography, health, governance, national identity, natural disasters, cyber intrusions, religious and ethnic tensions, violent radicalization, nuclear, WMD, and advanced conventional weapons and understanding their implications for peace, security, and the future international order. The course will introduce the role of federal and international agencies/organizations in assessing and formulating strategies for the risks and opportunities presented by these events. Students will acquire a basic understanding of the process of collection, analysis, and covert action, and of the relationship to policy. Through brainstorming, research, and careful analysis, students will inform decisions and will practice producing oral briefs. The course will conclude by providing students with the opportunity to produce a structured analytical product interpreting a specific 21st century event of their choice. This event will be briefed live to a mock panel of policy makers. This is a required course for students seeking the UNM Certificate in National Security & Strategic Analysis as well as those enrolled in the Global & National Security Concentration in the University College BISI program.

LAIS 345 – Elements of Community Safety and Human Security

Catalog Description: Introduces the student to and analyzes current movements to reform and improve safety in our communities and provide for basic human rights and human needs at state, tribal and local community levels.

Course overview: We will examine the newly- emerging field of Community Safety programs now being developed by state, tribal and local governments around the country, which offer the potential for new jobs working to make our cities, suburban, small town and rural areas safer, more just and more supportive places in meeting the critical human needs. We will also explore the expanding opportunities in our state and region for professional careers in this newly developing field and what skills and knowledge can help qualify our students for those careers. This is the required introductory course for a new UNM Certificate program starting this year.  It will also count as one of the elective courses for the NSSA Certificate and the BISI Global & National Security Concentration for students on main campus.

LAIS 409 – Individual Study

Catalog Description: Directed study of topics not covered in regular courses. Specific arrangements must be made with a member of the LAIS faculty responsible for supervising the work. A proposed plan of study is normally made at least one semester in advance.

Course overview:This course is required for students completing the Certificate either in National Security & Strategic Analysis or Community Safety & Human Security. Students will work with the instructor to develop a research project and write a capstone paper.  It may also be taken by other students who want to do an independent study project approved by the instructor.