About Illinois IDEA

Illinois recognizes the urgency of homeland security education, so that professionals in every field have the knowledge to prevent, manage, and recover from both natural and human-made disasters. First responders such as police, fire, and EMTs obviously need up-to-the-minute training. So do managers and planners in business and industry, education, government, health care, and social services.

In 2006, homeland security education and training were limited in Illinois. Nearly all existing programs targeted first responders, and no certificates, baccalaureate or graduate degrees were available except in computer security. Expertise did exist, but it was scattered across many of the public universities.

The Illinois Board of Higher Education awarded an innovation grant to Northern Illinois University and Western Illinois University to establish an alliance that would share courses, unique faculty expertise and other resources for homeland security education. The alliance is called Illinois IDEA, the Innovative Delivery Education Alliance.

The eight Alliance universities offer courses to students across the state without transferring or shuffling paperwork from multiple universities. Courses are taught by the most qualified instructors in the state, giving students quality experience in homeland security education.

The Alliance has the following purposes:

Create and maintain a seamless system for administration of registration, course sharing, and revenue-sharing for homeland security courses across all participating institutions.
Develop a multi-disciplinary, inter-institutional framework for homeland security education.
Deliver credit and non-credit homeland security education that combines best practices in instruction and cutting-edge research in this multi-disciplinary field.
Develop a clearinghouse of information for professionals, researchers, policy makers, and the public.
Provide leadership for grant writing and other initiatives to sustain the work of the Alliance.