The Johns Hopkins Gazette: March 18, 2002
March 18, 2002
VOL. 31, NO. 26

  

SPSBE Creates New Executive Leadership Program for Secret Service

By Neil A. Grauer
SPSBE
Johns Hopkins Gazette Online Edition

The Department of Public Sector Management in the School of Professional Studies in Business and Education has created a new two-year graduate Executive Leadership Program for the U.S. Secret Service, expanding on a partnership established in 1997. In the past five years, the federal agency has sent nearly 700 of its agents and personnel to classes conducted by SPSBE.

Beginning in August, a class of 24 Secret Service agents, uniformed officers and other personnel will begin studies in a two-year program that will lead to a master of science in management degree, said Sheldon Greenberg, director of the Department of Public Sector Management.

The new program "represents a significant step in [the Secret Service's] effort to develop current and future managers who have the daunting task of leading our agency through a myriad of new national and global challenges and demands for service," wrote Richard Elias, special agent in charge of the agency's James J. Rowley Training Center in Beltsville, Md., in a letter to SPSBE Dean Ralph Fessler.

Currently, SPSBE oversees four programs for the Secret Service Supervisory Development Initiative. Joseph McGowan, a retired Baltimore County Police Department official and Bethlehem Steel executive who has spent nearly three years supervising JHU's Secret Service partnership, said these courses were developed after Hopkins signed an agreement with the Secret Service to provide executive development programs for the agency.

The four programs currently conducted by Hopkins are Leadership and Organizational Behavior, First Line Supervisors Training, Ethics and Integrity, and Strategic Thinking and Planning, all of which "continue to be well received," Elias said.

According to McGowan, "The Secret Service is looking to Hopkins to be a major player in developing the future leaders of their agency." This leadership program, he said, may be the beginning of even more involvement with the agency, which provides protection for the nation's leaders; investigates white collar crime, computer fraud and counterfeiting; and assumes a significant role in maintaining national security.


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