College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Center for Anticipatory Intelligence
The Master of Anticipatory Intelligence (MAI) program is a nationally pathbreaking professional degree program that prepares students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds including science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), social science, humanities, arts, and others to anticipate and successfully navigate complex emergent security challenges across a wide range of fields and industries. The MAI constitutes the nation’s first graduate degree in the field, responding to a significant upswell in labor market demand across the US public and private sectors for security-focused graduates and professionals who possess advanced training in both hard and soft skills of security thinking, structured toolkits for system-level threat assessment and resilience design, and sophistication in interdisciplinary analysis and synthesis regarding complex and emergent security issues affecting their professional fields.
USU’s has led the pioneering effort in the US to establish the academic field of Anticipatory Intelligence: a multidomain approach to anticipating threats and opportunities emerging from the world’s increasingly complex security environment, oriented around the goal of reducing uncertainty and designing resilience across future scenarios. The MAI operationalizes this academic field through an interdisciplinary, cross-college degree that integrates core coursework in Anticipatory Intelligence with an applied emphasis track in International Security, Cyber & Security Analytics, Biosecurity, or Geographic Information Sciences to equip graduates with a potent combination of analytic and applied skills, cross-trained competencies, and an actionable professional education fit for the security challenges of the twenty-first century.
The Master of Anticipatory Intelligence program is a 33-credit professional degree with: 1) a required curriculum core, 2) elective courses in Anticipatory Intelligence, 3) a graduate capstone project, and 4) a hard-skill emphasis track facilitated in conjunction with partner departments. A minimum of 15 credits of the total 33 credits must be completed at the 6000 level, and all courses must be completed with a passing grade of C or higher. The MAI leverages interlocking, stackable components with other USU colleges and programs. The design of this professional master’s degree offers students significant curricular choice in order to deliver a tailored graduate experience.
Detailed information on the Master of Anticipatory Intelligence program, including application requirements, annual application window, and guidance for prospective students is provided on the program website, cai.usu.edu.