Help Advance Your Career with the International Relations Program

My name is Anthony Miller. I currently work for BNSF as a train dispatcher, and I am graduating from the master's degree in international relations program with a concentration in national security.

In choosing international relations and national security, I have always had an affinity for politics and so it's been a passion of mine. And having worked in both the air traffic control industry in the railroad industry, the transportation system in national security has come you know important, so that was kind of my what pushed me in that direction as I was looking at the different programs that I could do. You know national security right now it's kind of a hot-button issue, and so I felt like that would be something that would give me a good platform to go forward from.

Working for the railroad and BNSF, there's not a broad scope of people that have master's degrees, so in that aspect just having a master's degree kind of gives me that leg up. But also having a concentration in national security, it gives me some perspectives for the railroad that are different than most people would have, and it helps me to kind of have a differing mindset to how we can protect the railroad, how we run our infrastructure. So it will definitely help to give me that next step to be able to step into management and move up through the company if I choose to stay there.

In doing this class, and specifically this degree path and specifically internet or national security, I found that a lot of the risk assessment processes that we use to determine issues in the transportation sector and infrastructure will directly relate over to the railroad to any transportation industry. And then, two, going forward that's kind of where I want to use this degree to go is to maybe get into the State Department [or] into you know critical infrastructure protection and that will definitely apply to that and being able to use those skills and things that I learned to make that job easier.

As far as my education and my time in Norwich affecting professionally, I would say it has vastly expanded my communication skills, my ability to get my point across. My writing skills have dramatically improved throughout the course of the time here, which you know in the corporate world, how you communicate and the way that you come off to people is vitally important that you're getting the right information and the right point across. So I would say that having obtained this degree and my time here has very much improved my prospects professionally going forward.