Protecting Canadian Instrastructure – First Student to Graduate from Carleton’s MIPIS Program

Terrorism, security, explosives – these are all themes that attracted Kyle Van de Vooren to sign up for Canada’s first Master’s degree in Infrastructure Protection and International Security (MIPIS).

And this June, he will walk across the stage at Convocation to accept his degree from the MIPIS program offered by Carleton’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Van de Vooren actually graduated in February making him the first person to graduate from that program.

One of the big drawing cards for Van de Vooren was the interdisciplinary nature of the program that focuses on training security practitioners on the protection of national critical infrastructure systems from both a policy and engineering perspective.

He points out that: “MIPIS fosters collaboration between the students and professionals within the program, allowing for excellent secondary learning sources.”

Van de Vooren says he liked the fact that this program was not exclusively academic and has a strong hands-on influence. “The application of skills allows students to augment the knowledge that is learned directly in class.”

Students in the MIPIS program are required to participate in at least one practicum course. Van de Vooren completed three and is looking into the possibility of doing a fourth, even though he will have graduated by that time. “In my opinion, the practicum will set you up for success over policy-driven programs because you apply your skill set in real-world applications, not just in theory.”

Although he has a background in political science, Van de Vooren opted to tackle an engineering infrastructure project, writing a paper on Blast Hardening Fundamentals where he applied theories about current and potential future blast mitigation techniques to an electrical substation in London, Ontario. “I used software and pressure-impulse diagrams to calculate the damages and the required standoff distance to reduce damages to within tolerable ranges.” Although the paper was only supposed to be 30 to 40 pages, Van de Vooren became so intrigued with the topic that he wrote a 92-page paper.

“To pinpoint one specific attribute about the program I enjoyed the most, it was the discussions among friends, colleagues, family members and ‘randoms’ at social gatherings about the program itself, what we learned in class, or what I intend to do after graduating from the program,” says Van de Vooren. “This is a very tight-knit group of students that enjoys hanging out after hours and is willing to help each other out, as long as you pull your weight.”

At June Convocation, Van de Vooren will also be accepting the Professional in Critical Infrastructure Protection (PCIP) certification.

More information about the MIPIS program is available at: carleton.ca/ipis/.