Source: Tampa Tribune

Tampa's newest university doesn't have a football team.

It doesn't have a mascot.

But it does have the most restrictive admission process in the state.

If you want to enroll in the Joint Special Operations University, which officially opens today with a ceremony, you better be a member of the world's most elite military units or a security decision-maker.

The university is aimed at teaching tactics and strategy in a world where the enemy often is no longer a standing army, says university President Brian Maher. "We don't teach them what to think," says Maher. "We teach them how to think."

The university is located, for now, just outside the Dale Mabry gate at MacDill Air Force Base in a former Special Operations Command acquisition center. Some of those who enroll are nominated by their respective branches. Others apply.

Some courses, such as Introduction to Special Operations Forces, don't require any security clearance. Others require secret or even top secret clearance.

The course list includes Counter Threat Finance Educational Seminar, Irregular Warfare Course, Joint Civil-Military Operations Campaign Planning Workshop, Joint Contemporary Insurgent Warfare Course, Joint Special Operations Forces Senior Intelligence Leaders Orientation Seminar and Joint Special Operations Irregular Warfare Advanced Course.

Not all the participants are military. Some are from the State Department, CIA and the United States Agency for International Development. All the agencies can learn from each other, Maher says.

The university has a $10 million annual operating budget. It's goal is to "educate special operations forces executive, senior, and intermediate leaders and selected national and international security decision makers â€" both military and civilian â€" through teaching, outreach, and research in the science and art of joint special operations," according to its mission statement.

In addition to providing courses on campus and elsewhere, the university commissions publications for special operators, with titles such as "Innovate or Die: Innovation and Technology for Special Operations."

Joint Special Operations University opened in September, 2000 at Hurlburt Airfield in Okaloosa. It was the brainchild of Army Gen. Peter Schoomaker, former commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, who promoted the philosophy that facing a non-traditional enemy takes a non-traditional approach to warfare.

Schoomaker was ahead of the curve. Less than a year after the university opened, the nation was attacked by a non-traditional enemy using non-traditional weapons â€" hijacked jets. "After 9/11, the demand for education increased," Maher says.

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