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“Access to JMU’s experts ensures us, as we develop our programs, that there’s a sound base to them,” explains Sam Samuel, project manager for demining support systems at Essex.

John Noftsinger, director of economic development and partnership programs at JMU, was surprised when Essex approached him, but JMU concluded “that it was a great opportunity to engage students in a real-world problem.” JMU’s proximity to Washington and its desire to do more federal research made the endeavor even more attractive.

“We showed them how we could provide a high-quality product at a significantly reduced price,” Noftsinger says. Pentagon officials were sold, and the Center of Hu-manitarian Demining opened last fall in JMU’s College of Integrated Science and Technology with retired Army Col. Dennis Barlow at the helm.

Barlow, who left the military in September, is the former director of the Demining Directorate at the Pentagon. U.S. soldiers do not remove the land mines themselves, Barlow says, but they show citizens of the mine-infested countries how to do the job safely. The military also conducts land-mine awareness campaigns.

“It is a slow, nasty business,” Barlow says. There are an estimated 100 million to 150 million uncleared land mines worldwide. And “people are putting them in faster than we can take them out.”

Since 1994 the Defense Department has earmarked $20 million a year for humanitarian demining programs. JMU’s role will be to improve current demining programs by acting as a clearinghouse for information on the subject, Barlow says. “Getting information on where the land mines are and what parts of the world are affected is a tremendous informational undertaking.” The center plans to develop a home page and a search engine that will index demining information already available on the Internet. JMU students will compile the data, which the center will provide to any organization that needs it.

The center will also help develop Essex’s portable training system, which features interactive multimedia modules with access to a global land-mine database. JMU’s faculty has already produced 12 training modules for the system, including first-aid videos.

“All the different disciplines from across the campus are coming together to solve this problem,” Noftsinger says. “There’s a feeling in Washington that a solution to the land-mine problem is so perplexing that perhaps the current paradigm and efforts are not sufficient. We are hopeful that this new generation of students will ... help us find new solutions.”