Dr. Keith Preble Brings an Interdisciplinary Lens to Security Studies
Written by: East Carolina University® • May 20, 2026
Security studies isn’t just about what happens when conflict erupts. It also concerns the context and pressure points that make conflict possible in the first place: the sanctions that reshape economies; the trade systems that bind countries together; the supply chains behind everyday purchases; and the financial networks where power is gained, challenged, and contested.
“One of the myths that I like to dispel [about security studies] is that you can have warfare in other areas, not just on a battlefield with soldiers facing each other,” Dr. Keith Preble says. “That battlefield can also be in the global financial system.” For Dr. Preble, that’s what makes security studies such a compelling field: It asks students to look beneath the surface of world events and recognize the economic, political, and social forces that shape conflict.
As an assistant teaching professor in the East Carolina University® online Bachelor of Science (BS) in Security Studies program, Dr. Preble helps students expand their understanding of security beyond military force. His courses invite students to examine how power operates through trade, labor, policy, global markets, and everyday choices—and how these systems shape the risks, vulnerabilities, and opportunities that our society faces, as well as the tools we can use to respond.
Finding Security Studies Through International Relations
For Dr. Preble, security studies is not limited to battlefields, weapons systems, or military strategy. It is a field that helps students understand how power moves through economies, governments, policies, communities, and everyday life.
Dr. Preble’s own academic journey informs the way he teaches. As a first-generation college student, he understands that higher education can come with unspoken expectations that are difficult to navigate without guidance. That experience shapes his commitment to helping students understand both the course material and the “hidden curriculum” of academic and professional success.
As he explains, “There’s a lot of expectations in academia that no one ever talks about.”
That awareness has become central to his teaching philosophy. He wants students to develop the confidence, writing skills, research abilities, and analytical habits that can help them succeed in college and beyond. In his courses, security studies becomes both a subject area and a training ground for critical thinking.
Where Security and Economics Meet
Preble’s academic background is in political science and international relations, with a particular focus on economic sanctions, economic statecraft, and foreign policy. His research examines how economics and security intersect, especially when countries use tools such as sanctions, tariffs, foreign aid, and trade policy to advance strategic goals.
Students who arrive expecting security studies to focus only on war or military policy are challenged to think more broadly.
For students, that broader view can be transformative. It helps them understand security as a multidimensional field that includes human security, economic security, societal security, national security, and international relations. It also encourages them to ask deeper questions about how global systems affect everyday life.
Even the Clothes We Wear: Connecting International Security Issues to Everyday Experience
One of Preble’s strengths as an instructor is his ability to connect large-scale global issues to students’ daily experiences. In an online classroom, where building community can be challenging, he designs assignments that invite students to draw on their own lives and observations.
For example, in an introductory international relations course, Preble asks students to examine the labels on their clothing to identify where it was made. The exercise opens a discussion about labor, globalization, gender, exploitation, and economic security. Students begin to see how the clothes they buy connect them to international systems of production and inequality.
The lesson isn’t simply about where products come from. It’s about helping students recognize that global systems shape daily choices, consumer goods, labor markets, and security outcomes. He wants students to understand that many of the benefits enjoyed in one society may depend on vulnerabilities experienced elsewhere.
“I think it’s important to understand and recognize that exploitation,” he says, “but also how that exploitation confers security benefits on our society.”
That kind of analysis is central to security studies. Students learn to see connections among politics, economics, culture, labor, law, and policy. Rather than treating security as a narrow professional field, Preble presents it as a way to understand how societies organize power, respond to threats, and define stability.
A Multidisciplinary Field With Flexible Pathways
ECU’s online BS in Security Studies program reflects that same interdisciplinary approach. The program includes coursework in areas such as political science, homeland and international security, threats and policy responses, environmental health and safety, geography, history, criminal justice and criminology, and religious studies.
According to Preble, that breadth is one of the program’s major strengths. Security studies allows students to explore issues from multiple angles rather than remaining within a single disciplinary silo.
“One of the great things about security studies,” he says, “is that it isn’t just about politics or political science or about law.”
Instead, students engage with sociology, anthropology, economics, criminal justice, history, policy, and international relations. That flexibility is especially valuable for students who are still discovering their interests or who want to prepare for careers that require broad analytical skills where security plays a central role, such as compliance, cybersecurity, financial crime, intelligence, law, law enforcement, emergency management, logistics, the U.S. military, national security, and supply chain management.
Preble has seen students connect the degree to a range of goals, including law school, graduate study, intelligence, law enforcement, emergency management, military-related work, policy analysis, and research. He describes the field as versatile because students can shape their path around the questions and careers that matter most to them.
“I think students can take this degree in any career direction they want to pursue,” he says.
Teaching for the Real World: Practical Approaches to Skill Building
Preble is a dedicated teacher with a thoughtful approach to teaching. Consider his stance on collaborative research, writing skill development, and harnessing personal and professional experiences in the classroom.
Learn by Doing: Developing Good Research Habits in Class
Preble brings his research process into the classroom.
In research design courses, he helps students move from broad curiosity to focused research questions, theories, hypotheses, and evidence-based analysis. Because each student may be working on a different topic, he creates opportunities for them to share their ideas, revise their thinking, and learn from one another.
One distinctive part of his teaching is that he develops research projects alongside his students. By showing students how he approaches his own scholarly work, Preble helps demystify the research process. Students see that research isn’t produced instantly; it develops through questioning, revision, evidence gathering, peer review, and collaboration.
“I think that for me the way to get students to see or understand research,” he says, “is to have them work on research with faculty.”
In previous teaching roles, Preble invited students to contribute to research projects, including survey design, literature reviews, brainstorming, and drafting sections of academic papers. He hopes to create similar opportunities for ECU students who are interested in working on research related to security studies.
For students considering graduate school, law school, policy work, or analytical careers, these experiences can be especially valuable. They can also help students build a professional portfolio that demonstrates their ability to investigate complex questions and communicate findings clearly.
Developing Transferable Writing Skills Through Practice
While security studies content is important, Preble also emphasizes transferable skills. Writing, research, data interpretation, analysis, critical thinking, editing and revision, and professional preparation are central to his courses.
He traces part of that emphasis back to his own undergraduate experience, when a professor helped him rethink his approach to writing. Today, he wants students to leave his courses as stronger communicators.
“I always want students to come away being better writers than when they started,” he says.
Preble doesn’t expect students to copy his voice or write like scholars overnight. Instead, he encourages them to develop clarity, confidence, and authenticity. “I want them to write with their own voice,” he says.
Preparing Students for Various Analytical Roles
Another feature of Preble’s teaching is his interest in preparing students for roles beyond the university.
In his Weapons of Mass Destruction course, for example, Preble adapts an activity from his own professional experience working on risk assessments. Students are asked to evaluate the likelihood of a nation developing weapons of mass destruction by considering political, economic, and security factors. Through that work, they practice collecting data, interpreting evidence, building tables, reading figures, and making analytical judgments.
Those skills can apply far beyond security roles. The ability to research a problem, interpret information, write clearly, revise carefully, and present evidence is valuable in government, nonprofits, the private sector, law, public policy, intelligence, emergency management, and many other fields.
Online Learning That Meets Students Where They Are
Preble also recognizes the value of online learning for students who are balancing work, family, military service, or other responsibilities. For Preble, accessibility matters. Reflecting on his own undergraduate years, he remembers the difficulty of trying to balance coursework, employment, and financial pressures. Online education, he notes, creates opportunities that weren’t available to him at the time.
The format can be especially helpful for motivated students who need flexibility. However, Preble is clear that online learning still requires active engagement. Students must participate, manage their time, and take responsibility for their progress. “You can’t do passive learning in an online course,” he says.
For students who are ready to engage deeply, the online format can provide a meaningful path toward degree completion while allowing them to remain connected to their work, families, and communities.
Approaching Complex Issues With an Open Mind
Across his courses, Preble hopes students develop more than content knowledge. He wants them to become open-minded analysts who can listen carefully, understand differing perspectives, and approach conflict with intellectual humility.
Security studies often involves difficult questions: How do countries define their interests? Why do societies experience conflict? How do economic systems produce insecurity? What does power look like beyond military force? How should governments respond to complex threats?
Preble encourages students to approach those questions without assuming that disagreement is failure. In fact, he sees respectful disagreement as part of learning.
“It’s okay to agree to disagree with others,” he says.
For him, the goal isn’t always to change someone’s mind. Often, the more important objective is understanding why differences exist and how they shape national and international security. That approach can help students become stronger researchers, policy thinkers, analysts, and citizens.
Learn More About ECU’s Online BS in Security Studies
ECU’s online BS in Security Studies is designed for students who want to better understand international security challenges; emergency management; policy; risk; and the systems that shape safety at the local, national, and international levels. The program offers interdisciplinary coursework, flexible online learning, and a transfer-friendly path for students ready to finish their degrees and prepare for meaningful work in security-related fields.
To explore how ECU’s BS in Security Studies can help you advance your education and career goals, learn more about the program today.
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