Ken R. Pence
Assistant Professor of the Practice Engineering Management

Ken Pence has had leadership positions in the field of program management and technology adoption/assessment in his 31 years with the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department. His research at Vanderbilt focuses on high-risk decision-making, homeland security, systems engineering, and performance evaluations of technology implementations. From his position as a grant reviewer for the National Institute of Justice, he has evaluated grants for vehicle incapacitation methodology, sensors/scanners, less-lethal weaponry, and wireless/wired communications. He currently teaches engineering economics, program/project management, and applied behavioral science. As co-PI on a DHS grant ($1.2M), he is aiding development of adaptive online courses (with the Vanderbilt Institute for Software Integrated Systems – ISIS) to teach information security from security basics to cyber-warfare defense (www.act-online.net).

Dr. Pence is a graduate of the FBI National Academy (125^th Session) and has developed programs and taught police departments in Northern Ireland, England and Germany in security/ special weapons and tactics. He specializes in high-tech system adoption for tactical use, systems integration, and program management.