# Presentation: 224867

## Designing Educational Opportunities for the Hazard Manager of the 21st Century

- Deborah Thomas
- Dept. of Geography & Env. Sciences
- University of Colorado at Denver
- deborah.thomas@cudenver.edu

## Natural Hazards Center               University of Colorado at Boulder

**National PERISHIP Award**
**Dissertation Fellowships in Hazards, Risk, and Disasters**
**Funded by NSF with PERI**
**http://www.cudenver.edu/periship/**
**Co-sponsored Higher Education Workshop in October, 2003**
**http://www.colorado.edu/hazards**

*Natural Hazards Center*

**Designing Educational Opportunities **
**for the **
**Hazards Manager of the **
**21****st**** Century Workshop**
**Denver, CO**
**October 22-24, 2003**

**Funded by the National Science Foundation and FEMA’s Higher Education Project**

## Higher Ed. Workshop, Oct. 2003

- 55 leaders from hazards community
- Multi-disciplinary
- Practitioners as well as academics
- Goals and objectives
- To identify core competencies for skills and knowledge
- To begin to create a sample interdisciplinary curriculum
- To identify possibilities and challenges for incorporating hazard management principles and research into curriculum

## 8 Working Groups

- Core skill areas
- Core knowledge areas
- Research & technology needs
- Balancing research, theory, & practice
- Undergraduate Curricula
- Including linkages to community colleges
- Graduate Curricula
- Certificate Opportunities
- Continuing Education Opportunities

## Core Skills

- Curiosity
- Ability to think creatively
- Logical thought process
- Self-confidence
- Ethics
- How to work within the culture (how to be a “professional”)
- People skills, empathy
- Team work
- Good communication skills, including second language
- Sensitivity to and valuing other cultures
- Familiarity with the issues that revolve around disadvantaged and special populations
- Problem solving, including flexibility and adaptability
- How to handle pressure, dealing with others under stress
- Familiarity with computer technology (spreadsheets, using the Internet, GIS, databases, etc.)
- Grant/proposal writing
- Project management, budget management
- Time management and ability to prioritize
- Human resource management

- Analytic skills
- Ability to do research, as well as read and understand research
- Critical thinking, decision making
- Judgment
- Ability to network
- Coalition building and networking
- Negotiation and conflict resolution
- How to work with the political process, legal system, as well as different community groups
- Leadership
- Computer technology (for those who may be coming back to school and have not previously acquired these skills)
- Excellent communication capacity
- Ability to learn from mistakes (both self and others)

- Undergraduate

- Graduate

## Core Knowledge

- Approaches
- True interdisciplinary degree
- Discipline-specific degrees
- Local & regional specialties
- Content
- Disaster/hazards theory
- Risk susceptibility, resilience, vulnerability, mitigation
- Incidence command structure
- Government

**Social Sciences**

**Physical Sciences**

## Balance of Research, Theory, & Practice

- Need a combination of all
- Practical hands-on experience necessary
- Case studies, internships
- Conduct independent research, particularly graduate level
- Exposure to theory as well

## Curriculum

- Continuing Education
- Certificates
- Links between Community Colleges and      4-year institutions
- Undergraduate degrees
- Graduate degrees

## Potential Courses for an Undergraduate Program

- Business
- Capstone/Internship
- Communication
- Economics
- Engineering
- Environment & Health
- Government Affairs
- Hazards, Risk, & Vulnerability
- Hazards Survey Course (physical aspects)

- International Disasters
- Introduction to EM
- Legal Issues
- Methods
- Organizational Behavior
- Planning
- Social Dimensions of Disasters
- Sustainable Hazards Mitigation
- Technology

## Potential Courses for a Graduate Program

- Built Environment
- Capstone/Pro-seminar
- Communication (Risk)
- Economic Dimensions of Disaster
- Hazards, Risk and Vulnerability
- Human Behavior in Disaster (Micro)
- Introduction to Emergency Management

- Research Methods
- Organizational Behavior and Leadership
- Planning
- Public Policy Process and Analysis
- Social Issues (Macro)
- Structure and Function of Government

## Challenges & Opportunities

- Understanding of market: potential students and jobs
- Increasing diversity
- Very interdisciplinary (public administration to public health to engineering to physical sciences)
- Forming partnerships and cultivating champions

## Summary Points

- An emerging discipline
- Multiple contributing disciplines
- Must link to planning and sustainability
- ALL phases of the emergency management cycle
- Response AND vulnerability, mitigation
- International linkages

## Summary Points

- Curricula and course development
- Essential, needed, and fundamental
- Broad-based overviews, linkages to international perspective, critical and adaptive thinking
- Flexible with regional emphases
- Professionalization
- Strong links between academia & practitioners
- Creation of opportunities & promotion of profession and discipline