UNLV Executive Master of Science in Crisis and Emergency Management
June 2007 News

After working on emergency management, public safety, and homeland security issues for more than twenty five years, I take personally the role of higher education as leaders in building programs to enhance safety and security generally especially on their own campuses.
 
After the incident at Virginia Tech in April of this year, I REALLY TAKE IT PERSONALLY!

First, as then Governor Clinton’s Senior Assistant for Intergovernmental Relations, I worked in Arkansas to promote the best possible emergency preparedness, training, exercises, services, partnership, and outreach to state and local officials as well as the public. It became clear that training was of utmost importance and that training centers and academies could not provide sufficient training for all.  There was a need to increasingly rely on the institutions of higher education as we continued to build our profession. Disaster research, for example, was and is vital. Additionally, we needed strong professionals, with broad academic backgrounds to lead before, during, and after crises, disasters, and emergencies.

When President Clinton appointed me as Associate FEMA Director in charge of National Preparedness, Training, and Exercises to carry on these efforts on a national and international basis (1994), John McKay, at the FEMA Emergency Management Institute, and I launched the FEMA Higher Education Project, with a couple of institutions offering degree programs in emergency management. Today, those programs total 132. The University of Nevada at Las Vegas is one of a few executive graduate degrees.

As these programs developed, it became apparent that learning and academic growth can only occur where facilities, faculties and students – all of whom are national treasures – are kept safe and secure at all times. Meeting first with the officials at Western Michigan University, hosted by Dr. Alan G. Walker, and then the Vice Provost there and now the President of Upper Iowa University, including the state, county, city, and other community leaders, along with numerous WMU officials we jointly mapped out partnerships and plans for preparing universities for any eventuality.

In the meantime, FEMA launched a Disaster Resistant Universities program to assist selected universities in mitigating disasters. This momentum in the area of college and university emergency preparedness and mitigation continues to this day, though the program has not been funded in recent years. As an example, a Disaster Resistant University Conference was hosted by the University of Washington in Seattle in 2005 with more than a hundred emergency managers attending.. The California Office of Homeland Security  now funds 109 California Community Colleges to become NIMS/SEMS compliant and prepared for emergencies. SEMS is the State Emergency Management Standard.  Similar not identical efforts are occurring in other states.

The US Department of Education Safe and Drug Free Schools Program, under the leadership of Bill Modzeleski, has developed a model school emergency plan, a vibrant website with best practices and lessons learned, as well as an outstanding grant program for schools, school districts, and regions to prepare their schools for emergencies.  A critical mass of well-trained active leaders and model schools has been facilitated. I have personally served as the external evaluator for the schools in Northern California, from Sonoma, Santa Rosa, Windsor, Ukiah, Lake County, Del Norte County, Mendocino County, Eureka, Crescent City, all the way to the Oregon line.

Then, on April 16th, 2007, a troubled student at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia, went on a vicious rampage, killing 32 students and himself, the largest campus disaster in the nation’s history! That is the moment that it became personal for me – not just professional . My grandson, Alec Calhoun, was the last student to make it out alive from a classroom in which the professor and students locked the classroom door, put a desk up against it, and tried to barricade themselves for protection.  The shooter shot the lock off, shot the professor through the door and proceeded to come in firing away.

Now, my work with colleges and universities with regard to emergency preparedness has taken on an even higher level of emotion and personal commitment….as it also has for other professionals in our field!

More information on the ECEM program can be found online at: http://urbanaffairs.unlv.edu/pubadmin/