Make sure everyone is included in your campus emergency planning

Madison, Wis.—April 14, 2009 — There’s an easy way to remember who needs to be trained on the emergency management plan at your campus. In a word? Everyone.

In the recent online seminar Challenges in Creating and Assessing Campus Emergency Management Plans, presenters Maureen Connolly and William L. Kibler provided a step-by-step outline to developing an effective emergency management plan, and warned of the common missteps many campuses make. These missteps include a failure to train everyone on campus, a failure to communicate the plan effectively, and a failure to re-evaluate the plan on a continual basis.

“Some people will need more in-depth and frequent training than others, but everyone has a role to play and everyone needs to know what to do and where to go based on the specific emergency that may occur,” says Kibler, Vice President for Student Affairs at Mississippi State University, where he also oversees the University Crisis Action Team and the Incident Command Center.

Emergencies and other crises that occur on college campuses may be natural (e.g. tornado, hurricane, earthquake), facility related (e.g. fire, explosion, computer security breach) criminal (e.g. assault, rape, homicide), or human (e.g. death, suicide, overdose). The challenges in creating and assessing a campus emergency plan include the following:
• Knowing what the risks are for your campus
• Designing the risk/hazard audit
• Creating the team
• Training and transparency
• Establishing the incident command center
• Setting up the communication centers
• Assessing the effectiveness of your plan

Although it’s the high-profile tragedies that capture media attention, there are many other, smaller incidents that impact the college community and require a prepared response as well. The importance of having the right communication plan in place for every crisis, large or small, cannot be overstated.

“I think the most over-arching challenge that any campus faces still comes back to communication,” says Kibler. “How effective is the campus in its ability to communicate to all the various members of the campus community in the event of a crisis? … As much as we continue to do drills, and we continue to have very clear policies in place, it seems that the actual results of what happens turns very clearly on your ability to get the right word to the thousands of students, faculty and staff about what’s going on. And that’s something that’s always a work in progress and something that we have to work at very hard.”

If you missed the seminar and would like to purchase it for your institution, you can order the program in CD or print transcript format, both of which include the presenter's handouts.

Magna Publications is a leading publisher of newsletters and other information products in the higher education segment. Magna also manages onsite and online conferences on topics of interest to higher education.

For more information please contact David Burns, Publisher, Magna Publications, Inc., at 608-227-8109, or dburns@magnapubs.com.