Homeland Security grant supports Arizona State University study to improve emergency communications on college campuses
The university’s Environmental Technology Management faculty in the College of Technology and Innovation will explore public emergency communications needs at the nation’s campuses and universities to develop appropriate online multimedia training materials for campus administrators, communications experts, faculty and staff, state and local leaders, emergency managers and first responders who have jurisdiction over campus safety during emergencies or disasters.
“Communications constitute a vital link in the chain of systems, protocols and practices designed to help protect college and university campuses,” says David Edwards, principal investigator. “ASU’s new university-wide text-messaging alert system, to which faculty, staff and students can voluntarily subscribe, is a good example of a recent step taken toward enhancing campus emergency communications capabilities.”
As part of the grant, the team of Edwards, Hal Berkowitz, Al Brown, Jon Duff, Danny Peterson and Jeff Thomas of the Department of Technology Management, as well as other faculty and staff at ASU, will identify best practices related to campus public emergency communications and develop, prepare and distribute a series of three online modular training courses on effective, multi-layered campus public emergency communications.
According to Edwards, the university plans to integrate best practices from the nation’s 3,700 campuses and universities. The task of identifying best practices will involve surveys and face-to-face interviews with campus administrators, emergency managers and communicators in multiple states, as well as professionals having jurisdictional homeland security roles in campus safety.
The multimedia courses will incorporate the principles of effective campus public emergency communications, emergency protocols and systems, and communications backup systems and procedures. The tools will provide the training in a user-friendly manner suitable for diverse learners.
The faculty members working on this project have offered courses and degree programs online for several years. But before they move the new training modules online, they will develop and implement three face-to-face blended pilot courses for testing purposes. Once modifications are made, the courses will be available on a secure server for any authorized personnel to access.
Edwards and his team expect to complete the first of the three training programs in early 2009.
