Emergency managers play an increasingly vital role in protecting and restoring communities in the wake of emergencies and disasters. Through effective planning, response, and recovery actions, they can help to mitigate the negative effects of crises and promote resilience and recovery. In this course, students will be introduced to the foundational elements of emergency management (EM), including the laws and authorities that oversee EM in the United States. They will explore the four phases of the emergency management cycle—mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery—and will examine the components of emergency program management. Students will complete real-world-focused, scenario-based Assignments that emphasize critical thinking and problem solving. At the completion of the course, students will have the opportunity to earn a workplace certificate in emergency management in the U.S.

Rapid shifts in the economy, changes in political leaders, and negative news reports are just a few of the factors affecting marketing campaigns and public relations (PR) efforts. In this course, students can learn the value of managing internal and external communications effectively in situations of risk, crisis, and sudden change—a critical competence for PR professionals and organizations. Students examine successful and unsuccessful crisis communication efforts and consider issues of contingency planning, speed, transparency, multiple modalities, stakeholder analysis, and ethics. They engage in assignments designed to provide practical application of content through which they gain experience developing a communication plan to mitigate and solve issues of crisis in PR.

Communities around the nation have identified the need for resources to help people in various states of crisis, such as those associated with mental health issues, substance and alcohol abuse, and myriad forms of violence. Criminal justice professionals are positioned to refer those in crisis to proper community resources or use alternate intervention responses that may avoid arrest and incarceration. In this course, students explore the phenomenon of crisis through models, skill-sets, and methods used for crisis intervention. Students examine examples of these such as de-escalation, diffusion, negotiation, employment of multicultural perspectives, and Crisis Intervention Teams (CITs).

In an age of technological innovation, nuclear advancement, and virtual spread of knowledge, terrorism is at the vanguard of governmental action. In this course, students explore and discuss methods used by the criminal justice system to counter and manage disaster incidents, and they examine law enforcement responses to such incidents. Students learn about the function of the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and the Incident Command System (ICS)—agencies created specifically to provide specialized guidance and support to all levels of government and nongovernmental organizations who respond to disasters. They examine different types of weapons of mass destruction (including biological and chemical threats) as well as cyberterrorism. Through this course, students work toward gaining practical skills to engage in organizational preparation efforts in many different professional positions, including disaster response.