Emergency Management and Community Resilience Certificate Program

Remember, when disaster strikes, the time to prepare has passed.

- Steven Cyros

Who Should Attend

Professionals in any industry who are seeking to support their organization or community in preparing, managing, or responding to emergency situations. This program is of particular relevance to business, government, and community leaders, operations managers, communications professionals, and anyone interested in building the capacity of their organization to plan for and respond to a disaster.

What You’ll Learn

Upon completion of this program, students will have gained the knowledge to:

• Identify and understand elements of risk, knowledge, and uncertainty
• Evaluate social inequality, vulnerability, and racial justice in the context of emergency management and community resilience
• Understand the potential impacts of natural, technological, and complex disasters including climate change
• Learn about social memory, community, and cultural capital as elements of resilience
• Explore concepts of resilience and strategies for enhancing resilience within an organization and the community
• Acquire tools and methods for individual and organizational preparedness in the event of an emergency

The certificate consists of the following modules:

Culture, Vulnerability, and Disaster Resilience
Understand the difference between a hazard and a disaster. Learn the disaster risk management cycle as a framework to apply this and subsequent modules of the program. Explore different types of vulnerability related to different disasters and underlying social inequalities. Examine the concept of resilience and learn what makes a person, family, or community more or less resilient. Consider key cultural factors that influence disaster experiences. 

Disaster Planning for Resilience
Understand resilience planning for hazards and cascading disasters. Learn how resilience is shaped by social, natural, and technological systems and the degree to which the interdependencies between these systems influence who is resilient, to what, where, and how. Explore multiple mapping tools and their application in community resilience planning and public policy. Examine actionable strategies at the individual, household, and community levels for enhancing resilience. More importantly, we will identify adaption options that promote systemic change and social justice in a changing climate.

Geology of Natural Disasters of the Pacific Northwest
This module will focus on the possible disasters in the Pacific Northwest that emergency managers might have to deal with.  Students will come away with a better understanding of the geological disasters (earthquakes, landslides, floods, volcanoes, coastal erosion) plus climate-related storms (winter storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, and forest fires) we face in the Pacific Northwest.

Business Continuity Planning
For organizations to survive and prosper, they need resilience capabilities and strong relationships with other organizations. These capabilities and relationships allow them to cope with environmental risks. In this session, we will focus on how your organizations can better identify, mitigate, and respond to risks and apply tools and techniques that can help you develop a more resilient organization. 

Crisis and Strategic Communication
Building on what you have learned about pre-disaster planning, learn how to assess the positions and values of your stakeholders. With a lens of engaging the public, learn how to develop audience analysis and segmentation strategies. Learn skills for establishing credibility and expertise when communicating with stakeholders. Draft clear messages and message templates that adapt to the needs of audiences and present them back to the class. 

For more information on a graduate study in this area, visit PSU's Emergency Management and Community Resilience Master's Degree and Emergency Management and Community Resilience Graduate Certificate pages.