This week more than 40 college leaders from campuses across the country met to discuss how technology can help institutions respond to emergencies and disasters.
One theme that emerged was that colleges need to do more to foster collaboration with state and regional officials in their disaster planning, according to some attendees at the closed-door meeting.
“A lot of campuses feel like they’ve made really good progress at the campus level of developing plans,” said Rodney J. Petersen, a policy analyst at Educause, a higher-education technology group that organized the summit. “But there’s more of a challenge at the regional and state level.” Specifically, participants noted that many campus leaders don’t understand the National Incident Management System run by FEMA to coordinate disaster response.
Notes from the meeting were posted on a blog by Educause. One installment listed the six emergency-response programs that participants identified as the most innovative. —Jeffrey R. Young
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