Online Graduate Certificate in Emergency and Disaster Management

This course identifies the public law, regulation, and associated policy that facilitates and in some cases restricts emergency management planning, recovery, and relief. Topics include national, state, and local issues and examples of public law. The course also covers issues associated with intergovernmental (fire, police, EMS, emergency management, military, etc.) action in emergencies as such action relates to regulation or public law.

This course establishes the theoretical foundation that enables the study and understanding of what constitutes ‘disaster’ as a part of the human condition and experience. Students are given a basic understanding of scientific concepts such as fact, theory, and hypothesis. These are then illustrated by analysis and case studies provided by renowned thinkers and writers in the field of emergency and disaster management. Students leave the class with a quality theoretical foundation from which to conduct all of their future master’s-level work.

This is a survey course that is designed to introduce students to the concepts of emergency management. Topics covered include the history of the field, hazard analysis, mitigation, planning, communication, response, recovery, and terrorism. Students conduct interview research with an emergency manager and conduct a site visit of an emergency operations center. Students can use this course to springboard into advanced topics within the field as offered by other courses, and is a great place for students to begin their emergency management degree programs.

This course deals with the interaction, coordination, and facilitation between federal, state, and local agencies during preparation, response, and recovery operations. The history of emergency response organizational development is explored, along with the current structural and operational design provided by the National Response Framework (NRF) and the National Incident Management System (NIMS). Finally, the potential for public-private partnerships in disaster response is examined. Students will achieve an understanding of how all of the various agencies work together to achieve emergency management and disaster response goals and objectives.

This course is a study of the economics associated with international, national, state, or local level disaster. Students will study, analyze, and conduct research on the direct and indirect economic losses associated with disaster. The course will cover the economics associated with both public and private institutions.

This course offers students the opportunity to study a historical disaster of their choosing in depth. The theory of case study analysis is covered in detail—problem formulation, research methodology, data collection, and analytical techniques are examined. Concurrently, students develop a topic statement and concept of analysis for their chosen disaster. The final product of the course is a case analysis that includes a telling of the story of the disaster; a depiction of the methodology that will be utilized to understand the disaster in academic terms; an analysis of what happened and why; and the lessons that can be drawn from the study that would improve the field of emergency and disaster management. Students will learn a valuable research skill that can be used repeatedly throughout their careers.

This course is a fascinating study of the concepts of medical and healthcare issues in emergency management in mass-casualty and high-impact incidents. The student will learn about the planning and coordination--from the national to the local levels--necessary to respond to disasters that are natural (such as earthquakes, floods, tornadoes and heat waves); industrial, technological and transportation (such as hazardous materials, air crashes and mass gatherings); conflict-related (such as terrorist attacks and mass shootings); as well as the education, training and research done before, during and after these events.

This course focuses on the principles, types, and forms of health management systems that exist to serve public needs during society’s most threatening crises. Topics range from international and national political and policy views of disaster health management down to local levels where leading hospitals and emergency managers must respond to public health disasters on a daily basis.