This program is intended to:

• Allow students from most undergraduate degrees to enter a Master's level program in the field of Emergency Management and Business Continuity.
• Encourage those with undergraduate degrees in the Physical, Biological, Social Sciences, Engineering, Management, Public Administration, and Communications to enter this evolving field.
• Facilitate the acquisition of two master's degrees by allowing three relevant courses that can count toward either degree.
• Encourage outstanding students to consider an academic path to a Ph.D. and to conduct research in their original (undergraduate degree) field that is relevant to areas of Emergency Management and Business Continuity. For students going on to a participating Ph.D. program, all 30 credits will be counted toward the 90 graduate credit Ph.D. requirements.
• Provide a part time path to the degree based entirely on courses offered online through the Web, using appropriate group communications technology that allows for active participation with other course and degree students (Virtual Classroom TM and Asynchronous Learning Network approaches).
• Meet the new policy of the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM), which will require, beginning in 2010, an academic degree rather than just the current four years of experience requirement.
• Bring about the integration of the endeavors of Emergency Management and Business Continuity into one academic program, given that crises and disasters are impartial about their impact on both public and private sector segments of society.
• Increase the professionalism of this field, which is evolving in importance and societal needs, by increasing its presence in academic, research, and development professional communities.
• Providing an open door to good students in any undergraduate degrees by providing a "bridge" program of certain undergraduate requirements for some of the specialty areas.

Basic Requirements of the Program

The program is composed of the following three segments.

1. Fundamental Courses: Choose any two of the following four courses.

There is an advisor for each specialty area that may be contacted for questions on that specialty area and for advice on choosing courses. The specialty areas currently include:

• Information Systems
• Environmental Science and Chemistry
• Civil Engineering and Transportation
• Management
• Computer Engineering
• Computer Science

Fundamental Courses

A master's thesis is recommended for students who plan to go on to a Ph.D. in the future.

The masters project or thesis may be advised by any faculty member who is doing research related to the Emergency Management field.

Specialty Areas

The student may take two-four courses in any one of these specialty areas. The student who does not want to take a specific specialty area can propose a coherent set of courses that cuts across these areas.

Information Systems

The application of computing to information and communication in the Emergency Management and Business Continuity field represents the potential use of technology to integrate all the functions that must take place before, during, and after the disaster, as well as among the different organizations and units of organizations that must be involved in preparedness, response, and recovery. Information systems are the glue that puts together planning, mitigation, detection, training, command and control, response, and recovery into one unified process that provides the necessary infrastructure for the overall responsibilities. As such, they must be designed and developed with the evolving needs of the users and the organizations integrated into the development process.

With the increasing complexity of our society, so is there increased risk of severe increases in the accidental and deliberate release of a wide range of hazardous materials, both chemical and biological. Those trained to be able to make a meaningful contribution to the understanding of the associated risks, how to detect and track the implications of their occurrence, and how to respond meaningfully to their mitigation represent an important professional talent that needs to be available in the Emergency Management and Business Continuity area. All organizations dealing with hazardous materials should have this sort of talent in their Emergency Management team.

The physical infrastructure of the environment and the understanding of its normal status and their vulnerabilities to natural and man-made threats are critical to successful planning with respect to the details of determining the possible mitigation policies and resources needed for timely response to a wide range of potential risks. The ability to judge in a disaster situation a correspondence between degrees of damage, response resource requirement, and allocation is critically important. The development of realistic plans and adequate training underlying those plans for things like evacuations, safe shelters, emergency services, etc, is the challenge for those with an understanding of the complex relationships among a diverse set of facilities that make up our critical infrastructure.

The professionals in Emergency Management must be able to integrate the development of plans for response processes (within their organization and across necessary external organizations). They must also insure that everyone will receive adequate training and that in times of disaster those involved can work as well motivated and coordinated teams, no matter what degree of heterogeneity of expertise and level of experience exists among respondents. The emergency manager or business continuity professional must be able to be an entrepreneur or champion of emergency preparedness, and to prove and present people the best possible justifications for investing in an organizational function that may not be viewed as absolutely necessary by all those concerned, especially in times of restricted budgets. He or she must be able to stimulate planning, communication, and coordination among all parts of the organization or organizational units necessary to bring about effective crisis planning and response.

The design and assurance of communication infrastructure is critical to all aspects of emergency management. Being able to evaluate and insure the mitigation of vulnerabilities for such systems is an important contribution to the infrastructure survivability of such systems. Students with an undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering are encouraged to consider this specialty area.