What happens when teams from 57 cities building afterschool systems gather to discuss two key system responsibilities--improving afterschool programs and using data for informed decision-making? Lots of rich discussion. This report covers a national afterschool conference held in February 2013. It details what mayors, program providers, system…

Hamline University, a medium sized college in St. Paul Minnesota, dedicated resources and time to New Orleans, Louisiana in its efforts to rebuild and reclaim the city. Days after Hurricane Katrina hit, Hamline sent students, faculty and staff to help with recovery efforts. The Education Club adopted Martin Luther King Science and Technology…

Modern organizations constantly face unparalleled changes and uncertainty in the competitive world, thus requiring strategic planning to mitigate crisis conditions. Underscoring crisis plans are performance interventions that prepare employees, technological systems, and the organizational culture to effectively respond to a crisis event. However,…

This comprehensive analysis addresses the United States' alarming lack of preparedness to respond effectively to a massive disaster as evidenced by Hurricane Katrina. First, a timeline of problematic response events during and after Hurricane Katrina orients readers to some of the specific problems encountered at different levels of government.…

This comprehensive guidebook will help educational planners during emergencies and reconstruction. The "Guidebook for Planning Education in Emergencies and Reconstruction" presents examples of the problems faced in emergencies, and suggests policy options and strategies that have been found useful in such situations. It is organized in six…

When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005, it inflicted wind and flooding damage on all but one of the five campuses and centers of Delgado Community College, the oldest and largest two-year institution in Louisiana. Hardest hit was Delgado's main location, the City Park Campus in New Orleans, where three to six feet of flood…

"Lessons Learned" is a series of publications that are a brief recounting of actual school emergencies and crises. This "Lessons Learned" issue focuses on the response and recovery efforts to wildfires by the San Diego County Office of Education (SDCOE) and its school and community partners. Natural disasters such as floods,…

The changing demographic landscape of the United States calls for a reassessment of the societal impacts and consequences of so called "natural" and technological disasters. An increasing trend towards greater demographic and socio-economic diversity (in part due to high rates of international immigration), combined with mounting…

A network approach to disaster preparedness in university settings is described. Basic network concepts relevant for disaster preparedness and methods for analyzing network data without complex mathematics are presented. A case study of campus mental health and academic units at a midwestern university is presented to illustrate the practical…

The overarching goal of the National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP) is to build a safer, more secure, and more resilient America by preventing, deterring, neutralizing, or mitigating the effects of deliberate efforts by terrorists to destroy, incapacitate, or exploit elements of our Nation's critical infrastructure and key resources (CIKR)…

This paper reflects the experience of the authors working in the field of humanitarian education during the last two decades. Important changes have been witnessed since the Central American crises of the seventies, the refugee focus of the eighties and the new UN vision of the complex emergency crisis of the nineties resulting from the post Cold…

Schools play a unique role in communities when disaster strikes. They serve as shelter for evacuees and first responders; they are a trusted source of information; and once danger has passed, the district, as employer and community center, often serves as a foundation for recovery. Technology plays a key role in a school district's ability to…

This brief report, delivered after the completion of the 1st year of the United Nations (UN) Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) (2005-2014), highlights the recent developments regarding the Decade (2005). It reports on the documents prepared, the regional and national launches of the Decade held so far and presents relevant…

This study advances a conceptual framework for understanding the transformation of places into recovery machines after major hurricanes. This framework contends that in the years following such disasters, pro-growth coalitions take advantage of new sources of material and symbolic capital to promote further demographic growth. It also contends…

Disasters happen all the time; yet despite this, many organizations are caught unprepared or make unrealistic assumptions. These factors create environments that will fail during a disaster. Most information technology (IT) curricula do not cover disaster recovery (DR) plans and strategies in depth. The unfortunate result is that most new computer…