A collaborative design and implementation strategy for a geohazards planning and mitigation undergraduate certificate
Abstract
Natural hazards pose risks to people, institutions, and infrastructure. These risks are rendered more extreme, more complex, and more challenging to manage by global climate change. Recent extreme events such as Hurricanes Irma and Maria, and massive western wildfires, reveal a need for a more robust system of preparation for and mitigation of natural hazards at the state and national level. This is a problem for natural scientists, engineers, and social scientists alike, as hazards originate and occur in the interfaces between natural and social systems. Research shows that better-educated societies with better-educated decision-makers are best equipped to prepare for, mitigate, and recover from natural disasters. We seek to fully characterize the knowledge, skills, and dispositions required of graduates who will enter the natural-hazards workforce, and foster these in students by means of a certificate program accessible and professionally useful to hazards-minded students majoring in geoscience and other natural sciences, social sciences, engineering, planning, sustainability, and many other fields.
We conducted a collaborative design workshop in May 2019 at Arizona State University with faculty from community colleges, tribal colleges, and several universities who shared disciplinary and pedagogical expertise. We met our goal of collectively designing learning outcomes for an innovative undergraduate certificate in natural-hazards preparedness and mitigation, which is now under development. These learning outcomes focus on teamwork, communication, and natural hazard preparedness and mitigation. This certificate combines courses that can be offered at two-year and four-year colleges. Through this collaborative process, we offer a change to the fundamental way in which certificates are designed to fill the workforce gaps identified by the employment sector.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMED31E1004F
- Keywords:
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- 0825 Teaching methods;
- EDUCATION;
- 0855 Diversity;
- EDUCATION;
- 6309 Decision making under uncertainty;
- POLICY SCIENCES & PUBLIC ISSUES;
- 6630 Workforce;
- POLICY SCIENCES & PUBLIC ISSUES