UCF Emergency Management Faculty Selected for Prestigious FEMA Fellowship

Highlights

• The Vanguard Executive Crisis Leaders Fellowship is a two-week, senior-level leadership program focused on improving personal and collective preparedness in emergency management and crisis leadership.

• UCF's Claire Connolly Knox and Chris Emrich, who each worked with FEMA prior to joining UCF's School of Public Administration, were sought out by the federal agency for this highly selective opportunity.

• The experts believe the experience will allow them to build new partnerships, bring valuable insight back to UCF to incorporate in their classrooms and identify new ways to connect expanded emergency management expertise across disciplines.

• In April, U.S. News & World Report announced UCF earned the No. 1 Homeland/National Security and Emergency Management Graduate Program ranking in the nation for the third consecutive year.

They're already renowned researchers and experts in emergency management. Now, professors Claire Connolly Knox and Chris Emrich are expanding their impact to the federal level after being hand-selected for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Vanguard Executive Crisis Leaders Fellowship.

The fellowship, housed within FEMA's National Disaster and Emergency Management University (NDEMU), brings together top crisis leaders from across the nation to strengthen the future of emergency and crisis management. Emrich was selected for the 11th cohort in New Orleans (May 11-15) and Washington D.C. (June 22-26), and Knox will join the 12th in Washington D.C. (July 20-24) and Houston (Aug. 17-21).

Chris Emrich and Claire Connolly Knox at UCF's Emergency Operation Center, which is home to the university's Emergency Management team, keeping Knights safe in times of crisis. (Photo by Antoine Hart)

Researchers Sought Out by FEMA

Prior to joining the School of Public Administration's Emergency Management and Homeland Security program, Emrich and Knox each worked with FEMA in separate capacities.

Emrich spent years working in the organization, from mapping hurricane impacts in Florida in 2004 to helping rebuild trust in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Knox has worked with FEMA through its Higher Education Program, which she has participated in since 2011, lead focus group initiatives, established an annual award, and aided in training curriculum development.

When assembling these new cohorts, FEMA sought out and hand-selected each of them. Typically, it is rare to include multiple academics in these groups, let alone two from one university in consecutive cohorts.

"The fact that there's two of us from UCF is a really big deal," Knox says.

"By bringing together these multidisciplinary, cross-sectoral leaders, it will help us better prepare for uncertainty in future disasters." - Chris Emrich

FEMA formed the program's cohort model knowing that the future of disaster response depends not on any single agency or sector but on the strength of connections between them. Each cohort brings together crisis leaders from government, academia, nonprofits and the private sector to build the kind of cross-sectoral networks that are nearly impossible to forge during an actual disaster.

"This program is part of a more recent attempt to try to engage across sectors more efficiently," Emrich says. "By bringing together these multidisciplinary, cross-sectoral leaders, it will help us better prepare for uncertainty in future disasters."

Chris Emrich Emrich is the Boardman Endowed Professor of Environmental Science and Public Administration and interim director of UCF's National Center for Integrated Coastal Research. Photo by Antoine Hart)

Strengthening the Field, Benefiting Students

Emrich and Knox will participate in roundtable seminars, site visits and discussions with fellow experts to examine emerging risks and shifts in the emergency management landscape, explore leadership frameworks for navigating crises, and brainstorm strategies to strengthen the field, all while building this trusted, cross-sector network.

Knox sees the fellowship as a chance to build new partnerships and bring national insights back to UCF, ultimately benefiting students.

"Emergency management changes constantly," she says. "We don't have the luxury of rinse and repeat. This gives us another avenue to bring the latest thinking directly into our courses. I'm looking forward to exploring these issues through both the lens of researcher and the lens of program director."

Emrich also sees opportunities for expanding research and collaboration by learning where those in the field are currently struggling.

"I'd love to be a fly on the wall to hear what people's troubles are," he says. "In academia, we're fortunate to have the time to think about these things and reflect on how to better support them. Those insights turn into grant proposals, student support and expanding the knowledge base."

Claire Connolly Knox is a professor and founding director of the Master in Emergency and Crisis Management Program in UCF's School of Public Administration. (Photo by Antoine Hart)

Enhancing UCF's Cutting-Edge Research

The fellowship also aligns with emerging research areas that UCF is already exploring when it comes to cutting-edge innovations in crisis management.

For example, Emrich is currently using AI to build educational games that teach students about social vulnerability. What would once have taken years of programming work can now be produced from existing course materials and exercise content - opening the door to educational tools that weren't previously feasible.

"What AI has been able to produce from my knowledge is something I could not have produced on my own," Emrich says. "One of the things emergency managers are grappling with now is how to use AI productively. I look forward to being part of the conversation."

Knox is interested in real-time digital replicas of communities, called "digital twins," that can be used to model disaster scenarios, as well as to test recovery and mitigation plans before they're needed.

"A lot of emergency management boots-on-the-ground work is to help make decisions with the incomplete information in a very timely manner," Knox says. "We're looking at how AI can complement critical thinking skills with new capabilities. I've seen it take off in engineering and computer sciences disciplines using real-time social media data to understand evacuation patterns."

Beyond their individual research, both professors see the fellowship as a catalyst for something bigger within UCF and beyond. They hope it will help them identify new ways to connect expanded emergency management expertise across disciplines.

"Many faculty members in different departments are doing research that can actively support emergency management," Emrich says. "I think it might be incumbent upon us to come back to the university and say, 'This is where we need to be. This is how we connect all of our different experts, stakeholders and partners to make our program even stronger."

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