AN UNDERGRADUATE CERTIFICATE IN NATURAL-HAZARDS PREPAREDNESS AND MITIGATION

Natural hazards pose risks to people, economics, institutions, and infrastructure. These risks are rendered more extreme, more complex, and more challenging to manage due to the effects of global climate change. Recent extreme events in the US and around the world, including massive wildfires, severe storms, floods, and droughts, reveal a need for a more robust system of preparation for and mitigation of natural hazards: implemented at the state and national level and reproducible elsewhere. This is a challenge for geoscientists, environmental scientists, engineers, GIS specialists, and social scientists, as hazards originate and occur in the interfaces between natural and social systems. Research results indicate that better-educated societies with savvy decision-makers are best equipped to prepare for, mitigate, and recover from natural disasters. We have collaborated with hazards-related employers and colleagues at the community-college and university level; and conducted mixed-methods surveys of employment and market trends in hazards-related fields in order to characterize knowledge, skills, and dispositions required of graduates who will enter the natural-hazards workforce.

The proposed Certificate in Natural Hazards Preparedness and Mitigation is based on this work and designed to be accessible and professionally valuable to hazards-minded students majoring in geosciences and other natural sciences, social sciences, engineering, planning, information science, sustainability, and other fields. Courses will train students in the science of natural hazards, systems and spatial thinking, and in collaborative and communications skills, overlaying broadly applicable natural-hazards expertise on the disciplinary expertise students concurrently accrue in their majors. Knowledge and skills from the program respond to expectations that potential employers have for new employees. By design the curriculum includes both lower division and upper-division courses, so that students in Arizona community colleges can begin earning course credit toward the Certificate even before they transfer to the university.