The Provost and Senior Vice President for Administration appointed a Committee on Crisis Management during spring of 1998 to address questions relating to crisis management and to draft the first university-wide crisis management plan.

In this report, the Committee outlines its activities and presents its recommendations. The report proposes a working definition and examples of the types of crises that would activate a university-wide plan. It recommends the type of organization that could coordinate an institution-wide response to a crisis that cannot be handled locally by a school or major administrative unit. It proposes necessary elements for local crisis plans, which would be activated in cases where a university-wide response is not necessary or until the need for a university-wide response becomes clear. Using those criteria, it evaluates local plans it knows already exist. This report has also been reviewed and endorsed, preliminarily, by the university s academic deans and directors and senior administration.

1. Academic deans and directors and the senior administration concur that a university-wide crisis response plan is necessary and desirable.

2. Each academic dean and director, and relevant senior administrator in the cases of non-academic divisions or freestanding organizations, has agreed to appoint an appropriate individual to serve as the primary contact person on future matters pertaining crisis management and planning.

3. Each dean, director or relevant senior administrator has been asked to determine what local crisis plans already exist in their organization, to forward copies of those plans to a proposed future standing committee on crisis management, and to consider whether their organizations are prepared for crises that are not of university-wide proportions.

4. The president, the provost and the senior vice president for administration have been asked to provide input on what they desire their roles to be in the management of a university-wide crisis.

As final recommendations, the Committee strongly encourages the establishment of a university-wide Crisis Response Team and the creation of standing Committee on Crisis Management.

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