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Standards in Practice: Beyond the Basics of Health, Safety and Security
The Forum is pleased to announce the inaugural Standards of Good Practice Institute to be held on Wednesday, March 24, 2010 in conjunction with the Forum Annual Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Institutes will offer participants the opportunity to broaden and deepen their knowledge and understanding of the Forum Standards of Good Practice and hone their skills in implementing them.
The first Institute, Beyond the Basics of Health, Safety and Security, will be dedicated to the risk management issues with which we all struggle. Risk management incidents generate specific concerns and questions that lead to broader questions, which lead to an overarching concern: What is the best way to manage risk in education abroad, and how do we make the right risk management decisions? The practical, hands-on focus for this day will include multiple concurrent and plenary sessions that will allow participants to improve their institutional and organizational strategies for incident prevention and response.
NOTE: The Institute will be limited to 150 participants, with Forum members receiving priority registration and a discounted rate. You may register for the Institute when you register for the conference. On-line registration begins Thursday, October 15, 2009.
Institute Schedule - Wednesday, March 24, 2010
8:30am - 10am Concurrent Sessions
You be the Judge: Case Studies in Risk, Negligence and Risk Management
Joseph Brockington, Julie Friend
This session addresses the issue of negligence within a risk management context. Following a presentation on the elements necessary for negligence, tables of participants will review a series of actual and hypothetical cases to determine actual or potential elements of negligence and discuss how riskscan be mitigated or removed.
What Do We Learn from Critical Incidents Abroad? How and What Do We Share About Incidents and With Whom?
Steven Duke, Landes Holbrook, Stacey Tsantir
Education abroad professionals face many challenges when dealing with health, safety and security incidents abroad. But once a critical incident is nearing resolution or is over, what do we do with the information? Critical questions to be addressed by this session include: How do we track and report critical incidents? What level of detail do we share with individuals within our institution? How do we best share that information? How do we share information with external audiences, especially if we think our programs may compete with other programs, and that students will enroll in other programs if we share information regarding health and safety? What types of information should we share with faculty and students during pre-departure training? How can we learn from past cases to improve our emergency response plans and notification systems?
Engaging Study Abroad Faculty Directors in Risk Management Planning
Holly Hill, John de la Hunt
Faculty-led study abroad program leaders are charged with the safety and security of their traveling group, yet often fail to receive proper training to mitigate risks during their international program Participants in this session will create a risk management plan through a guided simulation during which each participant assumes a different campus role (including faculty program leader) and where their decisions impact the unfolding results within the simulation exercise. The simulation debriefing will teach participants about faculty director risk management training and the successes and pitfalls of this approach.
10:30am - 12pm Concurrent Sessions
Crisis Management and Public Relations
Brian Brubaker, Carol Foley, Arlene Snyder, Gary Rhodes
This session will address all factors of developing successful plans to communicate with the home institution, faculty, participants, families, and emergency assistance providers during an emergency abroad. The session leaders will contribute insights gleaned from their own experiences in managing students and study abroad programs by presenting scenarios and examples of events, how they were handled, and what was learned.. Breakout groups will develop crisis communication plans from the perspectives of on-site staff and the home institution.
Medical Strategy for Education Abroad
Bill Frederick, Gail Rosselot
Preventing and responding to injuries and illnesses is a primary goal of most programmatic safety efforts. However, medical strategy remains one of the most underdeveloped areas in education abroad risk management. This session will discuss practical and common sense medical strategies based on particular program characteristics such as student profile, nature of program activities, and program location, duration and mission, Topics will include medical screening, pre-travel consultation, vaccinations, staff training, student health and hazard education, emergency response, medical protocols, self-care and medical facility assessment.
Where Does Student Responsibility for Student Health and Safety Begin and End?
Michael Steinberg, William Anthony, Andrea Custodi, Julie Friend
In recent years, study abroad programs have put increasing emphasis on protecting student health and safety At the same time, study abroad programs are encouraged to foster students’ independence and self-direction. These two objectives may at times conflict. While study abroad is a time for exploration, it also exposes students to new risks that they may not face at home. What limits should study abroad programs set on student behavior? This session will examine our legal and professional responsibilities to students through a series of roundtable topics: How can we discourage students from risky behavior and encourage responsible behavior? To what extent should we leave students free to make their own decisions based on personal levels of risk tolerance? What are the ethical and practical boundaries between program responsibility and students’ rights to make autonomous decisions and take risks? To what extent do we need to monitor student behavior when they are travelling independently or involved in independent program activities? The Standards focus on program responsibility for health and safety. Should we include a standard or standards that emphasize student responsibility?
12:15 - 1:45pm Lunch Plenary featuring Dr. Eric Shaw,
Associate Professor, Joint Military Operations, Naval War College
Dr. Shaw will first present a selection of risk assessment models, and then explore unique issues facing education abroad professionals. The goal of his plenary address is to develop a model for reducing risk exposure and consequences. Serious analysis will be leavened by Dr. Shaw sharing personal experiences (sea stories) when he averted disasters. Dr. Shaw spent three years commanding the United States Coast Guard's Barque EAGLE, "America's Tall Ship," including deploying overseas with cadets and officer candidates from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.
2 - 3:30pm Concurrent Sessions
Theory vs. Reality: Lessons Learned in Crisis Response
Deb Ajango, TBA
As practitioners, receiving the call that someone has been critically or fatally injured on one of our programs is something that we all dread. Even though most of us will never receive that call, we must be both mentally and organizationally prepared in the event that it comes. Through personal experience of several fatal incidents both in the field and in management response, the presenters will provide valuable lessons from these tragic events that you can apply immediately, whatever the size of your program. This is most certainly not a ‘war stories’ session; it is about sharing what we wished we knew before and soon found out afterwards, in the hope that you will be better prepared to achieve the best possible outcomes from such a tragic event.
Assessing Adequate Coverage: Case Studies in Disability Accommodations and Insurance Planning
Katie Kutsy, Michelle Scheib, Laurie Dutson, Jim Baker, Karen Randazzo, Ric Valentino
In this session, panelists will share lessons learned and foster audience dialogue concerning solutions for overcoming disability-related accommodation barriers and troubleshooting a broad range of insurance issues. Topics will include: making decisions about providing student accident & sickness insurance and addressing pre-existing and mental health conditions; collaborating with disability services and third-party providers on providing reasonable (but not required) accommodations abroad for students with disabilities; addressing barriers in administering property insurance and risk management programs for education abroad locations and communicating effectively with foreign insurance professionals.
Constructive Disequilibrium: Do the Ends Justify the Means?
Philip Clay, Megan Che, Agida Manizade, Natalie Mello, Mindy Spearman
This session will explore what is acceptable risk in an education abroad context (particularly those that are unfamiliar and uncomfortable) and how the psychological development of late adolescents and their cognitive abilities impact students’ abilities to understand risk. The claim that education abroad experiences do facilitate a student’s transformation and growth by bringing them to unfamiliar, less comfortable destinations will also be explored.
Navigating Between Safety and Liability
Bill Frederick, Frances Mock
In risk management the best decision or the best course of action is not always readily apparent either when strategizing or in the heat of emergency response. The majority of the time, if you attend to liability concerns, safety concerns will be taken care of as well. Most of the time, effective safety practices are the best method for avoiding liability exposure. However, there are instances where a safety strategy could increase an organization’s liability exposure and instances where an effort to minimize liability exposure could compromise safety. This session will explore the zone where safety and liability potentially conflict. Specific areas for discussion will be student screening, program assessments and reviews, confidentiality, staff training and emergency response. The session will identify the most significant variables in order to inform our decision making, examine approaches that can resolve the conflict, and ways of structuring programs that assist in avoiding such conflicts.
3:45 - 5:15pm Concurrent Sessions
Classrooms Without Walls: Risk Management Protocols for Adventure-Based Study Abroad
Nancy Chamberlain, Ana Alonso
Not all study abroad programs have fixed destinations, partner institutions or virtual connection. Preparation of administrators and faculty for successful adventure-based study abroad requires special training and protocols. Five core areas will be addressed in this session: field staffing ratios, staff training and certification, participant medical screening, site visit requirements and use of third-party contractors, and emergency communication protocols. Participants will review case studies in small groups using best practices promulgated by the commercial adventure sector to address these core areas.
Beyond the Basics: Study Abroad Amidst Psychological Challenges
Janet Alperstein, Nora Dock, Irene Gawel, Dina Nunziato
As the number of students attending college with psychological challenges has grown so has the number of students studying abroad with these challenges. An overview of the psychological issues facing U.S. college students will be presented by a director of college counseling. Participants will review case studies in breakout groups to discuss and explore best practices for responding to the increasing needs of students before, during and after study abroad.
Review of Standard 8: Where Do We Go from Here?
Natalie Mello, Bill Frederick, Heather Barclay Hamir, Stacey Tsantir, Arlene Snyder, Kathy Poole
This team of colleagues will present on the information they have gathered and assessed regarding the health, safety and security standard. Discussion will center on proposed improvements to Standard #8 to include specific details about how programs should address issues of health, safety, and security. Participants will contribute to the dialogue and offer their input regarding the proposed revisions.
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