Call for Proposals

Deadline to submit: February 12, 2024

The Annual Institute for Health, Safety, Security and Risk Management is education abroad’s signature annual event focusing on the risk management issues faced daily by higher education organizations and institutions. This event is for anyone in education abroad interested in learning more about supporting the wellbeing and safety of travelers.

The Institute will include concurrent and plenary sessions that will provide participants with a wealth of tools to review, strengthen, and improve institutional and organizational strategies for risk mitigation, incident prevention, emergency response, and overall well being for students and education abroad professionals.

Goals

The goals of the Institute are to:

• Enhance the knowledge and skills necessary to meet the Standards of Good Practice for Education Abroad by analyzing requirements and sharing examples of best practices;
• Explore approaches and emerging trends from within as well as outside the field of education abroad; and
• Further strengthen the overall safety and security of education abroad for the benefit of all participants.

The Planning Committee recognizes the changing needs of the education abroad field and profession, and the responsibility to welcome and support new practitioners focused on health, safety, and security abroad. This event is designed to address the needs of education abroad practitioners of all levels with responsibilities in the areas of health, safety, security, and risk management, or with an interest in developing their skillset in this area.

Therefore, proposals should reflect an awareness of their intended audience’s experience level in the field and categorizing session content from advanced levels of understanding and practice to the ‘The Basics.’

Themes

Particular themes of interest to this year’s Institute include:

• The changing landscape of education abroad including institutional travel policies, the diversification of students’ experiences abroad (including research, internships, service learning, short-term), increased travel to more non-traditional locations, and meeting the needs of current students.
• Promoting emotional wellbeing for faculty, staff, and students
• Supporting faculty, staff, and student travelers through robust pre-departure preparation to encourage resilience and emotional wellbeing, increase risk mitigation, and promote positive outcomes.
• Best practices for supporting the health, safety, and security of underserved and underrepresented populations in education abroad.
• Preparing faculty to lead education abroad programs: defining roles, responsibilities, and good practices in faculty-led programs.
• Ensuring our community is supported in knowledge acquisition and personal wellness.
• Accomplishing more with less and managing competing priorities in under-resourced offices:

                 -Scaling for reduced staffing/resources, advocating for resources
                 -Changing definition of risk management profession
                 -One person offices vs teams of support

• Climate change and its impact on risk assessment and mitigation in education abroad (i.e. wildfires, heat waves, natural disasters, disease)
• Grappling with impossible questions (for example: nuclear fallout, cybersecurity, etc.) and setting expectations with stakeholders
• The field of international risk management and global health, safety, and security: seeking a full-time health and safety role, advocating for a position at your institution, collaborating with other practitioners, professional development opportunities, and essential skills to be successful in this line of work
• Thinking strategically amidst the ever-evolving state of higher education, creating data driven policies and procedures.
• Building effective crisis communication plans, running table top exercises, and leading after action debriefs.

Registration Fees

Registration Type	Early-Bird Registration	Regular Registration	Late Registration
HSSRM Institute In person & Virtual (Member)	$449	$499	$549
HSSRM Institute In person & Virtual  (Non-Member)	$549	$599	$649
HSSRM Institute Virtual (Member)	$99	$149	$199
HSSRM Institute Virtual  (Non-Member)	$149	$199	$249
HSSRM Institute Virtual  (Grad Student)	$49	$99	$149

 

​Proposal Submission Resources

Proposal Template

Use this template to gather information from your co-presenters and prepare your proposal before completing the online form. Click on the purple button and a Word document that you can use to pre-fill your proposal will get downloaded.

Presenter Connection document

We know that sometimes you have a great proposal idea, but may need some assistance rounding out your panel of presenters. To that end, we offer this space to serve as a hub to create connections with interested co-presenters. We hope that this will be a useful tool in creating diverse panels and impactful proposals.

Register for January 11

We are offering two Peer Discussion Circles to solve any questions you may have and to connect with other like-minded presenters. Come join us for free on January 11! Click to register and find out more!

Submit your proposal here