Crisis Leadership in Higher Education

Disorderly protests. Hostage situations. Extreme weather. Violence on campus.

It's impossible to control whether a crisis will happen at your institution. However, you can control the way you react to it and learn to handle it in a way that will protect your students and your institution's reputation.

Our Crisis Leadership in Higher Education program will help you respond to crises effectively, develop protocols and practices that minimize the potential for future occurrences and inspire confidence in the long-term success of your institution.

Strategies for a Crisis

Crisis Leadership in Higher Education gives you critical information about proactive training and planning so you can implement effective crisis management systems in advance of a critical event. The program is designed by faculty from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Harvard Kennedy School.

Crisis Leadership in Higher Education will provide you with:

• The tools needed to diagnose and understand the event
• Frameworks to help recognize critical distinctions between different types of crises
• The ability to foster situational awareness and ensure appropriate accountability during and after crisis events
• The skills to understand and manage both policy and operational concerns
• A rich combination of Harvard Kennedy School faculty experience in crisis management and Harvard Graduate School of Education faculty knowledge of higher education
• A lasting network of higher education professionals whom you can call on for support

Curriculum

Crisis Leadership in Higher Education is a four-day executive program led by a teaching team from Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

These faculty experts will guide you through a variety of concepts and scenarios, examining practical challenges ranging from natural disasters to the impact of campus culture and values on crisis management. They'll help you understand strategic and operational issues that arise when preparing for, responding to and recovering from crisis events. You'll also learn communication strategies and review techniques that can be tailored to a wide range of institutional circumstances.

Over four days, using real-world case studies, lectures and small group discussions, program faculty will guide you through a variety of concepts and scenarios, examining practical challenges ranging from natural disasters to emergent infectious disease to reputation-threatening campus incidents. Specific program objectives will help you to:

• Diagnose and understand an event
• Recognize critical distinctions between different types of crises
• Foster situational awareness
• Understand and manage both policy and operational concerns
• Ensure appropriate accountability, both during and after crisis events
• Clarify the role of training and exercises
• Manage the transition from immediate response to long-term recovery