TEM Program Details

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this degree, students will be able to:

• Effectively communicate the perspectives, values, vocabulary, and priorities of different types of providers active in emergency and trauma response
• Articulate and apply community-oriented, trauma-informed practice, including differences in experience, diagnoses, and different types of trauma inherent to emergency situations
• Effectively apply the Emergency Response Cycle within the context of natural disasters and other emergency situations
• Use crisis communication to interface and build connections with emergency planners and responders across disciplines and institutional settings
• Demonstrate data literacy in emergency management

Concentration-specific Learning Outcomes:

Community Resilience Concentration

• Engage with communities, including learning local ways and building rapport and trust
• Demonstrate cultural responsiveness to exacerbated vulnerabilities in a disaster setting, particularly with marginalized, minority, and/or vulnerable populations including consideration of intersectionality
• Articulate psychological responses common to emergency, disaster, and climate change, including social and political norms and perspectives
• Articulate methods to increase resilience and make recommendations for building resilience for individuals, communities, cities and infrastructure, industries, and first responders
• Identify and integrate the perspectives, values, and priorities of communities in emergency situations, with specific consideration of marginalized, minority, and/or vulnerable populations, and engage with cultural humility and responsiveness

Data Analytics Concentration

• Use geospatial tools and best practices to understand and communicate about hazards and risks, build scenarios, and plan responses
• Apply data science with consideration of the scale in planning and response, including city, town, rural, remote, and island populations
• Demonstrate participatory mapping techniques in GIS such as asset mapping, scenario building and assembling priorities
• Demonstrate GIS and modeling proficiency for emergency situations

Emergency Management and Preparedness Concentration

• Demonstrate knowledge of the structure and organization of crisis intervention services in Maine and how to access those services
• Navigate the policies, hierarchies, and pragmatics of working with homeland security, national incident management systems, and FEMA hierarchy works, in an emergency
• Create emergency plans, near term and long term, with consideration of pre-emergency response, transportation/access/mobility issues, community resources, mitigation and adaptation for resilience
• Develop operational responses for emergency scenarios
• Identify and demonstrate ability to write grants for public agencies for emergency planning, response, and recovery

Mental Health Concentration

• Articulate and apply crisis theory and practice
• Practice trauma-informed interventions, including Psychological First Aid, suicide prevention, substance abuse and recovery, and deescalation
• Assess trauma in emergencies, including vicarious trauma, with consideration for subpopulations that may have increased vulnerability, such as children, veterans, people with disabilities or mental health diagnoses, refugees, ethnic minority groups, etc.
• Demonstrate knowledge of the cognitions inherent in traumatic experiences, including impacts to cognitive functioning for responders and the affected population
• Demonstrate assessment skills specific to conducting a crisis assessment, including mental status, affective/cognitive/behavioral components, and stages of intervention, and mini mental status exams

TEM Advisory Council

The TEM Advisory Council is made up of professionals in the field who are keen to provide our students meaningful opportunities to support our communities in Maine.

The Advisory Council works with the TEM Program faculty to provide students opportunities such as internships, tabletop exercises, and other field opportunities so that they are able to develop hands-on experience throughout their course of study. For example, a partnership with MEMA and the county EMAs will allow students in TEM 512 Grant Writing to write real grants for FEMA mitigation funds that will help our communities cultivate their preparedness.

Our Advisory Council members are:

• Jake Emerson, Principal Scientific Software Engineer, The Jackson Laboratory
• William Guindon, Maine Mass Care Coordinator, Maine Emergency Management Agency
• Emily Kaster, Senior Emergency Preparedness Specialist, Tidal Basin Group
• Richard Lumb, Emeritus Associate Professor & Chair, Dept. Criminal Justice, SUNY Brockport
• Bradley Nuding, Director, Penobscot County Emergency Management Agency
• Samuel Roy, Natural Hazards Planner, Maine Emergency Management Agency
• Megan Salois, Coordinator, Maine Disaster Behavioral Health
• Kathleen Wescott, Former Coordinator (Retired), Maine Disaster Behavioral Health

The TEM Advisory Council will meet at least annually to review the curriculum, talk with faculty, and talk with students. Faculty and students are expected to attend this annual Meet and Greet.