Introducing A Virtual Emergency Operations Center Into A Higher Education Curriculum

Abstract

At West Texas A&M University, faculty members in the Criminal Justice and Emergency Management programs teach students how to deal with man-made and natural disasters. These program courses require students to learn about the National Incident Management Systems (NIMS) in addition to passing certain requirements. Each student must pass NIMS courses 100 and 200 as part of their coursework where students are given the opportunity to work through a table-top exercise involving a natural or man-made disaster. Over the past several years, due to the success of these exercises, one of the criminal justice professors proposed a funding project to create a classroom designed for crisis management exercises in the future. This article conveys important qualitative discussions in two significant areas: how the crisis management classroom was created, designed, and integrated into the emergency operations center for the Texas Panhandle; and how the crisis management classroom was provided with the opportunity to integrate a virtual emergency operations center (VEOCI), making West Texas A&M University the fifth university in the United States to have access to the new virtual management system.