| Emergency management is a rapidly growing and evolving discipline and profession. While only two degree-level programs existed prior to 1995 these two programs were joined by an additional forty programs by 2005. These new programs contributed to a broad expansion of courses and instructional materials. However, none of this growth and expansion had been guided by a commonly agreed upon curricular framework. This meant that programs within and between degree-levels varied widely on what they defined as an appropriate emergency management curriculum. The past several years have seen repeated efforts by a small group of academics and practitioners to develop a curricular framework out of lists of competencies, functions, skills, etc. This research combined and refined those earlier efforts into a unified list of broad goals, which were qualitatively and quantitatively studied to identify sets of goals sufficient to describe a curriculum appropriate for emergency management bachelor's and master's degree-level programs. |
