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Access resources from the DRU Summit and the DRU Network’s Initiatives

Strategies for Enhancing Campus Resilience

This past April, Carol Rehnberg, director of risk management at Western Washington University; Jacob Sajinyan, director of risk management at Washington State University; and I represented URMIA at the 2025 National Disaster Resilient Universities (DRU) Network Summit at the University of Oregon, Portland campus. The summit brought together more than 50 experts and practitioners from institutions of higher education. It provided participants with the opportunity to discuss enterprise risk management and emergency management and to explore strategies for enhancing campus resilience. This year’s summit focused on:

• The role of risk assessments in the campus environment and understanding institutional risk appetites.
• Continuity planning challenges and opportunities - including tools used, resource constraints, and practical solutions to improve engagement and effectiveness - along with a case study on the Zebrafish International Resource Center fire, showcasing the value of continuity planning in preserving critical research assets.
• Insights into the science of crisis communications, exploring barriers to effective risk communication and offering actionable strategies, including using trusted messengers, visual storytelling, and social norms to influence behaviors during a crisis.

Sajinyan noted: "The 2025 DRU Summit provided valuable information that created a clearer path forward for some major projects I am working on. One such topic I found particularly valuable was seeing how a developed and operational risk appetite statement can influence an institution's continuity/resilience plans."

DRU-ERM and DRU-Emergency Management Survey Results

Andre Le Duc, vice president and chief resilience officer at the University of Oregon also shared a  preview of the 2025 DRU-ERM Survey results at the summit. Many URMIA members participated in this survey sponsored by University of Oregon Safety and Risk Services and URMIA and funded by Deloitte & Touche LLP. 

Le Duc led panel discussions at URMIA’s 2025 Annual Conference on both the DRU-ERM Survey (ERM – Now, Based on the DRU 2025 ERM Survey) and the DRU-Emergency Management Survey (DRU Emergency Management Survey: Understanding and Improving Institutional Emergency Management Programs). Recordings of those panel discussions are available to all 2025 annual conference registrants.

A white paper summarizing the key themes, case studies, and actionable strategies from the 2025 DRU Summit was recently released and is now available to URMIA members in the URMIA Library: 2025 National DRU Network Summit. The summit reinforced the importance of collaboration, strategic planning, and communication in building disaster-resilient campuses.

Goal: Supporting Safer, More Resilient Institutions

URMIA is proud to collaborate with the DRU Network to further the advancement of enterprise risk management and emergency management planning in higher education. Together, we are committed to supporting safer, more resilient institutions.

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