Emergency Preparedness

Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) is committed to the safety and security of students, faculty, staff and visitors to our campuses. To support that commitment, we formed a crisis management team, which worked with university officials to develop a crisis management plan. The plan has been reviewed and approved by officials of the state of New Hampshire's Division of Public Safety.

The Dean of Students serves as the leader of the policy group of the Crisis Management Team. The policy group also includes representatives from Public Safety, Facilities, Residence Life and Marketing/Communications. The group meets regularly to keep the crisis plan current, conduct training exercises and provide resources for the campus community. In addition to the policy group, there are 15 team members who have been trained in and assigned to a specific ICS function, such as Operations, Logistics, Planning or Finance/Administration.

Most campus emergencies involve medical incidents, accidents and acts of violence and are managed by first responders, such as Public Safety, Residence Life and Wellness Center staff, along with local police, fire and EMS as needed. The Student Affairs Division has an emergency procedures manual that outlines protocols to be used by our first responders, who have received special training on responding to these types of events. These typically student-centered issues differ from situations in which our crisis management team is activated. Such situations represent an extraordinary and unpredictable disastrous event such as a flood, tornado, long-term power outage or fire that may impact our business continuity. When instances like these occur, members of the crisis management team's policy group assess the situation immediately and determine whether to activate the team.

SNHU has adopted the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's national Incident Management System and Incident Command System (ICS) as its framework for prevention, preparedness, response and recovery to a natural or human-caused crisis. ICS provides a flexible and scalable framework that can expand and contract as needed. Simply stated, the scope of the incident will drive the decision whether to activate a few members or the entire team to respond to and recover from an incident.

To learn more about Emergency Preparedness at SNHU, contact Public Safety.