Overview

Introduction

Webster University is an independent, comprehensive, non-denominational university with campus locations around the world.  Our community is comprised of thousands of students, supported by hundreds of faculty, staff and administrators who work to achieve its mission of offering undergraduate and graduate programs, including the liberal arts, fine and performing arts, teacher education, business and management.As such, it is incumbent upon Webster University to prepare to respond to a wide variety of emergency and crisis situations that may occur.  Since these situations run the risk of disrupting the daily operations and services that the University provides, Webster University has developed this broad Emergency Response Plan (ERP).

Purpose

The primary purpose of this plan is to establish policies, procedures and an organizational structures and roles essential for Webster University to respond to, and recover from, crisis and emergency situations that threaten lives, property, public health and the safety of faculty, staff, students and visitors in any location controlled, leased, or owned by Webster University.  Secondly, this plan also attempts to mitigate the threat of a crisis or emergency situation.

Objectives

All too often, crisis management is considered a singular set of actions taken in response to a particular event or incident. Instead, crisis management should be seen as a process that includes a series of stages or phases in which administrators take certain actions (Zdziarski, Rollo, Dunkel, 2007).  In this context, the objectives for Webster University's ERP include:

1. To establish the basic organizational and operational roles and procedures to be used in the event of any emergency or crisis situation occurring within or on a campus or site controlled, leased, or owned by Webster University.
2. To articulate clear command and control mechanisms that, when deployed, positions the University to secure and/or commit all appropriate resources toward minimizing the threat of the crisis and protecting lives, property, services and normal operations of the University.
3. To create a learning-centered environment that emphasizes community responsibility through an understanding of key concepts prevention, intervention, and response.  By focusing on prevention, we reduce the necessity of intervention and response.
4. The focus on broad response measures for various types of crisis/incidents, including but not limited to:  bomb threats, civil protests, explosions, fires, hazardous materials incidents, infrastructure failure, severe weather, severe weather, natural disasters, violent/criminal incidents, terrorism and public relations emergencies.

Publicly available sections of the Crisis Response Plan are available through the Crisis Response Links" on the right side of this web page. Sections in the "Limited Access Area" at right are accessible only with a valid logon and password.