COF Institutions Continue To Stay Prepared For Emergencies

COF Emergency Preparedness

Over the past year all Colleges of the Fenway institutions have made shelter in place and active threat training and exercises a priority across our community. Most recently, Emmanuel College and MassArt conducted campus wide full scale shelter in place exercises. These exercises occurred on March 29th (Emmanuel) and on April 11th (MassArt).

Leading up to these exercises, Emmanuel and MassArt made educating and training their communities about shelter in place response and active threat events a major priority. Training was made available to faculty, staff, and students in several ways:

  • Large group open session trainings were offered and scheduled
  • Department/ area specific trainings were conducted by Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness
  • Quick reference materials and video training was distributed to all students, faculty, and staff at both Emmanuel and Mass Art communities
  • Training materials were made available on both the Emmanuel College and Mass Art websites

Both of these exercises consisted of 3 major components; An emergency alert message sent out by Public Safety, a 15-20 minute response by the entire community, and an all clear message to end the exercise(s). Emmanuel College and MassArt also had teams of evaluators that were strategically placed across the campuses to observe campus participation and assist anyone who wasn’t completely familiar with a shelter in place order/response. Evaluator teams were made up of COF community members as well as other partners from across the Longwood Medical Area.

The purpose of these types of exercises is to help build “muscle memory” across the COF community to help improve response if an actual emergent event were to occur. These exercises are not a “test.” They are developed and implemented in order to identify areas for improvement and help our entire community to become more resilient.

Simmons University, Wentworth Institute of Technology, and MCPHS University are in the beginning planning phases for conducting similar exercises during the Fall 2019 semester.

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