Curt Harris PhD ’08 knows his periodic table, chemical compounds, and how to work a lab. What the physical scientist wasn’t expecting was to become just as adept at the complicated field of communications.
But when he joined the University of Georgia’s Institute of Disaster Management, housed in the College of Public Health, one thing became abundantly clear.
Curt Harris heads the College of Public Health’s Institute for Disaster Management, which features a curriculum heavily focused on crisis communication. (Photo by Peter Frey/UGA)
“Communication was always a problem when we were looking at disaster responses and engaging in disaster preparation exercises,” says Harris, who became the institute’s director in 2019. “Communicating was something that we did, but it wasn’t something we did extremely well—primarily because we didn’t train on it.”
That’s something he wanted to fix when he began developing the curriculum for the Master of Public Health in Disaster Management in the early 2010s. But Harris soon realized that a single crisis communications course wasn’t going to cut it. Crisis communications needed to be integrated into every class the institute’s faculty taught.
Glen Nowak, co-director of the Center for Health and Risk Communication in UGA’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, was a guest lecturer in disaster management courses over the years. A few years later when Nowak mentioned that a graduate program on crisis communications was in the works, Harris was all in.
Beginning in fall 2024, UGA began offering the Graduate Certificate in Crisis, Risk, and Disaster Communication, one of few programs nationwide that offers this combination of courses in a graduate certificate.
The new interdisciplinary certificate is a collaboration among three nationally recognized programs to educate students: the Crisis Communication Think Tank at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, the Risk Management and Insurance program at the Terry College of Business, and the Institute for Disaster Management at the College of Public Health.
The 12-credit program provides specialized coursework in crisis, risk, and disaster communication. The program connects the academic theories in these fields with industry practice, preparing students to manage and communicate through complex and difficult situations.
“Our goal is to make UGA the place to study, to research, and to get training on crisis communication management,” says Yan Jin, the C. Richard Yarbrough Professor in Crisis Communication Leadership at the Grady College and director of the certificate program. “How can you be proactive? How can you be ready?”
Being Ready
That theme of readiness is a cornerstone of both the certificate program and the Crisis Communication Think Tank, which Jin co-founded in 2018. The Think Tank combines the evidence-based expertise of academics from wide-ranging disciplines with the experience-driven insights of communication executives from corporations and other prominent institutions, including the American Medical Association, Ketchum, and Wellstar Health Systems.
The Think Tank draws on UGA’s extensive and internationally recognized scholarship in crisis and risk research.
Terry’s Risk Management and Insurance program is the largest undergraduate program of its kind in the U.S. and has been ranked No. 1 for the past five years by U.S. News & World Report.
Meanwhile, the Institute for Disaster Management is one of only six entities nationwide to offer a Master of Public Health degree with a concentration in disaster management. And the program emphasizes working with communities, government agencies, nonprofits, and more to maximize experiential learning opportunities for students.
Our goal is to make UGA the place to study, to research, and to get training on crisis communication management.” — Yan Jin, C. Richard Yarbrough Professor in Crisis Communication Leadership
A Program for Professionals
Crisis communications training at UGA isn’t just for students, though.
The Think Tank and Terry’s Executive Education program recently partnered on a crisis readiness workshop for business leaders in Atlanta, with the goal of educating executives on proactive crisis management strategies, how legal and risk management interact, the complexities of technology, media training, and a crisis scenario simulation.
Mike Pfarrer, the C. Herman and Mary Virginia Terry Distinguished Chair of Business Administration, leads programs that teach executives how to handle crises. (Photo by Peter Frey/UGA)
“I think part of the challenge for business executives is the word ‘crisis,’” says Mike Pfarrer, the C. Herman and Mary Virginia Terry Distinguished Chair of Business Administration and Professor in the Terry College and the associate dean for Research and Executive Programs. “Executives often think they don’t have crises because it’s just such a strong word.
“But ‘crisis’ can mean a lot of things and is defined by the industry you are in. Every company and its executives should prepare for something bad to happen, whether it’s a data breach, an oil spill, or whatever it is. And what we’re finding is that a lot of firms want to be better prepared.”
That’s why workshops like this one emphasize industry-specific challenges with actionable advice that executives can put into practice in their workplace immediately.
The Model for Crisis Comms
UGA is well on its way to becoming the go-to spot for crisis communications training, according to the founders of the program, with many institutions modeling their own programs after Grady’s successful Think Tank model.
But for the crisis communications leaders at the university, it’s less about earning a degree or certificate and more about shaping a mindset. Everyone, whether they’re in business, public relations, or public health, will likely face a crisis. And what they do in a stressful moment can mean the difference between a successful image rehabilitation plan for a company or the complete destruction of a brand.
“Regardless of whether it’s an undergraduate class or an executive training program, I think the key is understanding that crisis communication is not just about communication,” Jin says. “It’s thinking about crisis management as an ongoing process, from prevention, to preparation, to response, to revisiting to learn from any mistakes.
“How can you always be ready?”
