The objective of the University of Oregon's enterprise resilience program is to develop a holistic, enterprise-wide view of what the leadership collectively believes are the most critical risks to the achievement of the university's mission and to manage those risks at an appropriate level of risk tolerance for the university.
Resilience is the ability to adapt to an ever-changing environment and still meet your mission and strategic objectives. The Safety and Risk Services unit promotes resilience through its work with campus partners to support the university’s mission of exceptional teaching, discovery, and service. Our team creates links with campus partners to assess and address vulnerabilities so our partners can continue to innovate and excel. To achieve our goal of becoming a more resilient university, we strive for proficiency in three areas:
- Leadership and culture which stimulate the ability to stay aware, stay engaged, adapt, and make good decisions.
- Well-developed networks which help us use partnerships to leverage assets efficiently.
- Change readiness which requires active planning, proactive thinking, and innovative problem-solving.
Even though we cannot predict exactly when a crisis or emergency will occur, we can minimize losses through planning, training, and mitigation. We prepare by using an interdisciplinary approach to campus risk management, safety, and emergency preparedness — one that leverages our key asset, our people, by giving them the knowledge, skills, and technical assistance to address ever-changing vulnerabilities. Our efforts extend well beyond campus. We engage and support both state-wide and national resiliency initiatives, such as the Oregon Campus Resilience Consortium Concept and the National Disaster Resilient Universities Network (DRU) Network.
We believe our integrated organizational approach to resilience will become a model of how to turn one of a campus’ greatest concerns — the safety and well-being of its people — into its strongest asset as we build a resilient university.
