The program is offered as both a full-degree program and a certificate program for professionals looking for a less intensive educational experience. The degree program is designed as a 36-credit,12-course curriculum that can be completed in one to three years depending on the course load taken by the student. The courses will be offered in four 12-week semesters per year. Ten courses will be offered entirely in a distance-learning format using the BlackBoard® course-management system with a variety of teaching modalities such as online PowerPoint lectures with audio, asynchronous discussion boards, synchronous chat rooms, reading assignments, research papers, online journals and online testing. Students will be required to attend one 6-day, on-campus, summer seminar that will include live lectures, hands-on-skills labs, role-playing seminars, disaster drills and a table-top exercise. This summer seminar is a mandatory component of two of the required courses (DMM-635 and DMM-639). Students will also be required to complete a capstone experience that has several options, but a formal thesis is not required.

Effective communication skills are essential for your professional success. Disaster Medicine and Management students will be able to:

1.   Construct an argument or hypothesis in a logical, organized fashion, demonstrating depth of analytical ability and concept development.

2.   Defend or support work by cohesive paragraph development and flow.

3.  Avoid plagiarism by being able to restate factual information with their own words and demonstrate analytical ability and critical assessment.

4.  Search for and use sources and citations appropriately; demonstrate the ability to filter references for applicability and quality, and /or to follow the trail of references to the root article and evaluate for accuracy. In short, students should use critical analysis of the literature techniques.

5.  Recognize when an idea has been well presented and when it needs more development.

6.  Use correct grammar and sentence structure to ensure readability and publication potential.

7.  Present information clearly and effectively in multiple modalities: written paper, Power Point presentation, poster, discussion boards.

8.  Demonstrate reasonable facility with APA style and/or professional writing guidelines.

9.  Demonstrate reasonable facility with word processing computer tools to enhance writing.

10. Avoid the pitfall of using multiple quotes from the literature in place of deliberate analysis.

For more information regarding our curriculum, click here.