Pictured, left to right, are Organizational Leadership (OL) Analysis Hazard team members Kathy Niekamp of Celina, Sherry Post of St. Marys, Carrol Jeffries of Celina, Emergency Management Agency (EMA) Deputy Director Wanda Dicke, EMA Director Karl Kaiser; and OL team members Betsy Kamin of New Bremen and Shelley Johnson of New Knoxville. |
In response to a request from Mercer County Emergency Management Agency (EMA) Director Karl Kaiser and members of its newly formed county Mitigation Team, a group of seniors in the Organizational Leadership (OL) program at the Lake Campus of Wright State University are compiling a hazard analysis to be used for the upcoming mitigation plan being formulated by the agency in response to federal guidelines requiring a county mitigation plan to be in place.
The students will present their analysis to Kaiser and other members of the mitigation team in an open-to-the-public meeting on Tuesday, March 25, at 7:00 p.m. in the Central Services building conference room. In addition to making a PowerPoint presentation of their analysis findings, the team will also be prepared to suggest recommended mitigation activities.
The OL students are Carrol Jeffries, Celina; Shelley Johnson, New Knoxville; Betsy Kamin, New Bremen; Kathy Niekamp, Celina; and Sherry Post, St. Marys.
Organizational leadership students are required to complete a capstone project as a final requisite of the Bachelor of Science in Organizational Leadership degree program. These projects are a culmination of a year’s worth of work in which the students learn the skills necessary to apply classroom material to solve an actual administrative problem within a local organization.
With input from the Mitigation Team, the students have identified almost two dozen potential emergency situations that they have categorized and extensively researched through interviewing appropriate agency personnel and searching relevant Internet sites. The students have looked into the history, probability, and risk, over the past 100 years, of such potential disaster situations as agricultural disease, flooding, terrorism, tornadoes, earthquakes, traffic and air accidents, loss of natural gas, pipeline breaks, and more.
Kaiser says he is excited and pleased that he has been able to involve the organizational leadership program students in this project. “This presented a ready-made group of trained and skilled people to perform this very important analysis, one that, with the resulting plan the mitigation team will develop, will benefit not only this office and the Mercer County Commissioners but every resident in Mercer County. Once this plan is in place, our office and county will be better prepared with activities for reduction or elimination of hazards and the effects of those hazards.”
Dr. Mindy McNutt, OL assistant professor at the campus, describes the organizational leadership program as multidisciplinary and designed to provide graduates with the management and leadership skills necessary in a variety of vocations “in this age of the challenge of very critical business issues” giving students an opportunity to address a subject or problem and the implementation of a solution.
For their culminating capstone projects, students perform a problem diagnosis and needs assessment, develop and implement a program to solve that specific problem and assess the value of the solution selected. Through these capstone projects, students are given the opportunity to put to use the knowledge and skills they’ve gained throughout their two-year completion program. Individually or as a team, the students must plan, implement, and evaluate a project, and make a formal presentation at its conclusion.
Projects have ranged from response to this request for completing a hazard analysis to a plan to provide an HR consulting plan for local businesses, an office relocation project, and a proposal for a two-year naturalist program for the Lake Campus.
