Upcoming Events
National DRU Summit
APRIL 16-17, 2025
Portland, Oregon
This in-person event, provides an opportunity for peer-to-peer discussions, presentations, workgroups, and networking sessions.
Registration and more information coming soon.
Past Events
DRU Demonstration Workshop - August 2024
The Disaster Resilient Universities (DRU) Network, the University of Oregon and the University of Massachusetts Amherst co-hosted two national interactive virtual demonstration workshops for institutions of higher education (IHEs). 65 IHEs gathered to share how they managed and responded to demonstrations, protests, encampments, arrests, and related activities that took place on or near many of their campuses during spring 2024. Two white papers were developed to summarize findings and insights from the first session and second session.
DRU Climate Resilience Roundtable - December 2023
The Disaster Resilience Universities (DRU) Network®, the University of Oregon's Institute for Resilient Organizations, Communities, and Environments, and the University of California System facilitated a climate resilience roundtable discussion.
The objective was to understand how IHEs can become more resilient to climate change- particularly the risk assessments, resilience planning, stakeholder collaboration, and community engagement necessary to make IHEs better able to handle hazards related to climate change. Attendees included 24 professional leaders in safety, risk management, emergency management, sustainability, and compliance from nine institutions of higher education (IHEs), one commercial property insurer, a building engineering and consulting firm, and Deloitte & Touche LLP.
The DRU Climate Resilience roundtable white paper was developed summarizing the event and highlighting key findings.
Digital Threat Assessment Training - How to Identify, Assess, and Respond to Online Threats - August 2023
This training was facilitated by Safer Schools Together (SST). SST provides Safety/Threat Assessment teams with the tools needed to identify if an individual is on the pathway to violence, homicide, suicide, radicalization, or gang associated behavior.
Nearly 90% of today's threats are communicated digitally. Digital Threat Assessment (DTA) training provides participants with direct skills and tools that are effective and can be utilized immediately. Learn more about Safer Schools Together.
DRU National Summit - April 2023
The Disaster Resilient Universities (DRU) Network® and the University of Oregon hosted the 2023 DRU National Summit. During the event more than 100 participants representing 50 institutions of higher education met in Eugene, Oregon for presentations, peer-to-peer discussions, workgroups, and networking sessions. The DRU Summit summary of findings and insights is available along with speaker and panelist bios.
Threat Assessment in Higher Education - March 2023
This was a free virtual gathering that provided a spotlight on a university program that was promoting best practices in the field of Threat Assessment. Participants were then invited to participate with colleagues across North America in the contemplation of a virtual case study.
This free virtual event will be held twice per academic year.
Threat Assessment Gathering for Higher Education - November 2022
This was a gathering designed for public schools, private schools, community colleges, large schools, regional schools, and everything in-between.
Oregon Cyber Resilience Summit - October 2020
This preeminent cyber resilience event takes a "whole community" approach, bringing together the private and public sectors, owners and operators, cybersecurity experts, students, and community members to network and train together to defend our infrastructure from ever-evolving cyber threats. The event was hosted by the University of Oregon and the Technology Association of Oregon (TAO) in partnership with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Oregon TITAN Fusion Center (OTFC), as part of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month.
About the Summit
Cyber threats represent some of the most significant challenges to national security, our economic systems, and our basic way of life. Cyber risks affect all sectors: critical infrastructure, power and energy, banking, higher education, and many more. The interconnectedness of all sectors of our community causes cyber incidents in one area to affect the whole community. Consequently, to successfully defend our way of life, it is paramount that we work together to defend our cyber world.
Deloitte conducted two cyber capture the flag competitions for teams of 1 - 3 people.
The Goal: The goal of each challenge was to find the “flag” which is a string of text. The flags for each challenge were submitted on the Deloitte site in order to receive points.
The Scoring: Challenges awarded varying amounts of points depending on difficulty. The teams with the most amount of points at the end of the competition won.
DRU Network Higher Education Incident Management Teams Workshop - February 2020
An Incident Management Team (IMT) provides on-scene incident management support during incidents or events that exceed a campus's or jurisdiction's capability or capacity. Teams can include members of local, state, tribal, and territorial entities, Nongovernmental Organizations (NGO), and private sector organizations. Teams can be both residential (e.g., made up of members from one campus) or encompass various campuses, agencies, and jurisdictions.
The workshop was intended for individuals involved in leading or participating in their university’s or college’s crisis or emergency response, continuity, and recovery efforts for all hazards.
Workshop objectives included:
- Learning from campuses that have been at the forefront of IMT development and learn how they are structured, maintained and supported.
- Learning practical and hands-on approaches to building an IMT on campus and community.
- Sharing real-world examples and promising practices from current IMTs and campuses that used a team to manage fast-moving and complex events and incidents. Including large sporting events, meningitis outbreaks, business disruption, mass casualty events, etc.
- Sharing mutual aid resources available and how to access them (e.g., National Intercollegiate Mutual Aid Agreement – NIMAA)
- Networking with other professionals from around the country that are working to advance emergency preparedness, crisis and risk management, and resilience on their campuses.
Oregon Cyber Resilience Summit - October 2019
This preeminent cyber resilience event takes a "whole community" approach, bringing together the private and public sectors, owners and operators, cybersecurity experts, students, and community members to network and train together to defend our infrastructure from ever-evolving cyber threats. The event is hosted by the University of Oregon and Lane Community College on the UO's Eugene campus, in partnership with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Oregon TITAN Fusion Center (OTFC), as part of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month.
About the Summit
Cyber threats represent some of the most significant challenges to national security, our economic systems, and our basic way of life. Cyber risks affect all sectors: critical infrastructure, power and energy, banking, higher education, and many more. The interconnectedness of all sectors of our community causes cyber incidents in one area to affect the whole community. Consequently, to successfully defend our way of life, it is paramount that we work together to defend our cyber world.
This year we are pleased to announce that Cisco will be conducting a cyber-threat hunting workshop “Cisco Advanced Threats Security” for students and practitioners to get hands on training and experience in tracking down cyber threats.
Association of American Medical Colleges Symposium - Strengthening the Resilience of the Academic Medicine Community - September 2019
The DRU partnered with the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) to develop a symposium on Strengthening the Resilience of the Academic Medicine Community.
Overview:
Is your institution prepared to continue operations during a major resource or system outage? From natural disasters to a malware attack, academic medical centers and research institutions must be uniquely prepared to carry on in the face of unexpected physical or virtual disruptions. Participants joined us in D.C. for this special capacity building event that aimed to aid academic medical centers and research facilities in achieving organizational resilience.
This opportunity allowed stakeholders to connect with leaders in risk mitigation and recovery, break down siloes at their institution, and work with unity of purpose to develop organizational resilience. The AAMC Groups on Institutional Planning, Research Advancement and Development and Business Affairs convened this Symposium to engage leadership, faculty, professional and administrative staff, facility planners, along with additional roles that share responsibility for business continuity and recovery within the academic medicine and science community.
Deep dive into recent case studies about organizational resilience and learn from peers who have dealt with the unthinkable. Learning included:
- Defining the attributes and importance of organizational resilience for academic medical centers (AMCs)
- Lessons learned (scenarios) from AMCs on enhancing organizational resilience as well as the perils of not doing so
- Tools for both assessing an AMC’s current state of organizational resilience as well as for improving it
- Need for an organizational structure to enhance resilience
- Assessing Organizational Resilience, three-part analysis:
- Understand vulnerabilities
- Adequate adaptive capacity
- Sufficient situational awareness
DRU Organizational Resilience and Enterprise Risk Management Roundtable - December 2018
Roundtable Objectives:
- Explore both Organizational Resilience and ERM models for a campus environment. Roundtable participants will explore both the challenges and opportunities of the two approaches and review tools, resources, and maturity models
- Share and discuss lessons learned from developing holistic, enterprise-wide views of what the critical risks to the achievement of your institution's mission and objectives
- Provide networking opportunities for participants to connect with Organizational Resilience and Enterprise Risk Management leaders at other colleges and universities
The DRU Roundtable was sponsored by the University of Oregon, University of California-San Francisco, Simon Fraser University, University of Notre Dame, and Washington State University.
Oregon Cyber Resilience Summit - October 2018
This preeminent cyber resilience event takes a "whole community" approach, bringing together the private and public sectors, owners and operators, cybersecurity experts, students, and community members to network and train together to defend our infrastructure from ever-evolving cyber threats.
The event was hosted by the University of Oregon and Lane Community College on the UO's Eugene campus, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Oregon TITAN Fusion Center (OTFC), as part of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month.
About the Summit
Cyber threats represent some of the most significant challenges to national security, our economic systems, and our basic way of life. Cyber risks affect all sectors: critical infrastructure, power and energy, banking, higher education, and many more. The interconnectedness of all sectors of our community causes cyber incidents in one area to affect the whole community. Consequently, to successfully defend our way of life, it is paramount that we work together to defend our cyber world.
National DRU Network Summit - April 2018
Since 2005, the DRU Network has offered a simple yet effective means to increase communication, coordination, and collaboration between campuses to mitigate against, prepare for, respond to, continue operations during, and recover from national disasters, acts of terrorism, or other human-caused crises or disasters. The 2018 National DRU Network Summit built upon that historical framework by offering participants new tools, resources, and ideas for making campuses more disaster resilient. The Summit featured presentations by higher education experts and thought leaders, as well as peer-to-peer discussions, workgroups, and networking sessions to help members advance the concept of resilience on their campuses.
Day one opened with a presentation by John Vargo, Executive Director of Resilient Organizations, on "What is Resilience?" This was followed by an overview of Strategic Doing, a collaborative and interactive approach to strategic planning that can be applied to campus resilience efforts, by Robert Parker, Executive Director of the Community Service Center, which included lessons learned at the University of Oregon by Andre Le Duc. In the afternoon, panelists from Simon Fraser University and the University of Oregon discussed how to build productive multi-disciplinary teams designed to problem solve in today's fast-paced higher education environment. After, a second panel focused on addressing the long term impacts of traumatic events on campus. The panelists included Kristina Anderson, Virginia Tech shooting survivor and Executive Director of the Koshka Foundation for Safe Schools; Jennifer Bornemann, Commander in the United States Public Health Service that responded to the Umpqua Community College shooting; and Vanessa Becker, former Chair Person for the Umpqua Community College Board of Trustees and member of the Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Committee.
On the evening of April 4th, Kristina Anderson gave a public talk in which she shared a candid, first-hand account of her personal experience, journey towards recovery, and her mission to educate others in how to take personal accountability to create active threat response plans, as well as how to communicate the importance of violence prevention within our institutions of learning and greater communities.
On day two, Dr. Douglas Toomey, Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Oregon, and Lucy Walsh, ShakeAlert Outreach and Engagement Coordinator for the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, gave a presentation on ShakeAlert, an early earthquake warning system. A presentation on other resources and tools followed, which included presentations by Andre Le Duc on behalf of the National Center for Campus Public Safety; Bronwyn Roberts, Esq., Project Director at the Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools Technical Assistance Center; and Russell Oyeno, Ph.D., Associate Director for Instructional Systems Design and Delivery at the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center. The final presentation of the Summit was an overview of the UO Campus GIS and Mapping Program by Ken Kato, Director of Campus Mapping and GIS at the University of Oregon.
Over the two days, there were four interactive small-group discussion sessions designed to link, leverage, and align resources to enhance safety initiatives members are pursuing. The topics included building effective teams and partnerships; recovery and continuity planning; engaging leadership in response, continuity, and recovery; and organizational resilience and enterprise risk management.
Special thanks to the 2018 DRU Summit Partners:
- University of Oregon
- Simon Fraser University, British Columbia
- University of California, San Francisco
- Portland State University
- Washington State University
- Stanford University
- Oregon Community College Association
- Oregon Alliance of Independent Colleges and Universities
- NDPTC at the University of Hawaii