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Campus Resilience Program

This page provides Campus Resilience (CR) Program resources for the academic community to address a range of threats or hazards affecting schools and campuses nationwide.

These resources increase awareness of current risks and threats related to the academic community, provide tools and content for schools to measure specific campus vulnerabilities, include best practice guides and templates to help schools take action, and list opportunities for schools to evaluate its preparedness, response, and recovery capabilities.

The Campus Resilience (CR) Program Resource Library  provides the academic community with resources, strategies and templates to address a range of vulnerabilities and risks. This includes a variety of capacity-building resources and tools to empower practitioners and campus leaders to better prepare for, respond to, and recover from various threats and hazards posing a risk to the academic community.

The Campus Resilience Program Tabletop Exercise Series (TTX Series) is a collection of tailored events, each with unique objectives and outcomes, designed for the higher education community. Each event in the series challenges participants with multi-faceted threat based scenarios that test and strengthen their institution’s preparedness, response, and recovery capabilities.

  • The National Seminar and Tabletop Exercise (NTTX) is an annual two-day event that includes workshop sessions, resources, complex tabletop exercise and an after-action review session.
  • The Regional Tabletop Exercises (RTTX) are one-day events that include a tabletop exercise designed to address specific regional threats. The regional events are hosted multiple times per year in locations across the U.S.
  • The Leadership Tabletop Exercises (LTTX) are half-day events hosted bi-annually for campus leadership designed to highlight their role in managing emergency incidents.

Exercise Starter Kits are self-conducted tabletop exercises (TTX) tailored for the academic community. Each kit includes a set of scalable tools aimed to test existing emergency plans, protocols, and procedures, while also strengthening preparedness, response, and recovery capabilities. ESKs are available for both the K-12 and higher education communities.

DHS provides grants to state, local, tribal, and territorial jurisdictions that can be used for training, exercises, planning, personnel, and equipment to prepare for many threats and hazards. These resources provide useful information on current grants available to IHEs. There are two main categories of grants: preparedness grants and other.

Preparedness Grants

Preparedness (Non-Disaster) Grants
The Federal Emergency Management Agency provides program funding in the form of non-disaster grants to enhance the capacity to prevent, respond to, and recover from various emergencies.

FEMA Grants
This resource contains information on preparedness grants funding provided by FEMA to state, local, tribal, and territorial governments in the form of non-disaster grants.

Emergency Preparedness Grant Coordination
This website provides information on the Emergency Preparedness Grant Coordination initiative, which serves to provide investments in homeland security, emergency public health, and health care preparedness.

Find and Apply for Grants
In addition to the Non-Disaster Grants, this website provides useful resources on finding and applying for other various preparedness grants.

Continuing Training Grants
Offered through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Homeland Security National Training Program (HSNTP) Continuing Training Grants (CTG) provides funding via cooperative agreements to partners to develop and deliver training to prepare communities to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from acts of terrorism and natural, man-made, and technological hazards.

Other 

Tactical Emergency Casualty Care (TECC) Program
DHS delivers the Tactical Emergency Casualty Care (TECC) program that provides high-threat medical training, including for community stakeholders that respond to incidents at schools in our communities.

The Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) operates the Protective Security Advisor (PSA) Program.

PSAs are trained subject matter experts in critical infrastructure protection and vulnerability mitigation. They facilitate local field activities in coordination with other Department of Homeland Security offices and Federal agencies. They also advise and assist state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) officials and critical infrastructure owners and operators, and provide coordination and support in times of threat, disruption, or attack.

For more information on how to connect with your local PSA and to learn more about their specific offerings, please contact dhsacademic@hq.dhs.gov or your CISA Regional Office. PSAs perform security-focused community level outreach at educator's conferences/school board meetings and, within the scope of existing resources, help schools conduct security vulnerability assessments.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) launched the Campus Resilience (CR) Program in 2013, as an effort to engage institutions of higher education (IHEs) in developing and testing an emergency preparedness and resilience planning process tailored to IHEs. Managed by the Office of Academic Engagement (OAE), the program is dedicated to helping colleges and universities build, sustain and promote resiliency to the threats that confront institutions across the nation.

Last Updated: 10/27/2023
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