A California community college begins to heal: The Key

The No. 1 lesson about disaster relief Ryan Cornner would give college presidents is: do scenario training. 

The president of Glendale Community College said he and his team were working on emergency preparedness training with new managers when the L.A. wildfires started. 

“We were actually planning a tabletop exercise for spring, and boy, did we get a tabletop exercise. It was just real,” Cornner said in the latest episode of The Key, Inside Higher Ed’s news and analysis podcast. 

GCC serves 24,000 students from its campus about five miles from where the Eaton fire burned. Dozens of the college’s students and employees lost their homes, and many more were displaced for more than a week. GCC has expanded its efforts to provide access to basic needs for its students and has recognized that its part-time adjunct faculty need the most support. 

While providing food and housing support or giving students laptops has been a general principle of the community college system, Cornner says a new need in this emergency is coming from employees. 

“As an employer, we think that the real focus is making sure that the workplace has what it needs and making sure people feel supported in their work. But when someone has just lost their home, it brings an added element of ‘what should we do as a community?’”

Inside Higher Ed reported on GCC’s immediate emergency response in January and wanted to reach out to the institution again to check in on its recovery. 

Cornner said institutions can support their communities by investing in the future workforce of first responders and by providing a safe campus for secondary school students whose schools were destroyed in the fires.

Listen to this episode of The Key here, and click here to find out more about The Key.