FDRC Initiative Brings Colleges, Towns Together For Recovery

EATONTOWN, N.J. — It started with an emergency grant request. Then a marketing plan needed to be developed. Dunes needed repair and construction permits needed to be filed. Then someone decided a wastewater feasibility study was worth pursuing.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, students and faculty at colleges and universities in New Jersey lent their expertise to all of these projects and more. It was done with the guidance of the Academic Recovery Team (ART), a creation of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Federal Disaster Recovery Coordinator’s office.

The ART team is a group of experts from various academic institutions and disciplines, including landscape architecture, coastal engineering, environmental policy, economic and community planning, emergency management and homeland security.

FEMA reached out to colleges around the state to create the ART. Participating schools now include Richard Stockton College, Rowan University, Monmouth University, Rutgers’ Department of Landscape Architecture, Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey Institute of Technology, and Montclair State University.

“We sought out most of those schools,” FDRC’s Mark Strohoefer said. “We were looking for places that could provide skill sets the towns needed – engineering, architecture, business schools, economics, and social work.” He also said that the schools were interested in a more formal format for handling disaster relief, and that FDRC would be interested in contacting other colleges based on geography and the demands of future projects.

One of the initial impulses behind the creation of ART was that colleges had been getting involved in disaster relief work before, but weren’t communicating and working with the surrounding communities. ART allows FEMA and FDRC to match the skills and competencies of students and faculty with suitable projects, providing a benefit to both the college and the town.

It began immediately after Hurricane Sandy struck, when Tuckerton and Little Egg Harbor Township had an urgent need for a grant writer. The FDRC put the municipalities in touch with Stockton, who sent a student volunteer to assist. Later, a marketing class went to Tuckerton to create marketing plans for the town. The college started a “Downtown and Main Street” roundtable consisting of professors, three FEMA representatives, and mayors, city council members and business leaders from five neighboring towns.

The Stockton Center for Community Engagement announced the Adopt-a-Town program, which will enhance connections between the school’s students and faculty and towns in need of help recovering from disasters. Through the program, which officially launched in mid-September 2014, the school adopted Tuckerton and Little Egg Harbor Township as its partners. Over the next two years, the alliance expects to expand the Tuckerton marketing plan, create an economic development plan for the area and build three rain gardens.

Strohoefer credits the Center for Community Engagement with driving the initiative in its early days. It was Stockton officials who brought FDRC and Rowan together.

This past summer, Rowan students began a 12-month long wastewater feasibility study for Cumberland County. NJIT offered “Alternative Spring Break” and had approximately 40 students go to Sea Bright to work on repairing dunes, and Monmouth students helped the Highlands construction department clear a backlog of permit applications.

The extra assistance is welcome, as many of the municipalities affected by Sandy were small towns, which lack the personnel, money, or expertise to deal with the multitude of issues they faced post-Sandy. When Tuckerton, Little Egg Harbor Township and neighboring Eagleswood Township needed help managing their coastline issues, FEMA helped them combine into one project to present to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. Tuckerton and Little Egg Harbor Township were awarded a $2.4 million grant from NJDEP.

Two years after Sandy, Strohoefer sees FEMA’s role with the ART and the schools shifting from coordinating recovery to a greater emphasis on preparedness. When FEMA’s mission in New Jersey is over, a state entity is expected to take over and ensure that the team will be ready for the next disaster. The ultimate goal, Strohoefer says, is to create a system that can work for any disaster in any state.

FEMA’s mission is to support our citizens and first responders to ensure that as a nation we work together to build, sustain, and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards.

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