Letter from the Director
DRC Visitors,
Welcome to the Disaster Research Center’s web page. We hope that you will find useful information about our research and the people at DRC, events and links to the related educational programs offered at University of Delaware.
I am honored to serve as the Disaster Research Center’s Director. I am also very fortunate to have the opportunity to interact with many of the former directors on a day-to-day basis and to have spoken with all of the past directors. Even now, two of the founding directors, Emeritus Professor Henry Quarantelli and Emeritus Professor Russ Dynes, are both active and valuable participants in the center.
As the first social science research center in the world devoted to the study of disasters, the Disaster Research Center conducts field and survey research on group, organizational and community preparation for, response to, and recovery from natural and technological disasters and other community-wide crises. The center was established at Ohio State University in 1963 and moved to the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware in 1985. Recognizing the broader research interests in disasters across the University of Delaware’s campus and the interdisciplinary nature of the research, the center moved from the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice to the College of Arts and Science in the summer of 2006. Then in June 2007, the center again moved to report to Research and Graduate Studies in the Office of the Provost. This most recent move within the administrative structure of the university came on the heels of a physical move from the location on Main Street to newly renovated facilities in Graham Hall.
While much of the research at the DRC has been interdisciplinary, DRC is now embarking on a new era as the Center builds on and maintains this foundation in social science and DRC also broadens its activities to embrace more explicitly interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and cross disciplinary research. This includes developing and supporting a new interdisciplinary graduate program in disasters, involving more faculty from other disciplines in the activities of the center, developing a strategic plan to chart our future, and launching this new web site.
This strategic plan is intended to provide an agenda for activities at the Disaster Research Center (DRC) at University of Delaware over the next three to five years. Specific actions will be updated each year in response to changes in the environment and to reflect the year’s accomplishments.
I invite you to explore the web site and feel free to contact us if you would like additional information. Also remember to come back and visit as we will continue to update the site with project information and report progress on meeting the goals outlined in the strategic plan.
Warm regards,
Sue McNeil
