Claire Connolly Knox was honored with the Emergency Management Educator of the Year award from the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) — a testament to her role in building the U.S. News & World Report No. 1-ranked emergency and crisis management master’s program at UCF.
As a professor and academic program coordinator, Knox plays a key role in the School of Public Administration and is highly regarded in the emergency management field, as reflected in the peer-nominated award recognizing her significant impact on the program and its students.
“I was incredibly honored to receive this award,” Knox says. “These awards mean more to me than other recognitions because they’re from the practitioner community. As a former practitioner, I have such high regard for emergency management professionals and what they go through on a daily basis for their communities. The fact that they see me as not just one of their peers but also as someone they want to partner and collaborate with is extremely humbling.”
Growing up in coastal Louisiana, Knox has long understood the importance of emergency management in communities. This lifelong familiarity fuels her passion for preparing students to enter the professional field and make an immediate impact after graduation.
“Living along the bayou, coastal wetlands are our first line of defense against disasters,” Knox says. “Having lived through several hurricanes, I saw communities completely devastated. I learned how government response works, and I also saw community members and organizations rise to the challenge. It drives so much of my passion for designing a program that will help our students go into their communities and make them more resilient.”
“I’m really adamant about providing opportunities for students to sharpen skillsets that they need as they advance in a career.”
Her background as a practitioner in the field was also crucial for informing how she designed her emergency management courses.
“I’m really adamant about providing opportunities for students to sharpen skillsets that they need as they advance in a career,” she says. “This was informed by the experiences I had when I first started working for the federal government. It was assumed that I could write a technical report, facilitate a meeting, speak in front of policymakers and more, so I incorporate many of those experiences into class assignments, so students have a safe space to hone these skills and receive feedback.”
Whenever possible, Knox also provides students with ample opportunities to engage directly with practitioners and community partners — from local public administrators to panels of emergency management professionals — while gaining experience presenting and answering questions from real practitioners.
One of Knox’s favorite classes to teach, she says, is the capstone for the emergency and crisis management master’s program. In this course, students are paired with mentors from various emergency management agencies in roles they are interested in pursuing after graduation, helping them build professional networks and gain practical experience.
“Students share their career goals with me, and I take my time in selecting their mentors, doing the research, searching through my network and making cold calls,” Knox says. “I see this as an investment in my students’ futures, so I take it very personally.”
Other hands-on experiences include visiting local emergency operations centers for functional and tabletop exercises, working with real-world scenarios, visiting the Orlando Wetlands, attending professional conferences and hearing from real practitioners about the challenges they face in the field.
“[Being] able to invest in and shape the future generation of emergency management practitioners is very rewarding.”
“We have amazing partners in our local community that allow us to bring students into the field for different types of emergency management exercises and trainings,” she says. “It gives them a chance to not only use the equipment, but to be in the space, try out these different roles, and utilize the concepts and ideas that we have discussed in class. For me, it’s all about getting them out of the classroom and into the workspace they’re going to be in.”
Knox’s investment in her students and collaboration with working practitioners have not only led to co-authored publications and several teaching awards throughout her career, but have also played a key role in the emergency management program’s success and national recognition.
“To be part of a team of amazing faculty, staff, and advisory board members who [are] all on the same page about these types of learning experiences and end goals for our students — it’s my dream job,” she says. “[Being] able to invest in and shape the future generation of emergency management practitioners is very rewarding.”
