Working with Emerging Risks for Higher Education Risk Managers

The URMIA education plan fits with the core competencies but also leaves room for the ten identified emerging risks in 2022 so that the association is offering educational information to our members on how to handle these risks as we learn things about them. Working with a broad scope of writers and leaning especially on our skilled affiliate members, Stacie Kroll and Lou Drapeau join Guest Host Craig McAllister for a discussion on how it all came about.

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Transcript

Show Notes
URMIA Resource Guide [Member Login Required]

URMIA Education Plan [Member Login Required]

URMIA Insights – Emerging Risks: Internet of Things 

URMIA Insights – Emerging Risks: The Great Resignation 

URMIA Insights – Emerging Risks: Student Mental Health

URMIA Leadership

Transcript

Craig: Hello, and welcome to another arrhythmia matters podcast. Today we're discussing the emerging risk project. I'm Craig McAllister, executive director of risk management at the university of Miami, a member of the URMIA board and a lead on the URMIA professional development strategic goal. With me today are Stacie Kroll, managing director of the education practice at Gallagher and a member of the URMIA board and Lou Drapeau, the URMIA resource manager.

I'd like Stacie and Lou to introduce themselves a bit more.

Stacie: Yeah. Great. So thanks for having me, Craig. so Stacie Kroll, as you had said, uh, managing director of Gallagher's higher education practice, and a board member at URMIA. Been with Gallagher now for about a year, almost, prior to, being with Gallagher, as you know, um, I sat as the director of compliance and risk management for some small private liberal arts institutions in Massachusetts. So I’ll pass it off to Lou.

Craig: Thanks Stacie. 

Lou : Lou Drapeau, resource manager for URMIA, Um, my retired, uh, several years ago as director of risk management at the University of Kentucky. And I am now working part-time for URMIA as resource manager. 

Craig : Thanks Lou. Stacie. can you talk about the impetus for the emerging risks? 

Stacie : Yeah. Sure. So as a board, as the board of directors, we got, we get together a few times a year and uh, this year was a really special year as we took another look at our strategic plan. And as we were getting together as a board and reviewing our strategic plan, one of the opportunities that we identified for the association was really staying on top of these cutting edge risks uh, for higher education. And we know at this point in time, it feels like we're kind of being, uh, thrown a whole bunch of risks that we're are developing risks that we already know about that are shifting and changing, but we can't lose sight of those things that we don't really know enough about. and that we're not really at this point, ready to really dive in on what appropriate mitigation strategies look like.

So, what we wanted to do was identify kind of those emerging risks that we, we bravely don't really know a lot about, but frankly, but we want to put the idea in members' heads, uh, to make sure that they're at least thinking about the risk, uh, and getting some, uh, collective group think, I think, around identifying proper mitigation strategies.

So really to put the seed that some of these risks, while we may not know the answer to how to properly mitigate them yet, uh, we at least know what, uh, what little nuggets of thought leadership that need to be out there in order for us to tackle it down the road. So what we did was we identified, um, nine or 10 kind of emerging risks at this point in time as a board and with some of our volunteers through the association, uh, we cherry picked 9 or 10. Um, and we already started publishing some of those. So you may have seen an earlier insights. Uh, we've had a one pager publication on things like, return to work, uh, in this environment, which is certainly a fast adapting and changing as we move forward. Uh, student mental health and, artificial intelligence. 
 
 And these, uh, little one pager kind of thought pieces were authored by our affiliate members, uh, which is really cool and special, I think because it allows our members to receive this information direct from our affiliates. And it also allows the affiliates to kind of flex or share their area of expertise with a broader audience and they may be used to so, you know, keep a look out for the ones that we already have. And then we've got a number, um, that are already kind of in the works and being authored at this moment.

Craig : Thanks, Stacie. It's great that we have this partnership between the affiliates and the member institutions. The emerging risks certainly are, are coming from multiple directions with multiple people working to identify. Lou, can you comment on the importance of having the education plan and the emerging risk inventory and how URMIA plans to use both of them?

Lou : Sure. basically with the emerging risks is something that we've always been interested in is of course we add those to the URMIA risk inventory as, as we find out about them. And as we learn a little bit more about them, the interesting thing though, is that the URMIA education plan, which has been revamped to be in in conjunction with URMIA as core competencies and of course, core competency. Number one is risk management, technical skills. And the number one list on that is risk identification. So that fits right in, with identifying emerging risks. And so what we're trying to do is make sure that the education plan fits with the core competencies and that these emerging risks, we're offering educational information, to our members on how to handle these risks as we learn things about them. And of course, the things that we learned generally come from the membership who may be dealing with some of these risks and finding some, interesting new ways to handle them or deal with them in some other way.

Stacie : You know, Lou, it's interesting because a lot of these risks were identified from just member questions and asking about a particular risk and no one really had the answer about how to manage it. So to your point about kind of those things that we don’t know enough about, you know, some of the things we have in the works are like, name, image, and likeness, right, which is a little bit of the wild west right now. So what are the things we need to think about as we move forward with, NCAA NIL, requirements and then as well as autonomous vehicles- having them on your campus, but also building them on your campus from an engineering perspective. Right?

Which is something we've been thinking about. Cryptocurrency and accepting cryptocurrency as, a form of revenue for the institution. Through donations or through a tuition room and board, but that's something that, again, people are starting to ask and we don't really have the answer yet. So, uh, it's really nice to have that marrying of the education plan and making sure that we have that infrastructure to build this in and make sure that at the board level, at a leadership level, we're being really intentional, and making sure that we're, again, bravely stepping into this space where we don't have all the answers yet but collectively we can come up with some pretty good solutions. 

Lou : Right. And another place that those would show up, ultimately is in the URMIA resource guide, which has also been revamped to fit the core competencies. So as we come up with information and solutions on these emerging risks we can put some of the solutions in the resource guide.

Craig : So Stacie, you said that, some white papers or one, one page, cuts on some of these risks that had been published already. What other areas, can people find information about these emerging risks? 

Stacie : The URMIA network is a great place to start, right? So we're all tackling these. I think that, you know, the biggest benefit of URMIA membership is leaning on each other and is that networking and how collegial we are with sharing risks. So if we haven't put something out as leadership, yet, if we haven't published anything on behalf of URMIA, definitely ask your peers. and frankly, Google has been a great resource, at risk manager, I think a risk manager strength is how well they knew how to, uh, search in Google sometimes. So Google and looking outside industry as well. So even if it's something we haven't tackled in higher education, other industries have handled it.

So that's where kind of that, external, broader search, has been fruitful. And also leaning on your affiliates that we found through this project, that our affiliates actually have a wealth of information that they've been kind of managing within their own subject matter of expertise. And now they get to publish that to a broader audience, which is really exciting.

So even if it's something that, again, that we haven't published yet, put it out to the all member network and let's see if affiliates have answers there too. Because affiliates, we're really excited to start offering some stuff. Some of these things, cause they're challenged, they're challenged with it too, they're trying to figure out solutions to, so it's a real nice way to, um, enhance that cultural Vertiv, aspect of our URMIA community. 

Lou : And of course the other possibility is, if you have a question about some emerging risk is to click the ask Lou button. 

And, uh, I get those all the time. And a lot of times, if, if we don't have any information on a particular risk or especially if it's an emerging risk, then I will recommend to the person who has asked me the question that they pose the question to the membership and see if anyone else has an answer on it. And that I see a lot of those and a lot of those folks get some good answers from some of our members 

Craig : So it sounds like there's many ways our members can support this project and bring forth additional risk that they have identified. If they're not necessarily on the risk inventory already, either through the list, serve, ask Lou, or just reaching out to other members and, and asking them to, to get that forward. That's great. 

Stacie : Yeah, and the board is really the board and the affiliates committee are really engaged in this project, and actively engaged. So if you bring forth to anybody on the affiliates committee, anybody on the board of directors, or even just reach out to, URMIA@urmia.org and identify a risk that you haven't really heard us talking about before, we're happy to bring it forward and, solicit some of that expertise within our membership or within our, affiliates group.

So definitely bring it forward. And, you know, it's really important that we keep this alive and breathing, and that this is a living project throughout time. so I think in order for us to be successful in that endeavor, people need to be submitting kind of fresh ideas to, because our institutional members are people who are sitting butts in seats and dealing with these things on a day-to-day basis are the ones who are seeing it on the frontline. So it's really important that they bring that forward, and that we can help you find answers. and we can, again, really leverage that URMIA community.

Craig : Well attendees at the annual conference, be able to get additional information related to emerging risk. 

Lou : Absolutely. you know, as we come across this information, we try to make it available to all of our members. There will be several stations set up, at the conference in Indianapolis, where members will be able to come up and ask us questions and, we can direct them to wherever the information may be.

Stacie : I think you mentioned to Lou we're building in a pre-conference session around emerging risks. Right? Can you speak to that too? Because that's a really cool idea. We're doing this year. 

Lou : Yeah. And that's the session is called foundations of risk management and it's, really designed for, People who are new to the risk management community, either to risk management or perhaps risk management in higher education. but certainly, we will talk about emerging risks and I suppose if there are other more experienced members that wanted to, be in the foundations of risk management session, they could certainly sign up for it.

Craig : That's great. What would ask Stacie and Lou, is there any other thoughts or comments you have about the emerging risk project?

Stacie : It's fun. It kind of, it kind of like, activates that risk management geek part of your brain when you start digging into things you don't know about and start researching it. So it's a really fun project to champion as a fun project to engage members on. it's a fun project to engage affiliates on and kind of hear what they think about emerging risks.

Particularly when we get into things like NIL or crypto or artificial intelligence, I mean, it's just such creative, innovative conversation, around how to properly identify, analyze, and manage these risks. So, so it was just a really great project. I'm excited for what URMIA can do with this, and I think our members are really going to benefit from it.

I think they're going to, they're going to participate in it and I think they're going to benefit from it. So I think it will be a really cool thing to see how this has, grown over the next year and even further.

Lou : And it's really essential, I think to the mission of URMIA to keep our members up to date and informed about what is going on in the risk management, technical skills area. 

Craig : Well, I'd like to thank Stacie and Lou today for talking about emerging risk. As we all know, you have to identify the risk before you. can manage it. And the emerging risks are coming at us fast and furious. 

So thank you. I like to thank our listeners for tuning in and our guests and that's a wrap.