JOHNSON CITY - East Tennessee State University has won an important Federal Emergency Management Agency grant, the second such award in the last six months.
ETSU is the only university in the state to receive the FEMA grant, worth $160,000 and is part of the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program.
“We are thrilled to receive this honor,” said Dr. Andrew Joyner, an associate professor in the Department of Geosciences. “It means we can help improve the campus, making it an even safer place.”
The funding allows ETSU to update its hazard mitigation plan. ETSU’s Geoinformatics and Disaster Science Lab, a group that helps colleges and local governments across the nation better plan for extreme weather events, developed the plan and will work to enhance it over the next year, thanks to the funding.
The lab has already garnered national attention. In 2021, FEMA celebrated the lab in its exclusive Mitigation Planning Success Stories series, a respected marker that only a handful of organizations and jurisdictions across the U.S. receive.
In fall 2022, ETSU received a $280,000 FEMA grant intended to help the university ensure the campus is equipped with strong plans in the event of an environmental disaster.