Resilient Vermont Network (RVT)

Resilient Vermont Conference

Resilient Vermont 2024: After the Floods

Bringing together community leaders and groups working to celebrate and strengthen Vermont’s resilience.

The Vermont floods in the summer of 2023 highlighted the broad and ongoing need for investments in systems that support our health, safety, and wellbeing. This year’s conference will draw from a range of novel perspectives on resilience, while challenging our attendees to see how the insights and tools derived from these perspectives can be incorporated into our response to environmental, social and economic threats.  Our two areas of focus will be human resilience and indigenous perspectives on resilience. The human resilience sessions will be led by Norwich faculty who have developed programs for both military and civilian populations to build individual and interpersonal resilience in the face of intense stress. The indigenous perspectives on resilience will offer an expanded view of how we see ourselves and our place in the world.   

---

Join Us Live | March 19, 2024

 

---

Schedule | March 19, 2024

8:00 to 8:45 a.m. | Mack Hall Lobby
Conference Check In and Networking

8:45 to 9:00 a.m. | Mack Hall Auditorium
Opening Remarks
Dr. Karen Gaines, Acting President, Norwich University

9:00 to 9:30 a.m. | Mack Hall Auditorium
"Developed to Death"  
Performance and Q&A by The Civic Standard

The Civic Standard will offer a presentation about development, place making, history, and community resiliency. We will share our unique methods for building connections across real or perceived social and economic divides and jumpstarting profound community-wide connections and relationships through theater and cultural events. This workshop will include a PowerPoint presentation* on the pressures of development on small towns.  The Q&A that follows will open the floor to anyone who wants to share their views on our changing landscape and culture. 
*Presentation may contain a hint of satire.

9:25 to 10:40 a.m. | Mack Hall Auditorium     
Partnerships and Policies for Resilience
Moderator: Kahwa Douoguih, Co-Director, Center for Global Resilience & Security, Norwich University
Panelists: Wendi Goldsmith, CEO Sustainability Visions; and Patricia Coates, Director, Leahy Institute for Rural Partnerships.

The panelists will discuss the various attributes and types of community partnerships that foster resilience in the face of natural disasters and in general. They will also reflect on municipal, state and national policies that help and harm community-driven resilience investments. The panelists will offer their perspectives on innovative and unexpected ways to build resilience in the face of increased stress on our infrastructure and associated systems.

10:50 a.m. to 12:05 p.m. | Mack Hall Auditorium
Essential Leadership Skills in Promoting Resilience for All
Moderators: Amy Welch, PhD., Professor, Chair, Dept. of Health & Human Performance, Norwich University & Simon Pearish, Associate Professor, Norwich University
Panelists: Representative (D) Mitzi Johnson, State of Vermont; Mark Levine, MD, Commissioner, Vermont Dept. of Health; Doug Farnham, Deputy Secretary and Chief Recovery Officer, State of Vermont; Rich Holschuh, Chair, Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs; 

In this panel, we bring together leaders from around the state who work for organizations that support resilience in a variety of ways. The focus of this discussion will be leadership. What are the challenges and rewards of serving as a leader? How do leaders maintain personal resilience and maintain optimism despite obstacles and setbacks? 

12:10 to 1:00 p.m. | Milano Ballroom 
Lunch Break

1:00 to 1:50 p.m. | Concurrent Sessions

Milano Ballroom or VIRTUAL CLASSROOM
Bringing Flood Recovery into the Classroom
Moderator: Emma Spett, Graduate Research Assistant, University of Vermont

University courses across Vermont are using the July 2023 floods as a case study for building community resilience across a range of issues, including health, development, and ecology. In this panel, you'll hear from the students at different VT colleges and universities about the ways they're engaging with flood recovery and resilience in the classroom, and the impacts that their work is having on Vermont. Discussions about how this learning can be operationalized in state and local planning will be discussed as well.

Mack Hall 005 or VIRTUAL CLASSROOM
How Do You Move In the World? Personal Identity

We will discuss how Indigenous perspectives of identity differ from Western perspectives and ask how attendees might expand their concept of identity to incorporate a more community-based approach.

2:00 to 2:50 p.m. | Concurrent Sessions

Milano Ballroom or VIRTUAL CLASSROOM
Reimagining Worksite Wellness: A novel approach to building a resilient workforce.
Presentation by: Kylie Blodgett, PhD., Assistant Professor, Norwich University & Amy Welch, PhD., Professor, Chair, Dept. of Health & Human Performance, Norwich University

Mack Hall 005 or VIRTUAL CLASSROOM
River Restoration: The Environmentalist Movement and Indigenous Communities

In this session, attendees will discuss the indigenous perspective on the environment and the environmental movement.

3:00 to 3:50 p.m. | Concurrent Sessions

Milano Ballroom or VIRTUAL CLASSROOM
Building Resilience in Community Public Health in Response to Natural Disasters
Faciliator: Chris Callahan, Extension Associate Professor, UVM
Panelists: Maggie Nilz, MPH, CPH, Norwich University Public Health Program; Sarah Gradjura, UVM Transportation Research Center; Spencer Karins, UVM Spatial Analysis Lab; Molly Myers, Graduate Research Assistant, UVM.

Researchers from Vermont institutions will share how their work has been developed in coordination with community partners and share critical insight into how their research contributes to community resilience following disasters and extreme weather. 

Mack Hall 005 or VIRTUAL CLASSROOM
How Do You Move In the World? Walking Workshop

Participants will take a walk around campus to engage in a place-based discussion about our connections to each other and the community of life around us. Session will depart from Mack Hall 005.

4:00 PM to 4:50 p.m. | Milano Ballroom or VIRTUAL CLASSROOM
Flood After-Action Review: The Importance of Resilience
Facilitator: Bill Lyons, Co-Director, Center for Global Resilience & Security, Norwich University

Viewed through the lens of the cataclysmic floods of 2023, Norwich University will facilitate an Action After Review (AAR) to help improve the coordinated response of government, not-for-profit entities, and impacted communities in the event of a natural or man-made disaster. This AAR will analyze the key stakeholders’ pre-event expectations of a coordinated response versus the lived experience of the actual event. The goal of the AAR is to identify practices to sustain and new practices to improve or initiate. The intent is to then practice those changes prior to the next disaster response event.