Brian Crisan is a part-time graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy/counseling at The University of Akron. In December 2012, he earned a bachelor of science degree in emergency management and homeland security with a minor in fire protection technology. Since 2004, he has worked as a public safety telecommunicator. He briefly served as a volunteer firefighter and Nationally Registered emergency medical technician with a rural fire department in northeast Ohio. He currently serves as a police telecommunicator for an urban law enforcement agency.
Brian has attended numerous law enforcement training seminars. Topics studied include: hostage negotiation, domestic violence intervention, suicide intervention, Alzheimer’s and dementia, homicide call analysis, deception detection, vehicle pursuits, and active shooting response. In December 2009, Brian attended a 40 hour Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) course normally reserved for law enforcement officers. During the course, a number of experts (including seven physicians) lectured on a variety of mental illnesses, including: depression, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia, etc. In May 2011, Brian attended a course titled, “Technical Emergency Response Training (TERT) for CBRNE Incidents” at the Center for Domestic Preparedness in Anniston, Alabama. During the TERT course, Brian had an opportunity to train at the Chemical, Ordnance, Biological and Radiological (COBRA) training facility, which is the only facility in the United States that trains civilian responders in a truly toxic environment.
From 2006-2012, Brian studied emergency management at the University of Akron. In 2007, he completed an internship with the Office of Emergency Management in the University of Akron’s Department of Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (EOHS). During his internship, he wrote a response plan for a critical campus building and participated in other, related activities. For a few years after completing his internship, Brian continued to assist UA’s emergency management coordinator with functional exercises conducted as a part of an Emergency Response, Preparedness, and Planning course. In November 2010, Brian assisted with a functional exercise for University staff. Brian has also participated in exercises at the Cleveland Clinic and at the Austen BioInnovation Institute in Akron (ABIA).
In 2010, Brian became active with the UA student chapter of the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM). He traveled to the parent organization’s annual conference three times: once in San Antonio (2010), once in Las Vegas (2011), and once in Orlando (2012). Since joining IAEM, Brian has demonstrated his leadership skills with the group by earning positions of progressive responsibility. He was appointed IAEM’s public relations representative in April 2011, Vice President in January 2012, and President in May 2012. Under his leadership, IAEM was recognized by the IAEM Student Council as the 2012 Chapter of the Year in an awards ceremony at the annual conference in Orlando, Florida. One year earlier, Brian wrote the winning nomination that led to recognition for Dr. Robert M. Schwartz as the 2011 Chapter Advisor of the Year.
Brian has also attended other conferences, including: Ohio LinuxFest (2006, 2010) in Columbus, Ohio; the Fire Department Instructor’s Conference (FDIC) (2011) in Indianapolis, Indiana; the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO) Conference (2011) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and the Governor’s Hurricane Conference (2012) in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Brian is also an atheist and skeptic. In October 2012, he was interviewed by Kim Lawton for a story on the rise of the religiously unaffiliated in politics for the PBS show Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly. Brian is a member of the University of Akron’s chapter of the Secular Student Alliance and the Cleveland Skeptics. He has also attended the Reason Rally (2012) in Washington D.C. and Skepticon 5 (2012) in Springfield, Missouri.
Brian enjoys writing and he has published several articles and letters to the editor. Some of his written work includes:
- Integrating Public Safety Dispatchers Into the Planning Process, IAEM Bulletin (October 2010)
- Support PSAPs, a letter to the editors of the Emergency Management Magazine (November/December 2010)
- A degree in dealing with disasters, USA Today College Blog
- Crisis Intervention and De-escalation: A Critical Skill Emergency Managers Need, IAEM Bulletin (March 2011 edition)
- Risk and Social Engineering: A Non-Technical Approach to Breaching Security, IAEM Bulletin (May 2011)
- Passwords: How Big is Your Haystack?, IAEM Bulletin (April 2012)
- Psychological Lessons: A Few Studies from the History of Psychology (August 2012) (online edition)
- Post-Incident Trauma Interventions: Reevaluating the Use of Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (May 2013)
To view more of his written work, click here.
In his spare time, Brian enjoys bowling, billiards, live comedy acts, rock concerts, and talk radio. Some of his favorite netcasts include: Security Now!, Tech News Today, Triangulation on the TWiT network and OS.ALT and, although this show is sadly no longer in production, I’m still a die-hard fan of Diggnation - both on the Revision3 network.
