(Denver, CO)  September 1, 2008 - Emergency management specialist Gary Gleason is in Portugal for a three-month teaching and research assignment in civil protection. The project is being funded by the prestigious J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship program and coordinated through the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars (CIES).

Gleason is teaching three courses on civil protection at the Polytechnic Institute in Leiria, along with research regarding best practices in homeland security on the Iberian Peninsula. The three courses Gleason is leading are 1) Homeland Security in the United States: the Incident Command System and the National Incident Management System; 2) Emergency Public Information: Communicating with the Public and Managing the Media during Emergencies; and 3) Transit Emergency Preparedness: Protecting Critical Infrastructure and Managing Mobility during Disasters.

Gleason’s Fulbright research project is to document lessons learned in recent disasters. Based on research and interviews with civic leaders responsible for response to and recovery from recent incidents in Portugal, Gleason will write short case studies on lessons learned. At the conclusion of his Fulbright experience Gleason will write a thesis encapsulating these best practices, comparing and contrasting these lessons with emergency management strategies in the United States.

Gleason is the president of NCI partner company, Communiqué USA.  Gleason has served as the project manager for several joint NCI/Communiqué projects including developing interactive training products for the Federal Transit Administration’s National Rural Transit Assistance Program that help community transit systems develop better emergency response plans and procedures.