Center for Organization Resilience

Leading the Way
Be the Change. Open to Learning. Lead with Courage. Dare to Empower.  

We established the Center for Organization Resilience to serve as a leading resource and advocate for trauma-informed practices. We have become a leader in this field, having developed and refined our curriculum over the past decade, long before such degrees existed.

Since 2020, our one-year master’s degree in Trauma-Informed Education has proudly graduated 472 students! The program continues to prepare students for specialized roles in schools, nonprofit organizations, and other institutions. Our graduates earn the title of Trauma-Informed Specialist, paving the way and empowering resilient communities.

Our professional certificate programs in trauma-informed education have served more than 20 administrators from colleges and universities across the country. We collaborated with and guided them to create trauma-informed spaces on their campuses. We are expanding our trauma-informed certificates to include other critical disciplines.

Professionals already working in their fields can learn how to implement trauma-informed strategies through one of our six-week online programs.

•    Higher Education Administration
•    First Responders
•    Early Childhood
•    K-12 Education Administration
 

Goals of the Institute

We'll serve as a national advocate, resource, and model for applying trauma-informed practices to build resilience and thereby improve the quality of life for tens of millions of people who have experienced trauma.

With the support of a Social Justice Fund grant from Colonial Life and its parent company Unum, Columbia College has established the I-BRTIP to focus on the following goals.

• Offer Rigorous Graduate Programs
  Offer relevant and rigorous graduate degree and certificate programs in building resilience through trauma-informed practices for educators, social workers, and criminal justice, health care, and human resources professionals. 
• Integrate into Undergraduate Curriculum
  Integrate trauma-informed practices into undergraduate programs of study in education, social work, criminal justice, nursing, health care, business, and the arts. 
• Offer Continuing Ed
  Provide conferences, webinars, symposia, and blogs on trauma-informed practices to build resilience. 
• Provide Training for Organizations
  Share knowledge and teachings with business, industry, health care, and nonprofit organizations—from schools, service agencies, and law enforcement to churches, arts organizations, and advocacy groups. 
• Promote Research 
  Conduct and publish related research and innovative ideas about the practical application and advocacy of building resilience by establishing the Trauma-Informed Practices Quarterly.
• Model through Day-to-Day Operations
  Become a national model for trauma-informed practices that build resilience for transforming academic and student affairs programming at colleges and universities across the country. 
• Serve Communities as a Central Resource
  Advocate and serve schools, organizations, and communities in ways that align with our mission of innovation, social justice, service, and leadership through a trauma-informed lens.  

SAMHSA Approach

I-BRTIP endorses the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) definition for trauma: Individual trauma results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.  

I-BRTIP also endorses SAMHSA’s concept of a trauma-informed approach, which is grounded in a set of four assumptions and six key principles. The four assumptions: A program, organization, or system that is trauma-informed:

1. realizes the widespread impact of trauma and understands potential paths for recovery; 
2. recognizes the signs and symptoms of trauma in clients, families, staff, and others involved with the system; 
3. responds by fully integrating knowledge about trauma into policies, procedures, and practices, and 
4. seeks to actively resist re-traumatization. 

The SAMHSA’s trauma-informed approach incorporates six key principles: 

1. Safety
2. Trustworthiness and Transparency
3. Peer Support
4. Collaboration and Mutuality
5. Empowerment, Voice and Choice
6. Cultural, Historical, and Gender Issues

(SAMHSA’s Concept of Trauma and Guidance for a Trauma-Informed Approach prepared by SAMHSA’s Trauma and Justice Strategic Initiative of July 2014) 

Widespread Impact

There is not an area of human life that is untouched by trauma and mental health. Studies by the National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI) and others confirm that the impact of trauma is a major cause of mental illness and physical illness. Likewise, trauma is a root cause for many children in Department of Juvenile Justice facilities.

Medical practitioners unknowingly respond to mental health and trauma survivors on a daily basis. Medical training includes very little attention to either, aside for a single class session. In higher education and in the workforce, lingering effects of trauma emerge as obstacles to success and worse, as reasons for failure. 

Mental health and trauma are under-treated, under-diagnosed, and overrepresented in vulnerable populations of all kinds.  The LGBTQIA community, persons of color, and women all carry an extra heavy burden of risk and occurrence of both mental health conditions and trauma. And of course, they are intertwined and exacerbated by the far-reaching and lifelong effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. Collectively, intersectionality, and the compounding influence of systemic racism and injustice in conjunction with trauma increases the sense of urgency to diagnose and treat trauma and to expand trauma-informed practices. 

We have more detailed research than ever before that trauma alters the development of the brain, leaving people from all of these groups with another risk of social impairment due to developmental lags.  We know for instance that on a cellular level, African American women are approximately 10 years older than their chronological age.  At the cellular level, they carry the trauma of more than 300 years of racial and economic oppression and discrimination. 

Generational Impact

This centuries-long problem manifests in higher infant and mother mortality rates, as well as lower life expectancies of both men and women of color.  This also means there are members of society who cannot live up to their highest potential or contribution.  The connection between building resilience through trauma-informed practices and social justice is profound.  

Not only do oppressed groups risk trauma and mental health conditions to a higher degree than others, but they also carry the oppression of the past in their DNA. This follows generation after generation. Moreover, the long-term impact of trauma has already increased significantly during COVID-19, particularly among vulnerable populations. As the pandemic continues, the effects on BIPOC, LGBTQIA, and families living in poverty will only worsen. 

These are the issues Columbia College is prepared to address with our Institute for Building Resilience through Trauma-Informed Practices (I-BRTIP) as our unique contribution to advancing social justice. 

The name of the Institute begins with “Building Resilience,” reflecting a commitment to a strengths-based approach that draws upon insights from the history of resilience, the wealth of cultural assets in the midst of systemic oppression, and practices such as child positive thinking, creating a supportive school environment, building strong relationships between school and family, joining peer groups, building good relationships with neighbors and relatives, and proven strengths-based strategies such as family culture and traditions, affection, positive and open communications, daily routines, defined boundaries, and clear expectations. 

Upcoming COR Dates

First Responders Certificate Course - The purpose of this course is to train those who frequently encounter traumatic situations to better understand and respond to both the people they serve and themselves. Upon completing this certificate, participants will have the tools to improve communication, build trust, and reduce the risk of re-traumatizing those experiencing a crisis. For first responders themselves, it can reduce the negative effects of their work, such as PTSD and burnout, leading to less stress and higher retention. This course will equip you with the tools to maintain a healthy work-life balance.

• 6-week asynchronous course
• October 13, 2025 – November 23, 2025
• For more information, please email Dr. Elaine Chavez-Swain at ESwain@victoriada.com.