Big Bend Community College William C. Bonaudi Library

William C. Bonaudi Library's Down the Research Rabbit Hole Issue 4 | Kyle Foreman: Original Parts

The William C. Bonaudi Library talks to Director of Safety, Security and Emergency Management, Kyle Foreman about his lifelong research practices at work and for fun. 

Could you share some books, blogs, journals, or other sources of information you use to keep up with your profession.

Public Safety offers a wide variety of media in order to stay proficient.

Websites:

Campus Safety magazine is probably the foremost online resource for Campus Safety professionals. Written by people who actually do the job, it’s the most reliable source, I believe.

Higher Ed seems like an unbiased source of information. The writers seem to be well-centered and transparent; if higher ed is doing something and it’s not a good practice, the Inside Higher Ed writers don’t turn their heads to it.

The Journal of Emergency Management is a great resource for emergency and crisis management issues.

Books:

Crisis Management: Planning for the Inevitable by Steven Fink is an excellent and timeless classic. The lessons in the book continue to ring true 35 years after this book was first published.

Crisis Leadership Now by Laurence Barton – Excellent. Over the years I have attached multiple post-it page markers to topics in my copy. I’ve referenced it a lot over the years.

What Were They Thinking?: Crisis Communication: The Good, the Bad, and the Totally Clueless by Steve Adubato. A great reminder of how crisis management can go wrong and what human traits cause it to happen.

**We can interlibrary loan these books for you. They are also available via North Central Libraries.
 

You have to talk to a lot of audiences and people from a variety of backgrounds.  Do you have a technique for getting out critical and sometimes difficult information?

The audiences Campus Safety has contact with a range from one person to hundreds of people. Each audience or customer will require a different presentation. To achieve this, you simply have to understand each audiences’ or customers’ needs.

But, the biggest thing you have to do is show that you care and be honest, timely, and transparent. Once you’ve lost the customer’s trust, it takes a very long time to rebuild it.

In your off-hours, you work on some amazing vintage vehicles.  How do you learn about these vehicles, hunt down the parts, and keep your research together?

My hobby is working on old Ford trucks, vintage 1970-1978. I own two, and my buddy owns two and we frequently help each other out. Thankfully, there are old Ford truck enthusiasts worldwide and multiple web resources for research and for buying parts. It can be a challenge sometimes hunting down a part, and in some cases, the part can be cross-referenced because it was used on several types of Ford vehicles. I keep a three-ring binder for each of my old trucks to catalog the research and to log the repairs or upgrades.