This article describes an ongoing project to build an evaluation framework for a competency‐based graduate program at The University of Southern Mississippi. Many traditional methods of evaluating performance at academic institutions provide only a partial assessment of individual program performance. In an increasingly competitive global economy, program evaluations should also consider the perspectives of students, graduates, and employers in order to develop curricula that will address the critical skills sets needed for strategic and value‐added performance improvement work in the 21st century.

The Problem. Human resource development (HRD) academic programs have grown and evolved over the last 25 plus years in a dynamic, global economy; yet, many HRD academic programs still grapple to define their role and purpose. Without the ability to clearly articulate the potential contributions undergraduate and graduate HRD programs offer the HRD profession, our universities, and global economy, we weaken our capacity to advance the field of HRD. Each year since 1999, The Conference Board, a global research association, has asked CEOs, presidents, and chair people across the globe to identify their most critical challenges. In the CEO Challenge 2015 and 2016 Reports, human capital was ranked as the number one global challenge. As the top challenge, CEOs view human capital in all its forms-from dynamic leadership to a skilled workforce cadre-as the primary fuel that will drive the engines of growth within their organizations. Undergraduate HRD programs are uniquely positioned to academically prepare entry-level professionals with the research-based knowledge, skills, and abilities required to develop the people needed for today's organizations; yet universities struggle to find appropriate patterns and themes for their curriculum. The Solution. This article provides a framework, an underlying structure, for undergraduate HRD academic programs mapped to strategies deployed globally by CEOs to meet their number one challenge of human capital-to build sustainable organizations and economies. Implications for developing undergraduate HRD curricula are included. The Stakeholders. HRD scholars, practitioners, and higher education administrators interested in the academic preparation of entry-level HRD professionals.

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Modern organizations constantly face unparalleled changes and uncertainty in the competitive world, thus requiring strategic planning to mitigate crisis conditions. Underscoring crisis plans are performance interventions that prepare employees, technological systems, and the organizational culture to effectively respond to a crisis event. However, crisis planning has been an overlooked area in the performance improvement literature. In the present study, we review results of a survey on crisis planning conducted by the research team seven months after Hurricane Katrina. Specifically, performance improvement professionals (n=129) employed by organizations located along the western Gulf Coast were surveyed on the existence and composition of their organization's crisis planning before and after Hurricane Katrina. Results indicate that organizations did increase crisis planning during the post‐Katrina period, and that crisis plans consisted of components and activities supported in the literature. We use these results to identify and discuss how performance improvement professionals might leverage their knowledge of human performance technology (HPT) in supporting organizational crisis planning efforts.

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