CHANGE IN LEADERSHIP

Director of ECU Center for Natural Hazards Research stepping down

By Lacey L. Gray

Dr. Meghan Millea has been named interim director of ECU’s Center for Natural Hazards Research effective July 1.

Dr. Meghan Millea, professor of economics, has been appointed interim director of East Carolina University’s Center for Natural Hazards Research effective July 1.

Millea will succeed the center’s founding director, Dr. Jamie Kruse, who will return to the Department of Economics as a full-time faculty member.

Millea came to ECU in 2017 after 19 years of teaching, research and service at Mississippi State University. She is an award-winning professor whose primary research interests lie in the field of applied microeconomics as it relates to education and the labor market. In her role as interim director of the CNHR, Millea will be an advocate for the center’s interests as well as the broader interests of the university, its students and faculty.

Kruse, distinguished professor of economics in the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences, came to ECU in 2004 to lead the center’s study of the impacts of natural hazards — coastal hazards in particular — on the people of eastern North Carolina.

In the center, academic researchers work with field experts and practitioners in emergency management and storm mitigation. Under her efforts, Kruse created research teams that include more than 50 undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral research associates, and junior and senior faculty from 15 universities and research institutes across the country.

Dr. Jamie Kruse, Harriot College distinguished professor of economics and director of the ECU Center for Natural Hazards Research, is stepping down after 17 years of service to the center.

“Through her leadership, CNHR has successfully fostered a multidisciplinary research community that conducts impactful research on economic, social and physical aspects of natural hazards affecting eastern North Carolina, the United States and the international community,” said Dr. Haiyong Liu, professor and chair of economics. “Her reputation in the fields of economics and natural hazards research has elevated the CNHR to regional, national and international prominence.”

Kruse’s work is nationally recognized and examines resilience, including preparation for natural hazards in the forms of effective policies, private sector interventions and household decision-making around mitigation and risk management. Her work dovetails into post-storm resilience, including the speed and distributional impacts of recovery from storms. The work is relevant to mitigation, preparation for and recovery from natural hazards, including hurricanes.

In 2009, Kruse partnered with the North Carolina Emergency Management community to create an annual NCEM/ECU Hurricane Conference. The conference, hosted by the CNHR, engages scholars and officials from the federal and state levels, as well as local government and emergency management offices. It provides a forum for sharing ideas and focusing on community-engaged, practitioner-informed research.

“These networks of natural hazards researchers produce high-quality, relevant, engaged scholarship that enhances the resilience of our coastal communities, the people of North Carolina and beyond,” Liu said. “Dr. Kruse has made outstanding contributions to these research endeavors as a superb economist, an innovator in scientific collaboration and a national leader in efforts to understand and manage natural hazards for the betterment of society.”

Kruse previously had faculty positions at the University of Colorado and Texas Tech University, and a visiting position at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.