Wheaton College Alumni Magazine Spring 2013 | Page 21

The Making of a Disaster Specialist
“Now what?” wondered Dr. Jamie Aten as he stood in his living room seven years ago with
a roll of duct tape in hand. He and his family had moved to Mississippi just six days before
Hurricane Katrina made landfall, and he had just finished following the preparedness
instructions issued by state and local governments.

during The monThs following the disaster, he visited local congregations and witnessed how these

Dr. Jamie Aten, hDi’s founder and co-director.

churches addressed the overwhelming needs. one tiny congregation, for instance, rallied around a widow
who had lost everything. They became her family.
Jamie listened to stories, meeting everyone from a beleaguered local pastor, exhausted by the seemingly
endless needs of his struggling congregation, to a man in his early 40s who quit his job and moved to
Mississippi to help with the recovery. The man explained his motivation: “This was something small that
i could do to be a witness of Christ in such a terrible situation.”
Dr. Aten served as assistant director of the katrina research Center at the University of southern
Mississippi before coming to Wheaton as the endowed rech associate professor of psychology. he has
spent countless hours researching disaster preparedness and response and considering ways to enable
the body of Christ around the world to prepare for the unthinkable and to rally around those in need.
in essence, he’d like every church member to be prepared to answer his question, “now what?”

Chris Wilson ’12

MElissA sMiGElsky ’08, M.A. ’12

Training child advocaTes in haiTi

analyzing Trauma and effecTiveness of
TreaTmenT models in sub-saharan africa

Chris began working with hDi through a collaborative
research class that allowed him to participate
in a graduate-level research project while still
an undergraduate. After six months in haiti on a
hnGr internship