For Your Consideration

“Ursus Head” would make a great name for a garage band, wouldn’t it?  The name’s from a small cape located in the bucolic Kenai Peninsula, near Iniskin and Pile Bay Village in southcentral Alaska. (If you click on the link, “zoom out” about 8-10 times and click on the “satellite” button for full effect!) It’s where I’d be right now if I had my druthers…

For those of you who have been wondering as to my whereabouts, I offer (in my own defense) a quick update on the progress of my studies:

1. I’ve passed 3 of the 5 Certified Risk Manager (”CRM“) certification exams, and am awaiting for the results of my third examination. Based upon the timing of the required courses, certification completion should be achieved in the first quarter of 2009. Each course is 20 hours of intensive instruction followed by a 2 1/2 hour short answer, essay examination. These institutes are by far the most rigorous and doing well on the exams requires the most thorough and complete understanding of risk management concepts. The CRM material also provides the most useful “real-world” information and is pretty much all hands-on. Insidiously, I like these courses the most!

2. As of November 1, 2008 I’ve passed all 3 of the Associate in Risk Management (”ARM“) certification exams and now am authorized to use the ARM designation. Each part of the material is tied to a 400 - 500 page academic text for which proficiency in the material is required to pass. While you can (theoretically) take classes on the material, I did this certification completely self-study. It’s heavy on theory, which is why I can’t get too excited about most of the material. That being said, it’s fundamentally a good thing to explore and understand the theoretical underpinnings of risk management and is a great adjunct to the CRM material. However, being exposed to both the CRM and ARM material at the same time, the ARM material alone feels incomplete.

3. I’ve passed 3 of the 5 Certified School Risk Managers (”CSRM“) certification exams and based on the timing of the remaining required courses and exams, the time frame for completion of this certification is the 1st quarter, 2009. I usually get the question, “Why school risk management?” Because it’s entree into the issues and complexities of public entities. As compared to for profit enterprises, public entities have vastly different capitalization issues and legal liability exposures which affect risk control activities and risk financing options. So basically, I want to take what I learn about school risk management and apply the concepts to other disciplines- doing this forms the basis of the sparks of creativity!

So, assuming all goes well on the timing outlined above, there’s a bit more education I have planned for myself. The “ARM-P” designation is the “Associate in Risk Management for Public Entities” designation and is earned by completing one additional course/exam in addition to the ARM material. Late 2008 is my planned completion date for this certification. UPDATE: Got it and am currently waiting for my diploma!

Reaching out to more traditional educators, New York University has 2 risk management programs I’ve found of particular interest: one is a “Certificate in Financial Risk Management” program and the other is a “Graduate Certificate in Enterprise Risk Management” program. Both provide the “meaty” risk management graduate level material I’m looking for without having to suffer through the entirety and hellacious expense of a “formal” MBA program.

The only remaining question is what I’ll wind up doing with all this… Till next time, enjoy what’s left of the summer!

UPDATED RESULTS AS OF 12/6/08.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 17th, 2008 at 12:41 and is filed under Life, Fun. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.