Smith has managed to present a sensible, easy-to-follow schematic that can take academia from functioning to thriving. While the book is written to the academic audience, one could adopt the principles easily into nearly any business operation.

Risk Notes

Engaging Risk: A Guide for College Leaders is a relatively short and easy read that providesinformation on the fundamentals of ERMand the role they play in the process…. [T]he text delivers on its promise to guide the reader through ERM with a focus on campus involvement, knowledge building, and sustainability. This guide will influence the way campus leaders, including department chairs, view their engagement with risk.

The Department Chair

In these days when so many valued and valuable colleges and universities are facing what seem to be growing and unprecedented threats to their well-being and even sometimes to their very existence, Paula Vene Smith has written a truly important book about risk. But what makes this book an imperative read for trustees, administrators and faculty is that she defines risk as including but going beyond financial risk to include risk to mission and to the values that are at the heart of our institutions and then gives her readers thoughtful and insightful ways to address such risks.

- Dr. Susan Resneck Pierce, President Emerita, University of Puget Sound, and author of On Being Presidential and Governance Reconsidered,