Friends and family still live there.
Today, her job includes keeping track of the 350 university students who are expected to be studying abroad this year, and that means close monitoring of official security warnings and maintaining communication with the students.
For her, the attacks drove home the importance of her job.
“It makes it real for me and closer to home. It brings more passion to what we are doing,” she said in an interview Wednesday.
A cousin has a childhood friend who was killed in the subway attack. One friend lives a mile or so from the airport in Brussels, which was also attacked, she said.
Wright State students this year will be headed to Europe, around 15 of them, but Belgium is not a destination this year, Ferrari said. They’ll mostly be in England, France and Spain.
The university has developed a disaster incident plan and is prepared to act quickly to respond to a crisis, Ferrari said.
“It’s a tight risk-management plan we have at Wright State,” Ferrari said. “Any incident that happens, Wright State is prepared to handle it.”
On Wednesday, the Associated Press reported that the Islamic State group has trained at least 400 fighters to target Europe in deadly waves of attacks, deploying interlocking terror cells like the ones that struck Brussels and Paris.
When there are travel warnings for other nations, institutional approval is required to travel, Ferrari said.
Reporter Malik Perkins contributed to this report.
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