The conversation in the cafeteria during FEMA's 13th Annual Higher Education Conference (as related by Cortez Lawrence, Superintentent for FEMA's Emergency Management Institute) was about whether we are being disingenuous in implying that students who graduate with a degree in Emergency Management will be able to go out and get a job as an Emergency Manager.

Are we?

Just as the number of Emergency Management Higher Education programs is growing and the number of graduates from those programs is increasing, are we suggesting those graduates have all the skills, knowledge and competencies to allow them to walk out with their degree and into a job as an emergency manager?

Sounds kind of silly when you put it that way, doesn't it?  What other professional degree says one can move directly into a professional position without additional training or experience?  Physicians do a residency and board exams before they are licensed to practice.  Attorneys take the bar to get licensed and then get hired as a junior partner.  Is there any other profession that doesn't require some kind of apprenticeship or mentoring to achieve excellence?

Generally, hiring a principal emergency manager is based on a number of factors, and certainly experience is one of them.  Experience is a big part of being a good emergency manager, but it is definitely not all of it -- not any longer.  Education provides the foundation and deeper context with which to evaluate our experiences.  A college education can significantly shorten the learning curve that most of us went through when we got started.

So, maybe the question should be (1) how to get experienced emergency managers more education and (2) how to get new emergency managers more experience?

I am not sure how to accomplish that first part.  There are still a lot of long-time emergency managers who are dubious about the value of an emergency management education.

The second part of that equation - getting more experience for new emergency management graduates - is a lot easier to address.  The most convenient way, of course, is for colleges and universities to include an experiential learning component in their programs.  Some do that now, and others will be soon.

Beyond that, we should be stressing to new Emergency Management students that experience comes in a lot of different guises.  Most of the students I talk to would choose to work in the public sector and are frustrated they can't find a job there.  In the currently economy, getting an entry-level emergency management job in local or state government is not easy.

Even if they'd rather work in the public sector now, new emergency management graduates are more likely to land jobs in the private sector or with non-profit agencies.  That's okay!  They are still developing and honing their skills, gaining knowledge and becoming more competent. When (and if) they decide to move on to a public sector job, they'll have the kind of experience (and education) to do just that.

The mission for higher education is to educate emergency managers; experience is most definitely graduate work.

I've been asking this question today and - being at FEMA's 13th Annual Higher Education Conference, AND among a goodly number of academics who are supporting both kinds of programs - I am finding there are a lot of different opinions.

This is a very small sampling, of course, and mostly from those folks I managed to run into during the course of my day.  But this is who writes the course curricula, requirements and expected outcomes that eventually wind up on the FEMA Higher Ed College List.

Generally, everyone acknowledged there was a different focus between Emergency Management programs and Homeland Security programs.  Emergency Management programs are all-hazard driven.  Homeland Security programs have a single discipline focus (terrorism).

There were, however, some very colorful opinions about Homeland Security degrees and whether they stand alone or are really more of an adaptation, or speciality, of Emergency Management.  Homeland Security programs are generally funding-driven, and most exist because of DHS funding.  As that dries up - as it is already beginning to do - many of those smaller or less well-known programs are likely to disappear.

Depending on which side you are looking from, there was either concern or evasiveness about the non-collaborative nature of Homeland Security programs.  No argument that Homeland Security is internally focused; more cops-and-robbers and deliberately guarded.  Emergency Management programs are  externally focused toward our communities, our resources and partnering.

There is certainly a longer and more robust history for Emergency Management as a discipline - there is a pretty well-developed body of knowledge, principles and (coming soon) a set of specific curriculum standards. Likewise, planning for a (foreign or domestic) terrorist attack (i.e.: Homeland Security) is an important consideration for our nation's preparedness.  But then, so is planning for a major public health emergency like a pandemic.

How many different silos should we be creating for these disaster preparedness specialities?  What will we be calling the next disaster du jour?

Ultimately, I think it all boils down to a quesiton of semantics.  Would the end result be any different if we just made up a new name? 

How does 'Disaster Management' sound?

I wrote a blog a few days ago about whether there really was a difference between Emergency Management and Homeland Security - at least in academia. - to which my colleague Eric Holdeman agreed this whole debate was getting a little old.

I couldn't agree more.  However, my experience this past week at FEMA's 13th Annual Higher Ed Conference and the IAEM-USA 2010 Mid-Year Meeting kind of suggests that isn't happening quickly enough for either of us.

Eric is also right in identifying federal grant money as the major culprit.  Wait!  Now that I think about it - isn't money the root of all evil?  I'm sure I read that somewhere.

At any rate, I did some research about how the differences between the two have been expressed in the academic literature and found two really interesting papers.  One was published by GovTech (June 2008) by Bob Jaffin (now an Assistant Professor at the American Public University).  Let me summarize:

While Emergency Management is still a young field and Homeland Security is a post-911 phenomena and both can be professional degrees, the fields (specialities) that comprise the programs are different (i.e.: public policy vs. military science).  Because most schools can't support ONE degree in this field, much less TWO, and federal funding currently favors programs with the phrase "homeland security" in the title, a program called "emergency management" often gets transformed.  Many institutions created new programs that are somewhat of a hybrid of the two, many others just reconfigured their existing programs so they would quality for DHS money.

If a student were looking for an appropriate academic program, Jaffin wryly advised:

• "If you want to help build strong and resilient communities and contribute directly to the community's well-being on a daily basis - whether that community is local, regional or state - then emergency management is the track to pursue."
• "If you want to protect the public from bad people, then homeland security is the track to pursue."

The buzz words in Emergency Management higher education right now are "core competencies". In other words, are students being taught the fundamentals they will need to walk out with that diploma and work in this field?

As we speak (read!), there are various efforts to define what those "core competencies" really are. If you take a look at some of the work already done (go ahead - start here), you'll see this is not a new discussion. Indeed, it seems to come up every few years.

There are already vetted sets of core competencies for emergency management education out there. The problem is there is no ONE body who will assume the authority to publish them as a final product everybody else can (or will) accept. Yep - I said 'assume': as in 'take responsibility for'.

This time around,, the questions are more insistent and certainly the need is more pronounced. Given that, I personally don't think anyone could much improve upon the "Top Ten Competencies for Professional Emergency Management" Dr. Wayne Blanchard wrote in 2005. (I've excepted a bit of his notes on each one.)

1. Comprehensive Emergency Management Framework or Philosophy - "Comprehensive emergency management can best be summarized as 'all-hazard, all phases, all actors'."

2. Leadership and Team Building - "Without leadership, bureaucratic organizations and their personnel will tend to stay within more or less business as usual bureaucratic systems and methods of operation."

3. Management - "Leaders need also to be able to manage, or have managers under them - people who have the ability to implement, to make happen."

4. Networking and Coordination - "Emergency management offices are typically short staffed or no staff at all - just someone with the responsibility but insufficient resources. This situation requires that emergency managers network and coordinate with a broad range of other organizations - up, down and laterally in government levels, private sector, voluntary associations and community-based organizations."

5. Integrated Emergency Management - "Beyond the importance of networking and coordinating with a broad range of stakeholders, is the need to integrate hazard, disaster and emergency management concerns into a broad range of organizational entities."

6. Emergency Management Functions - "Emergency management functions are variously described and enumerated ... herein will be stressed several key functions: Risk Assessment, Planning, Exercising, EOC's, interoperable communications, warning systems, lessons learned."

7. Political, Bureaucratic, Social Context - "Emergency management is situated and must operate within various constraining and enabling circumstances."

8. Technical Systems and Standards - "Students need to learn the tools of the trade, which today include such subjects as: NIMS, NRP, NFPA 1600, CEM, GPS/GIS, software, etc."

9. Social Vulnerability Reduction Approach - "The social vulnerability perspective teaches practitioners to focus first and foremost on those most vulnerable to disasters in their communities."

10. Experience - "It has been stated since the beginning of the FEMA Emergency Management Higher Educaion Project in late 1994, that the three keys to emergency management are education, training and experience (preferable disaster experience)."

By the way, do you know where the term 'core competency' came from? It was coined in 1990 by C.K. Prahalad and B. Hamel - they were faculty at the University of Michigan at the time - in their book "Competing for the Future". They used it to define a business strategy based on a corporation's unique market strengths. Since then, it has been co-opted into all kinds of other occupations and the best general definition I could find was this one: "a knowledge, skill or ability that contributes to the successful completion of a task on the job."