The question on the board is this: Who is going to take over for us baby boomer emergency managers when we finally retire? (Assuming we can retire, given the state of our 401k's.)
My friend, Eric Holdeman, has an article in Emergency Management Magazine about cultivating the next generation of emergency managers. College and university degree programs are giving us a wealth of motivated and educated young people who need an opportunity to get the experience they need to take our place.
One way to do that - one that is really popular for campus emergency management programs - means finding those opportunities for students before they graduate.
Most higher education degree programs for emergency management or homeland security require some form of experimental learning (or service learning or externship) as a requirement for graduation. The format may be different, but they all involve some kind of real-world practice.
Let me pass along a personal experience and then I'll tell you how to mentor your own replacement.
A few years ago, I arranged to take on a summer intern - she needed to complete 200 hours of externship before she could graduate from her emergency management degree program. She flew across country (at her own expense) to work for me at minimum wage for three months. She had coursework related to response, continuity of operations, exercise planning and writing plans; she had taken all the NIMS-ICS courses; she had helped design and staff an EOC for her campus.
She spent the summer creating an inventory and maintenance schedule for my EOC, reviewing and editing plans, designing a program for building/evacuation managers that would apportion responsbility based on occupied space. She took all the training I could get her into (general management as well as emergency management), participated in all our campus and county-wide exercises and absorbed as much as she could.
When she left, I asked her what she had learned and this is what she said:
Her coursework was designed to help her develop critical thinking and solve problems. There were no limitations on resources or time. In real life, though, it wasn't that neat or clean. Or easy.
I ask you - how valuable a lesson is that?
This young woman graduated, did a few other internships, worked on several declared disasters in her community. She now works as a junior representative for one of those well-known, national, disaster management consulting companies. One of these days, Lindsay will replace me as a senior emergency management professional. I am looking forward to it.
This is where you can find out more about experiential learning in emergency management degree programs.
And then, when you are ready to mentor your own intern, you can post it on the IAEM internship bulletin board -- along with NYC OEM, JLW Assoc and the City of New Orleans.
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My friend, Eric Holdeman, has an article in Emergency Management Magazine about cultivating the next generation of emergency managers. College and university degree programs are giving us a wealth of motivated and educated young people who need an opportunity to get the experience they need to take our place.
One way to do that - one that is really popular for campus emergency management programs - means finding those opportunities for students before they graduate.
Most higher education degree programs for emergency management or homeland security require some form of experimental learning (or service learning or externship) as a requirement for graduation. The format may be different, but they all involve some kind of real-world practice.
Let me pass along a personal experience and then I'll tell you how to mentor your own replacement.
A few years ago, I arranged to take on a summer intern - she needed to complete 200 hours of externship before she could graduate from her emergency management degree program. She flew across country (at her own expense) to work for me at minimum wage for three months. She had coursework related to response, continuity of operations, exercise planning and writing plans; she had taken all the NIMS-ICS courses; she had helped design and staff an EOC for her campus.
She spent the summer creating an inventory and maintenance schedule for my EOC, reviewing and editing plans, designing a program for building/evacuation managers that would apportion responsbility based on occupied space. She took all the training I could get her into (general management as well as emergency management), participated in all our campus and county-wide exercises and absorbed as much as she could.
When she left, I asked her what she had learned and this is what she said:
Her coursework was designed to help her develop critical thinking and solve problems. There were no limitations on resources or time. In real life, though, it wasn't that neat or clean. Or easy.
I ask you - how valuable a lesson is that?
This young woman graduated, did a few other internships, worked on several declared disasters in her community. She now works as a junior representative for one of those well-known, national, disaster management consulting companies. One of these days, Lindsay will replace me as a senior emergency management professional. I am looking forward to it.
This is where you can find out more about experiential learning in emergency management degree programs.
And then, when you are ready to mentor your own intern, you can post it on the IAEM internship bulletin board -- along with NYC OEM, JLW Assoc and the City of New Orleans.
