Episode 3 - Certifiable
Show Notes:
Guests this month:
Jon Fessler, IAEM Certification Commission Chair: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-fessler-996ba135/Â
Other items referenced:
Learn about Objectives & Key Results (OKRs): https://www.whatmatters.com/faqs/okr-meaning-definition-exampleÂ
IAEM Mentorship Program Ideas: https://connect.iaem.org/discussion/mentorship-at-iaem-usaÂ
Please fill out the survey to provide feedback on mentorship in emergency management: https://forms.office.com/r/BsPRmsBaXJÂ
Updates on recent IAEM's Government Affairs efforts: https://connect.iaem.org/communities/community-home?CommunityKey=5bf2a4fe-c1be-46b1-91d4-01876c98fe26Â
IAEM Happy Hour Save the Date: January the 11th at 6 p.m. Eastern, https://connect.iaem.org/events/event-description?CalendarEventKey=791b7fe9-24e2-46e6-80d5-018c92214b6e&Home=%2Fevents%2Fcalendar&hlmlt=EDÂ
IAEM Certification Commission: https://www.iaem.org/Certification/Certification-Commission
IAEM Certification Program: https://www.iaem.org/Certification/Getting-StartedÂ
New Certification Applicant Guidebook: https://www.iaem.org/Portals/25/documents/2023/Certification/Applicant-Guidebook.pdf?ver=2023-11-20-193553-427Â
Certification Resource Center: https://www.iaem.org/Certification/Resource-Center
New USA Training Allocation Chart: https://asmii.sharepoint.com/sites/IAEMCertificationCommission/Lists/Sample%20Training%20Allocation%20Table/Sample%20TAC%20%20Public%20View.aspx?env=WebViewListÂ
Certification Mentorship Database:
https://www.iaem.org/certification/getting-started/find-a-mentorÂ
Transcript:
Taylor Frizzell:
All right, welcome to this episode of the Just In Case podcast. I'm your host, Taylor Frizzell, and joining me, as always, is Mr. Justin Kates, IAEM USA president. This month, we are going to be talking about all things certification, if you will. Hey, Justin, how's it going?
Justin Kates:
It's going good. This is our third episode, and we still haven't decided to cancel this, so I think we're on the right track.
Taylor Frizzell:
Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's up to us. I'm pretty sure if they start, like, coming at us with, like, metaphorical pitchforks, maybe that might be, uh, the sign that we should probably wrap it up, you know?
Justin Kates:
Yeah, well, we've got to get through 12 episodes, and if we can make it through 12, we'll have a big party.
Taylor Frizzell:
Only if there's pizza involved. Anywho, I do want to take just a second to welcome our guest for this month, Mr. Jon Fessler. He's the Certification Commissioner. Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us this month. Hopefully we don't scare you away. If we do, I'm truly sorry.
Jon Fessler:
So far, so good. Thanks for having me.
Taylor Frizzell:
Good, good. How is everybody's holiday? Hopefully you guys got to relax a little bit, maybe take some time off.
Justin Kates:
Well, mine was pretty relaxed. I just caught up on all my work that I can't get done because of all the IAEM stuff that constantly takes up all my schedule. So, you know, it's, it's good to be able to actually get some real work done. But we, we, we had a good holiday. How about you, John?
Jon Fessler:
Yep. Same thing. I have a six month old granddaughter, so we got to spend time with her. So everything's wonderful.
Taylor Frizzell:
Oh, that's the best. My sister had a baby about a year ago and I'm loving being an aunt. So I can only imagine it's like twice as wonderful as a grandparent.
Justin Kates:
Well, that's kind of funny because I actually, uh, we weren't, we're at a Christmas party with my two nieces and I think I definitely realized I don't need any kids. So I think, uh, I think we have opposite reactions.
Taylor Frizzell:
Why does that not surprise me though, Justin? I don't know. You just don't strike me as someone who's like, you know, I got to have 8,000 kids.
Justin Kates:
No, definitely not. Not interested.
Taylor Frizzell:
Well, I'm glad you guys got to have a nice relaxing vacation and holiday. So it's wonderful. No matter what that looked like, even if it just meant working more, Justin. I do want to throw it back to Justin for a couple of minutes here. For an update on some IAEM USA activities. What's going on up at IAEM USA?
Justin Kates:
Well, we've made a lot of progress this month and I don't think people really recognize how much work in the last two months of the year is really focused towards transition. Transitioning the leadership, making sure that we close out all the projects from 2023. And so there's been a lot of work to try and clear out many of the different initiatives that people have been working on over the last 12 months. And then when we bring on new leadership, there's also orientations that we'll do with that new leadership so that they're aware of sort of the rules of the road when it comes to working within IAEM. And then we're preparing for the objectives and key results for 2024. So if anybody's not familiar with objectives and key results, also known as OKRs. They're a performance tracking tool that we implemented a few years ago, started off sort of testing it out. Now we're really rolling it out to the whole association. And it's a way for us in 90-day chunks to determine what are the three to five most important things that we want to get done within our team. And so what'll happen is each caucus, each committee, each region, they'll come up with three OKRs for a 90-day period. We do it in quarters, so it'll be the first three months of 2024. And so they focus their efforts on trying to accomplish those objectives and key results. So these last two months are closing out the quarter for OKRs and then starting to plan for what are the things that we need to do for 2024. So there's a lot of good work. And I think one of the big things that's going to be changing this year is all the OKRs that will come out from the caucuses and committees. We're going to publish those so everybody in the association can see. And that way people can see what's going on. What are their caucuses and committees actually working on? And hopefully that'll entice people to get involved. I always say that The place where you can really get the most out of your involvement in IAEM is by getting involved in your region and by getting involved in some sort of a caucus or a committee because that's where you can actually engage with people, learn, and contribute to the profession. And I know we've talked about it during our last episode, and I've posted a lot about it online. I have these three priorities for this year, advocacy, representation, and mentorship. And we've made progress on all three of those areas also over the last 30 days. For advocacy, we've appointed a number of folks to help support the Advocacy and Awareness Caucus initiative to create an HR toolkit for emergency management hiring. And so there's gonna be some additional work that'll take place on that in the coming days. Representation, a number of additional task forces and commissions have requested IAEM send members to help them on a variety of initiatives. Most recently, we've just appointed a few folks to a small work group that the National Weather Service is putting together to completely redesign their operating model. So we're talking about significant changes to how the National Weather Service provides better customer service to emergency managers, And this is a really exciting opportunity for IAEM to be right there at the table to help provide that insight as to what emergency managers at the local level and within the other sectors that IAEM represents really need. And then mentorship. Just yesterday, I sent out a survey on IAEM Connect asking for folks to help us design this prospective mentorship program for IAEM. And I've talked a lot about what my vision is for this. It's really to scale up and beyond the AEM and CEM mentorship program, which we'll probably talk about a little bit later this evening, and really talk about all types of mentorship. And so what we did is we sent out a survey via IAEM Connect really to get some feedback from perspective mentees, perspective mentors, or even people who have been involved in a mentorship program that just want to help us figure out what this should look like. And what's been interesting is it's been almost completely different from what we've been hearing from the members. When we have been out and about, we've talked to members about mentorship and a lot of folks have talked about this idea of having sort of a cohort style mentorship program where a bunch of people sign up by a deadline, you might get like 20 people, they get assigned a mentor and then for six months, nine months, 12 months, however long it would be, they work through these sort of regular meeting cadences And then at the end, that's either an opportunity for them to continue working in that relationship, or they've completed the mentorship program. What we're finding from this survey is that it seems like a lot of people want something more in line with the way that our AEM-CEM mentorship program works, where the database, you go on and you decide, I want to reach out to this person and establish a mentorship relationship. So we'll work through that and figure out how we can design something like that. The other thing that's been interesting from the survey results so far, which by the way, we've gotten almost 80 people have filled out the survey in just 24 hours. That's pretty impressive. It's good that we're getting a lot of responses from that. We also thought, okay, the primary place for people that are looking for a mentorship is going to be in that early career, so aspiring emergency managers. Well, it turns out that the majority of people that are looking for mentorships, at least from the survey results that we've gotten so far, are either mid-career, looking to learn more about supervising people, or how they might be able to get into an executive position. So that's another thing, you know, we've talked about having sort of different types of mentorship programs as part of this overall initiative. We have to keep it manageable, though, and focus on one specific one for right now. But we'll work with the membership committee to figure out how we can roll something like this out. And our goal is to get at least a pilot up this year so that we can build upon this in future years. So there's been a lot of work on the government affairs front this month. We've supported a number of bills, both at the federal level, but even Region 1, we allowed for the Region 1 president to support a piece of legislation in Massachusetts because of how important it was to the emergency management profession. So definitely some important work on the government affairs front. And the last thing I wanted to close out with, we talked about it last month, But there's still an opportunity to participate, at least when this episode is published on the 9th. We have our happy hour that's coming up with the IAEM leadership. It's going to be January 11th at 6 p.m. Eastern Time. You can find more information about it, we'll put it in the show notes, but easily you can find it on the IAEM website as well. And that'll be an opportunity for folks to get on and chat with the IAEM leadership. I'll be there, Josh will be there, Carrie will be there, I'm sure a number of other members from the board will be there, and hopefully that'll be a way for people to bring up concerns, questions, or ideas, and hopefully we'll make that a recurring thing. So that's it for this month. A lot going on, but a lot more work to do.
Taylor Frizzell:
I'm not surprised by how much progress you and the rest of the crew have been able to make. I think it's funny that you're surprised by kind of the mid-level careers needing mentorship, because as someone who's in mid-career, who has existential crises on like a weekly basis, I'm not surprised. We need help. It's fine.
Justin Kates:
Yeah, I would agree too. I mean, I think it was an area for me as I was progressing up through my emergency management career, I wish I would have had a mentor at that phase. I definitely had a lot of mentors very early in my career. But as I started having to supervise people and things like that, there was definitely not a program to help connect me with somebody who was actually a good boss. Because that's the other thing. There's a lot of people who are bosses, but that doesn't mean that they're a good boss. So I don't know if I want them as my mentor. So yeah.
Taylor Frizzell:
I don't know. I've only ever had spectacular bosses, Justin.
Justin Kates:
Sure. Yeah. Really good. Yeah. Yeah. The inside joke there is at one point, Taylor worked for me in Nashua. So I'm sure that was probably one of the best experiences that she had when learning how to not be a boss.
Taylor Frizzell:
We can talk offline, John. Don't worry about it. I'll make sure that you get all of the notes. Perfect. And we'll make sure to add all those links, like Justin said, into the show notes as well as all of our social media and whatnot. So you folks will have access to the survey link and the happy hour registration. I know I'm planning on attending, whether or not that makes you want to go or run away. That's to be decided here. I'm going to shift gears a little bit. I want to reintroduce our friend John here, who is the IAEM USA Certification Commissioner, which is a very big and important role. So I'm so glad that you're able to be here with us today. We have Lots of things to discuss, because as we talked about briefly beforehand, this is a big topic. There's a lot that goes on with certification. So hello and welcome again. Well, thank you. I'm going to go ahead and just kind of jump right into questions and we'll get started along here, but of course.
Justin Kates:
And Taylor, one other thing I just wanted to add sort of a little bit of a correction. So John is actually the certification commission chair. So and we'll probably I'm sure talk about this is that there's a whole selection of of certification commissioners, and John just has the the fortune and opportunity to have to lead them, which is a whole feat in itself. So it's so yeah, he's actually going to lead this.
Taylor Frizzell:
Jeez, did you know that when you were signing up for it, John? Or is this news and now you're horrified?
Jon Fessler:
You have to actually, you know, get nominated and want to do it. So I can't say that I didn't know it was coming because I asked for it. So.
Taylor Frizzell:
Well, that's actually a really good plug. It's like we've discussed this before something. If you could start by just giving folks a very brief introduction and background as to how you landed in this position and then kind of what the role entails, if you could.
Jon Fessler:
Well, I think, you know, I started my emergency management career a long time ago. I certified originally in 2005. So it's been a fair amount of time. And I worked in both the public and private sectors over time. So I was with the fire department in Illinois. And then I've been with three major television and motion picture companies in Southern California. So kind of been back and forth. I have a weird background. So, you know, it is what it is, but it fits pretty well here. So. Kind of funny, but I had some mentors back coming to California that got me involved on the emergency management side in some of the groups. So as Justin said, being involved in, I was involved with the California Emergency Services Association, the local group to start with. And then kind of moved back and forth and did a couple of things, was back in Illinois, got myself onto the Region 5 board for a period of time, came back to California, worked with a couple of people who most people know I would count as great mentors, Ellis Stanley and Mike Martinet, you know, who, you know, gave back. And, you know, I think I don't want to say conned me or guilted, but I didn't kind of push to give back and do something. So I wanted to be on the certification commission. You know, I filled out the paperwork a couple of different times. You know, it's based on a whole array of things. So, you know, public sector, private sector, education, so on and so forth. It's very diverse. So, you know, it may take you a couple of times. So don't be discouraged if you're not selected the first time. I can tell you that you should try again. Anyway. So I did that, tried a couple of times, was successful. And it's a three-year term, three-year commitment. And once you have done three years, you have the ability to ask to do another three years, which is what I did. And once you are approved for that second three-year term, you can then move forward and be part of the executive committee. So there's a chair, there's one or two vice chairs, depending on what the makeup is. And then there's a couple of members at large. Everybody serves a one year term, except for the members at large. They serve two. And that kind of rotates around. So we try to not, you know, there's people coming on to the commission every year. After three years or six years, you have to be off the commission for at least a year before you can get back on. So I think it does, you know, gives you a break and makes people, you know, opportunities available for others. So I think that is a very good thing. And so I'm, I was the vice chair this year. And then in January, I will become the chair, and that will be my fifth year. So I can stay around for another year after that. And then I need to, you know, take my hiatus and see what happens after that.
Taylor Frizzell:
You might need a vacation after that. I think it sounds like you've been busy. So
Jon Fessler:
It is busy. It's a lot of work. The commission basically reviews applications for AEM and CEM every other month. So it's different people are doing different things. The bulk of the commissioners are very busy in January and March, so the odd-numbered months. Once they complete their work, then the staff is even busier and the vice chairs, they have to review all the letters that come out, all the If somebody is successful the first time, that's pretty easy, and then they get a nice letter. And if they have some areas that are not accepted, and maybe we need some more information, or this particular course wasn't accepted for whatever reason, Uh, they get a letter that we spend a fair amount of time trying to review, make sure that it's clear and what was missing and what needs to be put forth. So that, uh, you know, independent verification for everything is very important. You know, you can't, we can't take a resume that says, you know, John did all these wonderful things and just go, Oh, okay. That's great. you know, Justin or Taylor would need to, you know, verify all that as your, you know, supervisors and so on and so forth. So a lot of different people are involved, a lot of different documents, and it's a fair amount of work to go through a single application, but I think it's very rewarding.
Taylor Frizzell:
Yeah, I don't doubt that. I don't doubt it at all. And so you touched on this a little bit. The application is difficult on both sides, right? The folks filing that application are putting in a lot of effort. You folks are putting in a lot of effort to review them. I want to take a little bit of a step back, and you alluded to it a little bit, and kind of just talk through what the components of the AEM or CEM application are. And I know that's a big question, so we can certainly break it up if that's easier.
Jon Fessler:
Yeah, it is a big question, and I guess I can go through it fairly, you know, we could spend several hours just talking through that. Obviously, that's not the goal. There's a lot of information online, so that would be helpful for anybody that's, you know, looking to go through the process. The AEM and the CEM, the AEM, what's different about that is that would be for somebody with less experience. OK, so those are the two real differences. There's an online. Everything is done online. There's an enrollment. There's a fee. There's an exam for both. That's all the things that you have to do. And then for the AEM and CEM both, there's references. So you have to have three references. One of them has to be your immediate supervisor. They need to provide, you know, position descriptions for all the jobs that you have on the CEM side. On the AEM side, you know, the references themselves can talk about some of that, but they don't need to. Whereas on the CEM side, they must. But the references are important. Uh, the commissioners many times will reach out to a reference. If there's a question they don't maybe something isn't as clear as it could be. So that information is important. We ask for, you have to have at least the one letter we asked for up to three, you have to have three references. Um, And then there's a training requirement, so emergency management training and general management training, and both require 100 hours of each that has to be documented. All of these things have to be done within the previous 10-year period. So if you're somebody that's old like me, you can't use stuff you did back in 1980 anymore. That ship has sailed. do something in the last 10, and then you put all of those documents together, and that really is the basis of the AEM. So people that are starting out, people that don't have a tremendous amount of maybe experience as an emergency manager, but they're on their way, they've got some education, that's a great spot to start. The CEM side, again, you have to have all of those things, but now you need to actually put in some work history documents. So that requires, you know, position descriptions and then letters from, you know, either HR or your supervisor to actually document that you've done those jobs. And what we require is that you do a minimum of 1920 hours per year and that doesn't, or for a year of credit, you must have three years of credit. Okay, so if you have a part-time job or half the time you're, you know, or part-time or you're a part-time emergency manager, where you're only working half the time of your job on EM work, you know, you have to be able to explain that, it needs to show in the job description and it needs to be verified in the letters. You know, we can use part-time, we can use many, many years for that. So that doesn't have a 10-year requirement. I could go back to 1980 and get those documents, you know, so I'm good there.
Taylor Frizzell:
I'd be impressed if you were that organized to have that all from 1980, quite frankly.
Jon Fessler:
I'm not, so. And the only caveat to all of this is if you have a bachelor's degree or higher that's in emergency management, then that three years goes to two years. Same basic stuff. You still have to have all the rest of the pieces. So that takes care of that work history piece. And then you have to have some experience. So you need to either have participated you know, in really participated in a full scale exercise or a declared disaster, or two functional exercises. So it could be something, you know, you need to be part of the group that's really doing the work, not a, we get a lot of questions, a lot of things, you know, well, I'm a, you know, first responder, and I spent, as I said, 25 years in the fire service. So Being a first responder doesn't count as somebody who's doing comprehensive emergency management. So the fact that you responded to a disaster or you were part of a major public event, you know, the Rose Bowl Parade or whatever it might be, doesn't get you what you need. It really needs to be doing comprehensive emergency management and that needs to be shown in all the documentation. So that's, That's the piece that some of the AEM folks may not have. So that's why there's two different levels. You can get your AEM and then continue on, get your education, and then convert that to a CEM. On top of that, training is still the same. You have to have 100 hours of each of the emergency management, general management, all documented, verified. And then contributions to the field. Now that is, it's really a kind of a keystone to what it's all about. It's like the mentor program, it's all of that. It's giving back, it's doing the things that are gonna help others. So you have to have six different contributions to the field and there's 16 categories available. Something as simple as being a member of IAEM for three consecutive years, that would be one of the requirements. It doesn't have to be IAEM. It could be your local group. California could be CESA, those kinds of things. So that would be one. Teaching a class. And again, we won't go through all the specifics because there's a lot of them. We don't have that much time. But doing research. Certifying as an emergency manager in a different state. doing speaking engagements, you have to do three of those. But and again, they all need to be documented. They all need to be within the past 10 years. And you have to have six different ones for your initial certification. If you can get all that put together with a nice bow on it, then it gives the commissioner something to review. And if all the ducks are in a row, then you'll be successful. If they have questions, depending on how busy they are in a month, they may, if it's just, hey, we got one question, they could reach out. If not, you'll get a letter at the middle of the following month after the review that'll say, hey, we need some more, you need to resubmit some things. And hopefully that list will be very detailed and tell you what you need.
Taylor Frizzell:
Thank you for.
Justin Kates:
Go ahead Taylor. I'm gonna step on top of you.
Taylor Frizzell:
I was just gonna say it's a big. It's a big lift, so I appreciate you walking through that and I did want to just take a second to kind of plug. There are some resources online for the certification corner, which is certainly a place to start, and we'll talk in a little bit later about kind of the mentorship program specific to CEMs, which is also a resource. that is available for folks because it is a big kind of lift for folks. Apologies, Justin, go ahead.
Justin Kates:
Yeah, well, so I wanted to kind of highlight one of the things that John covered about sort of the differences between the CEM and the AEM. I really don't think that the AEM gets as much recognition for how difficult that it really is. I mean, you still you still have to pass the exam, which demonstrates your knowledge about comprehensive emergency management. So it's not like somebody who doesn't understand all aspects of mitigation and preparedness and response and recovery. I mean, they have to, just as the same way that the CEM does, they have to pass that exam. Really, the biggest differences are the education requirement, the contributions, and the experience. And so I'd love to see us and hopefully, you know, both myself and then following me, you know, Carrie and Josh and whoever comes after them can really help to elevate the AEM and make that, you know, seen as a really important part of somebody who's coming out of maybe a college and looking to demonstrate that they have sort of that full understanding of emergency management, but just don't have the experience yet, and then prepare them so that they can then go and get their CEM at a later date once they've captured that experience.
Jon Fessler:
And I know there are some colleges that have reached out recently. I spoke with one gentleman at the conference when we did the overview course. And they are looking at trying to see if they can put into their program something where when the student is done, they would have most of the requirements met or potentially all of the requirements met to then get their AEM. There is some interest in it. It certainly is a doable thing. It just requires a little coordination and some people are already asking. So hopefully that will continue on.
Justin Kates:
Absolutely.
Taylor Frizzell:
And I think what's neat about that model, especially in universities and colleges, is that they're also surrounded by other people going through the same process. And I know when I was going through mine, that was the biggest help, not only just to kind of talk about you know, how they were getting documentation or how they were doing kind of like brainstorming, but also just for the moral support piece of it, because it is a lengthy process. I think that's an awesome model. I would love to see that at any institution that's willing to do that. You know, in case my plug for that is helpful for anybody. Kind of a selfish question here. It's what I do here. This is this podcast is really just so that I can get questions that I have answered from folks. I hope that that's a theme here that people have caught on to. But as a mentor myself, someone who's been through the process already is going through my recertification next year. I'm just saying. So if it comes across your table, John, just like give it a good check. No. All right. But as a mentor, a lot of folks that I speak with sometimes struggle with getting all of the documentation that you've alluded to for professional contributions and work experience. The documentation piece of it can be really challenging. Do you have any words of wisdom for anyone that might be struggling with that?
Jon Fessler:
Well, I don't know if I have any words of wisdom at all, but I'll give this a shot. And we kind of boiled it down. I don't know, two years ago, a year and a half ago, a group within the commission spent a lot of time and put together the guidebook. And we go through the guidebook on a very regular basis and make updates to it. There's a change log associated with it online. So, you know, if you looked at it last week and you look at it next week, there may be a change. Um, so you can look at the change log and see what the differences are. Um, I, I got it down to six words, read the guidebook, follow the guidebook. It is what the commissioners that are reviewing are following as well. So if the document, if the guidebook says you need to have this piece of information and this is acceptable, that's what they're going to look at. So if you put it in there and you follow what the guidebook tells you to do, you almost can't be wrong. I don't want to say it's that simple because you are right. It is it's difficult. The idea was to produce the guidebook as a companion and try to make the application less wordy. Because it was very long and very wordy. So we continue to work on that and try to make that. The goal is to make the applicant experience as painless as possible and get all the information in. And it's just a process. And it's a long process. It's arduous. But it's very worthwhile, and we've seen you know, the letters, they'll talk about, here's what the guidebook says. And, you know, if you get a resubmission and, you know, it tells you you need these two things, then put those two things in.
Taylor Frizzell:
I think that, Justin, if we could just put that like as a quote. in the show run, please read the guidebook, follow the guidebook. I think that the podcast is done. I don't think we need to talk about anything else.
Justin Kates:
Yeah, there you go. But I do think it's important to emphasize that this guidebook is a new tool that's been put out. But I'm sure that some of the folks that are going to be coming up for recertification soon Didn't, you know, they didn't have the guidebook back when they were doing it. So I know, you know, one of the challenges as a mentor, a CEM mentor myself, when I would talk with folks, I would sort of have to distill down the resources that were everywhere. Cause you had some of the stuff that was in the certification commission corner, then you had the stuff that was actually in the application, and then there were a variety of other additional resources that were sort of put together, everything from the training allocation table to the matrices that would show what professional contributions line up with what. The guidebook has sort of condensed it down now to a one-stop shop that has all the information that you need and then really, you know, defined examples of what you need in order to meet all of the variety of requirements.
Jon Fessler:
Yeah, I mean, I think it's, I think it is a wonderful thing and the You kind of touched on it. The problem that some people have on the recertification side also is when you certify originally, or even when you certify originally. Let's stick with that. You put in maybe 125 hours of training, and you don't know. You don't get that information back. You don't get the feedback on what the commissioners may not have accepted. Same thing, you're always encouraged to put a little extra in. Don't put 100 in, because then if one specific class, they can't open the certificate for whatever reason, the file's corrupt, then you have to resubmit. So the disadvantage to, putting that in is you, you don't necessarily get the feedback of what was not accepted. As long as you, you know, the whole overall thing it's, you know, it's like taking a test, you know, as long as you, you know, meet the requirement and, and pass with a percentage, you don't know what question you didn't get correct. So sometimes we get, you know, we get people who are like, well, I put that in when I certified originally. And it's like, you may have. But now you needed to put four contributions in. You put four in, and we didn't accept this one, which may not have been accepted the last time. So there is a little bit of difficulty with some of that, which is the same as the mentors. And we talked a little bit about that as well. We've been talking about we need better and more continuing education for the mentors. Like you said, Justin, when you did it, Taylor, you're going to recertify. Then going forward, you can be a mentor. But as the documents change, we put the new tech out, whatever it is, things continue to change. You know, we need to, as the commission do, I think a better job of getting the mentors, the information they need on the changes, because that's, I see that as a little bit of a gap that we, we need to continue to work on.
Justin Kates:
That's a that's a great idea. Actually, I think that would be good is anytime something new from the commission comes out, you know, having that distribution list of all the featured mentors. You know, made aware. Okay. Hey, there's a new training allocation table or you know, hey, look, there's been some updates to the guidebook and here's what they are. I think that's a great idea. That might be a good time, Taylor, to ask the question about the mentor program and how that works.
Taylor Frizzell:
Yeah, sure. Definitely. I think that's a good point. I think that. Well, yeah, OK, so we can ask a question about the mentorship here, but Speaking from the mentor side of the house, how can folks find information on kind of those updates? I know they do send out some emails. And then also, I think, as you're talking about some of those changes that are coming down the pipeline, both for mentors and people just applying for their AEM and CEM, I'd love to kind of drill down to talk about if you see any changes that you'd like to kind of work through over the next year so that might impact the the mentorship program as well as the kind of CEM AEM application process.
Jon Fessler:
Yeah I mean I think I think there's a couple of different things that are gonna that we're gonna see. We we need to and and obviously I don't actually take over as the chair until next you know till Tuesday so We're going to talk about doing some things internally a little different. I think we need to do a better job on the website. It's not as easy to navigate. I mean, it's easy for me to go find what I want on the certification side because I've been doing it for four years. It may not be easy for somebody that's certified, and they certified a couple of years ago, and now they're you know, starting to think about recertification, so they're trying to go find stuff. So we need to do a better job of updating that. I think we do a good job, staff does, on notifying people when they're coming due. But again, when you're coming due, are we really giving you all the tips that, you know, hey, there's a new tech, think about that. Now, we did notify all the USA people, that the USA training allocation chart was changing. But there's a lot of people outside of the USA that use classes from the USA. And we didn't necessarily notify all of them. So some of that you find on the website. Some of it, there's a lot of different methods that we use to get information out. But I guess, you know, if we don't use all of them for everything, I don't, you know, we're going to miss people. I mean, I think that's true. You know, this podcast may be very, uh, informative, but if nobody listens to it, you don't get anything. If you, you know, if you're getting, uh, you know, whatever it is, whatever I am, uh, vehicle that you're getting your information from. I doubt we probably put all the information that we have in all of those forms. So that, I don't know how we fix that problem, you know, but I would like to look at the certification side of the website and make some, you know, we need to make some updates and freshen it up and make it easier and easier for people to, you know, navigate.
Taylor Frizzell:
I think that's a good point. It's something we've talked about a lot over the past few episodes. It's just kind of engaging membership and how we do that effectively. And I think this is just another instance of how can we effectively engage people in the process? How can we make sure they're getting the resources they need? So Justin, that's your mission for this whole year is just to figure out how we can perfect that. That's your to-do list.
Justin Kates:
To me, I think a lot of this comes down to usability. And there's a whole field of study out there. People who are designing processes will look through and say, OK, how do I make this easy for the customer? And I think we can learn a lot from that and apply a lot of that to the certification program. And to me, I think the benefit of what we've got here is we have a really significantly dedicated set of commissioners and staff who sort of put that all together. They're the ones that are really making this program work today. And we can combine that with sort of upgrades to the website and enhancements to the messaging that we go out. And I think we really have an opportunity to have sort of a better program than we've ever had before. So John, you've got a lot of work ahead of you. By the end of the year, we're going to look back and we're like, man, the certification program has thousands of more applicants now.
Jon Fessler:
Well, hopefully. I mean, hopefully that the AEM at the college university level takes off. That would be great.
Taylor Frizzell:
If you thought you were busy now, just wait. Apparently, you're going to have all three of our podcast listeners are all going to apply now. Yeah. I do want to start to switch gears here just a little bit, but before I wrap up kind of this Q&A session here, I just want to take a minute to highlight what, John, you think the benefit of the AEM and CEM is, if you will. And Justin, if you want to provide your kind of commentary on that as well, I think that that would be an excellent way to bring this together a little bit.
Jon Fessler:
Well, I mean, I guess I can start, and I know it's been said, and I believe it to be true, or I wouldn't put the effort in that I do and do what I do. But I do think it is. IAEM is recognized as the premier organization, and I think AEM and CEM are the premier certification. So I think that's true in my years. you know, many times when you're looking at, you know, job postings and position descriptions. Many, many, many times, you know, it's if it's not required, you know, to have it may be required to get and it certainly is on the desired list of, you know, things to have. So I think I think that's you know, those are a couple of the things and I do think You know, by by going through and doing that, even if it's not required, I think you're reinforcing, you know, your individual commitment to the to the qualifications of the profession. You know, if you really feel it is a profession, I think most of us do. I know that's a topic of conversation, you know. But I think I think it truly, truly shows that you're dedicated to the profession.
Justin Kates:
Yeah, I think to follow on with John's perspective, to me, I've shifted to looking at it as an employer. I've said, if I have two candidates, one with an AEM or a CEM, I can assure that the person at least has some baseline level of knowledge. because they had to pass the exam. So they understand comprehensive emergency management. Unlike somebody who may have had a lot of experience, particularly in the response realm, but has not done mitigation or has not done recovery work. At least I know if they came from a response background, but they've passed the exam as part of their AEM or CEM, they at least have that baseline knowledge. The other thing that I look at, especially from the CEM perspective, is it's a good package to show the full picture of their contributions to the profession. So you can see that they've got the experience, you can see that they've got the baseline knowledge, you can see that they've given back to the emergency management profession. They're not going to just be this person who's sort of getting by and just is sort of looking for their next position. They actually are trying to improve themselves, better themselves. And so that's the way sort of I look at it from an employer standpoint is, I can assure that the person who has that certification is going to come in and is going to know how to manage a project. Because let me tell you, the CEM is a project from start to finish, getting all the documentation together and working through the communications and everything. So, you know, it shows me that they can start something and they can finish it, which, you know, even for me was was tough. You know, it took me years to really finally get my packet together after sort of stumbling along for time after time, but now it's together. So I think that's what I look at from the perspective of what it means to be a certified individual in this program.
Taylor Frizzell:
So normally here, we would start to kind of wrap up the episode with our Ask the President section. And we still are, but funny enough, we received a question about the certification program. And so I would love to throw that to Justin and to John. So if you'll bear with me, there's a little bit of a buildup here, but I think it's relevant context for the question. So this person says they're from public sector emergency management with more than 20 years of experience, some leadership and policy roles, as well as disaster deployments. Their higher education consisted of a technology certificate program during the dot-com era, and a degree at this point in their career isn't necessary, and it's the only obstacle from the CEM. So the value of a college degree is not being discounted, but the requirement is excluding the notable population of IAEMs membership from obtaining the CEM. The question here is whether or not there's any discussion around the topic of creating a pathway for members to upgrade from AEM to CEM without that four-year degree. So because it is the Ask the President section, I'll start off with Justin. Then, of course, John, if you would like to provide anything additional, that would be wonderful.
Justin Kates:
Yeah, no, I think this is a great question. So there certainly is some discussion going on on this topic right now. I would say in the last few years, there's been a number of individuals from across the association that have been asking about what kinds of considerations might be made for folks who don't have a bachelor's degree and how can we provide a pathway for them to get the CEM. Now remember, for those of you that don't know the certification program too in depth, the AEM has a variety of rigorous requirements, but one of those requirements is not a bachelor's degree. So individuals who don't have a bachelor's degree can still go for their AEM currently in our current program. So what currently is going on in this process? There's been a couple of presentations that have been done to the board, the IAEM USA board, to talk about this idea of trying to create some equivalency, experience equivalency, for the certification program, for CEM. And what we recognized at the board was that we don't really know the answer to this question. We don't have the technical expertise to determine whether it does make sense to create some sort of an equivalency process. And even more complicated behind this is there's an effort that's been underway to create an accreditation for our certification program. So that way we can demonstrate that our certification program has met sort of these very rigorous standards to ensure consistency for each element of the certification that's viewed by an outside entity, almost like an audit. So we want to ensure that any changes we make to the certification program, particularly the CEM, don't pull us out of that pathway to get our accreditation for that program. So what was sort of tasked to the IAEM staff, and the resources were put towards it, was to bring on a consultant with expertise in this specific area to provide guidance on what this might look like. And if we remove the bachelor's degree requirement from the CEM, should it be replaced by something else? particularly one of the areas of concern is around writing. Many of you may remember just within the last few years, the essay requirement was removed. And part of the reason for that was, again, that accreditation process that we're aiming towards. One of the responses that was made was the writing component could be easily judged by the person's completion of a bachelor's degree program. They've got to write in there, and so we can justify that that's something that could be removed from the program. Well, if both of those are gone, and we know how important writing is in emergency management, is there a way to still assess that as part of the CEM? So having this outside consultant with the expertise in this area will hopefully help us. I don't have a timeline on when that will be complete, but I know that that was approved and is underway at least a few months ago. When it comes to my personal perspective on this, I don't really have sort of a leaning on either way. Folks who have provided sort of this context of why they believe we should remove that bachelor's degree requirement from the CEM, and they've got a compelling argument looking at some of the other certifications that are out there that don't require a bachelor's degree. But there's also a really compelling argument from folks who are looking to further professionalize, saying that in order for us to really have a robust set of soft skills, that a bachelor's degree is really an essential part of that. So I think this is the benefit of bringing on an expert from the outside to help us understand what would be the challenges and what would be the positives of making a change like this. But it is underway. So John, you've also been involved in this a long time. So you probably also from the Certification Commission perspective have been involved in some of these discussions and might have some additional context for us.
Jon Fessler:
Well, I mean, I think we, we, as the commissioners at the time, you know, we've talked about it a couple of times over the years that I've been on the commission. Have the same opinion that you had is like, we really need you to get an expert to figure it out. Cause that certainly is not our expertise. I mean, we, we feel comfortable as peer reviewers looking at, you know, other applicants, but certainly I'm not of the, you know, is that important or is it not important? I mean, there was a point in time when I was certified originally in 2005, a bachelor's degree was not required. If you had a bachelor's degree, fine. If you did not, it was I don't know what the numbers were, but it was so many years of of experience, you know, per year to get to the four year degree basic equivalency. So there there was something there. I don't know exactly why it was changed, but it was.
Justin Kates:
Yeah.
Justin Kates:
And and I think the key is that the association is always looking at the certification, both the AEM and the CEM, to ensure that it meets the demands of emergency managers today. And we know that one of the things that has been mentioned by many in this conversation right now is that degree programs look a lot different than they have in the past with folks, you know, maybe deciding that they don't want to go for a degree just because of the costs that are involved in it or the access that's involved in it. But again, I think, you know, as an association, the other real piece that we have to consider is what are all the things that are brought forth by getting a bachelor's degree that help you in your emergency management career? Because a lot of times Emergency management is such a narrow piece of society, and the things that you'll learn in a business degree or a sociology degree or a psychology degree, whatever the topic would be, those things you will pick up and leverage as part of your work as an emergency manager moving forward. Yeah, definitely some discussions ahead on that, but that was a great question. I'm glad that they asked that, especially for this episode, because it is so timely.
Taylor Frizzell:
Yeah, and I'm looking forward to the results of bringing in that expert. I think it'll be a really interesting conversation going forward. I'm glad we're talking about it. I do want to start to wrap up now to your point, John. We could talk for hours and hours and hours about this, but I think people would get sick of the sound of my voice. So I will save everybody from having to listen to me much longer. But I do just want to say a huge thank you for being on here tonight and chatting with us. I know it's a big ask when people have jobs and families and whatnot. So thank you so much for being here.
Jon Fessler:
My pleasure. Happy to do it.
Taylor Frizzell:
Oh, good. Don't say that because we might have to suck you back in at some other point. So just careful, you know. As we wrap up this episode, I do want to remind folks to send in your questions for Justin and using that link that's going to be in the description or you can go to bit.ly /just in case podcast.
Justin Kates:
And we also, again, now have a real web address that people can go to. It is justincasepodcast.org. And remember, it is just in case, not Just in Kates. So it now will take you directly to the podcast website. You'll find the transcripts from each of our episodes, you'll find links to how to subscribe on your favorite podcast platforms, and all that information will be there. This episode, like every episode, comes out on the 9th of the month, and we will be hitting a new topic each month, and we're already starting to plan for the episode after this. Remember, ask your questions so that way we can make this as engaging as possible, and hopefully we'll have a good guest for our next episode. Thanks a lot, everybody.
Taylor Frizzell:
Take care, folks. See you next month.