Show Notes:
Guests this month:
Dr. Mike Gutierrez, Massachusetts Maritime Academy Undergraduate Student Chapter Advisor: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-gutierrez-ph-d-0bb77b53/Â
Ethan Rego, Massachusetts Maritime Academy Undergraduate Student Chapter President: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethan-rego-/Â
Julie Elliott, University of Delaware Graduate Student Chapter President: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliehagenelliott/Â
Sydney Dyck, University of Delaware Graduate Student Chapter Vice President: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sydney-dyck-ma-112b68244/Â
Other items referenced:
IAEM student membership: https://www.iaem.org/studentsÂ
IAEM student chapters: https://www.iaem.org/groups/StudentChaptersÂ
FEMA Emergency Management Higher Education Symposium: https://training.fema.gov/hiedu/educonference24.aspx
IAEM Lunch and Learn: Government Affairs and Advocacy Basics, July 17 from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. ET: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/647bc694-48a1-4a7c-8a5c-50deeda2a2da@cb664994-d190-46db-9588-9096808d45deÂ
Transcript:
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
Hello, folks. Welcome. Welcome back to the Just In Case podcast. I'm your host, as always, Taylor Frizzell. And joining me with his bright, dazzling, smiling personality, if only you could see it, I promise it's there, is Mr. Justin Kates. How are you, Justin?
Justin Kates:
Good. What's new?
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
You know, I'm just trying to survive. It's getting hot out. I'm tired. It's fine. This is just existence.
Justin Kates:
Well, you know, the one interesting thing that I realized as I start my first summer at my new job, I don't have to open up any cooling centers this year. I don't have to deploy any bottled water anywhere because we sell bottled water, so that's helpful. I also don't have to worry about trying to figure out how we're going to deal with the sweltering temperatures over the next couple of days. So for the government emergency managers out there, I support you.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
So your biggest concern right now is when the appropriate time to switch to free iced coffee is, correct?
Justin Kates:
That's a good point. Well, look, you know, iced coffee, just everybody wants it during the heat. So we'll make sure there's plenty for supply.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
If you were true New Englander, you'd be drinking iced coffee all year round. I'm just saying, you can't move back to Delaware.
Justin Kates:
No, that's not going to happen.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
We didn't poison you well enough up here. Anyways, folks, this month we were talking about students in emergency management, and I'm so very excited this month. We have a full house, all kinds of wonderful folks are joining us today. We have Ethan Rego and Dr. Mike Gutierrez, both from the Massachusetts Maritime Academy Undergraduate Emergency Management Program as a student and faculty, respectively. And then our friends from the University of Delaware Graduate Emergency Management Program, also a student and faculty, respectively. We have Sydney Dyck and Julie Elliott. Thank you all so, so much for joining us. I'm so happy to have you all here. We are going to dive right into questions. I have a lot of things I want to talk about as per usual. It's kind of my brand. So I want to start by talking about, and we talked about this a lot throughout the length of our podcast here, seeing this kind of shift from life experience folks in the field of emergency management to a lot of folks graduating with emergency management degrees, either undergraduate or graduate. And I would really love if you folks could kind of walk us through what your degree programs look like. So if you want, we will start with our undergraduate folks from Mass Maritime Academy. Dr. Gutierrez, if you want to kick us off with kind of an Bless you. Pick us up with an overview of it. And then I'll toss it over to Ethan to give us your experience. And we'll do the exact same thing afterwards with our folks from Delaware.
Mike Gutierrez:
Yeah, so thank you. Thanks for having us on here. And yeah, that's a loaded question because with all of the changes going on in emergency management and higher education, there's a lot of discussion about what those changes look like and what does the future hold. But just kind of give you all a little idea of our program. Obviously, we are a four-year undergraduate program. We're a little unique from other programs. We just got back from the FEMA Higher Education Symposium. And I heard a lot of programs saying, hey, you know, our programs are, you know, our numbers are kind of stagnating. Ours isn't. Ours has been growing. We actually are up to 101 incoming freshmen just for emergency management in our program. But as a good emergency management program, we're always evolving. So since I started here at Mass Maritime, we've really revamped our curriculum and we're still doing that. So it's a learning process to try to make sure that our students understand why we do things right. Oftentimes, our students, once they enter the profession and they go to, they'll go to places like FEMA's Basic Academy, the Advanced Academy, various states have their own respective academy. They'll learn the hands-on through those various trainings. And so our job is, as educators, to help them understand the why, the decision-making models, the management that goes into this, understanding the bigger picture beyond just first response. And I think that's the direction that, or maybe a discussion that's kind of on the horizon right now is where a lot of folks are kind of saying, who are we and what are we going to be when we grow up? And so at our program, we like to follow what we call the learn-do-lead model. All of our students have to do an experiential learning their freshman year. We offer three different locations for it, but they basically get hands-on in emergency management just to break them right into the emergency management as freshmen. They also have to do two co-ops or internships in order to graduate, and so Oftentimes, these range from going back to my previous conversation where we still have a lot of people doing police and fire, but we're seeing a lot more students come out and want to do some of the FEMA, the MEMAs, and the other EMAs of the world. And so that's kind of our direction. And in general, we're still trying to make changes to our program to align with the needs of the industry. And I think that's an important partnership that the practice side of the house and us as academics need to make sure that we're in tune with so that we're setting up these young future leaders to go out into the workforce with their and get able actually be able to get a job and know what they're doing so.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
Yeah, we'll come back to that too, kind of the job market and the post-college experience for both our undergraduate and graduate folks, because I'm sure they have similar challenges and perks, right? I'm actually going to kind of tweet this a little bit. I want to pass it to Julie really quickly to do the same thing. Give us an overview of what your graduate program looks like, and then I'll talk to our students about their experiences.
Julie Elliott:
Awesome. Yeah. Well, thanks for having us on here. You know, just to recap, I'm Julie Elliott from the University of Delaware. I'm in the PhD program in disaster science and management at the University of Delaware. And we actually have quite a a variety of folks that are part of our club that are from a lot of different degree programs, which I think is really interesting. We've got folks from, you know, speaking for Sydney real quick, but she's in actually the sociology PhD program and our newly elected president for next year is actually from our geography PhD program. And we do have several members that are civil engineers and the list goes on and on. So we're very multidisciplinary, right? But a little bit about the program I'm in. My degree program is very theory focused so pulling in theory from a wide variety of disciplines so I am required to take some classes in the civil engineering department as well as our sociology program. public health as well, oftentimes people do focus on that. And really, I mean, I think something that everyone on here will easily agree with and everyone listening at home will agree with too is that emergency management is multidisciplinary, like you really need to be able to cross discipline lines. It doesn't mean you have to be an expert in all of those areas, but just being able to navigate between different folks of different backgrounds and experiences is really important. So that's really a big focus of The degree is kind of pulling together some of the different theory that exists among all the disciplines and the program definitely prepares you for a very research focused job post graduation or, you know, working at an institution of higher education. or maybe working at a think tank or something of the like. But University of Delaware also has a master's in disaster science program that still has a lot of theory involved with it, but also draws in a lot of the practical application pieces. And we often partner with our master's students to put together some events. So we bring in lots of guest speakers. um the program also requires an internship as one of the requirements for graduation so there's a lot of you know while there is a big focus on theory there's a lot of realization that that practical real world ground truth experience um is extremely extremely critical to draw into um we need that to be informing the theory that we're pulling into the research that we're doing and I think one of the big examples is a lot of emergency managers are being pulled into non-traditional disasters like homelessness and the opioid crisis and you know the impacts of climate change and the list goes on and on and on and those are things that are new that we're all experiencing and our practitioners that come as guest speakers often bring that up and anyway so there's a lot of just trying to meld those two fields and figure out how we can help How can researchers and academics help practitioners and bridge that gap? And so that's something they're really trying to complete with that program. And really what our chapter hopes to do is help kind of bridge those lines of communication between the two big circles. So yeah.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
So you're going to solve all of our problems, it sounds like.
Julie Elliott:
I appreciate that. We're trying to keep it realistic here.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
I love it. I'll, I'll send you the list of all of the issues I have, and I'm sure that you folks have plenty of time to to work on this. All right, I will pass it over now because I do want to talk to Ethan and to Sydney about their experiences. So, Ethan, if you would like to kick us off here, what's your experience been like?
Ethan Rego:
Yeah, so obviously it can only speak to Mass Maritime's program. Coming from the Higher Ed Symposium with Dr. G as well, you hear about how all these programs are so different. And that's one of the big talking points of the Higher Ed Symposium was standardization across programs. But anyways, for our program, it is very hands-on at points, and it's very theory blended. So through internships, you are required to do two, like Dr. G said. I did mine in government, both with the state agency in Massachusetts. I did one in local government. I also did one in consulting and healthcare just to kind of get a blend of different sectors and how they do EM. You do cover different sectors within the program a little bit. You do take coursework in business continuity, risk management, but most of the coursework is tying kind of back to government emergency management and traditional EM and how that looks like. In terms of opportunities like Dr. G touched on experiential learning. I have done a few of those as well. We recently just took the freshmen on a two week trip to California to work for Team Rubicon. We were doing wildfire mitigation out there near Sacramento so that was a great experience. That was the first time we had run that trip. We also have other programs going on. We have a trip to New Orleans that students take. So every summer they go for about two weeks. They go down to see the levees and talk with people that worked in Katrina and still kind of seeing the aftermath and the effects of that disaster. We also have a program to Guatemala and we also have a study abroad program in Denmark, which I got to do my junior year. lots of great opportunities for travel and just life experience within the major. And then we also have our different clubs and programs, the big one being the IAEM student chapter, which Dr. G is the faculty advisor for and I was the president of for the past two years. And that's where we really bring in guest speakers, go on different tours of agencies and get more of that out of the classroom experience when it comes to seeing people and meeting people.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
I almost feel like this episode should have come with a disclaimer, because one of the things that you folks all keep bringing up is, I can only speak for the experience of this program. And I think that's a good point, right? All of the programs across all these universities at different levels are going to be vastly different experiences. But what I think is really neat is that we kind of get a glimpse into some of those a little bit. So thank you all for speaking about yours. I do appreciate it. Sydney, do you want to give us a rundown as to what your experience has been like?
Sydney Dyck:
Yeah for sure so hi everyone my name is Sydney Dyck and I'm going into my fourth year of the sociology PhD program here at the University of Delaware and yeah it's been a great experience like Taylor just said you know all programs are different but I first got set onto the kind of disaster sociology side of everything at my undergraduate degree at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta in Canada And so it's been really great to come to UD where we have the Disaster Research Center, and it's kind of all disaster all the time, and it goes from just having one class at Mount Royal to having so much to explore here and really dive into things. And yeah, I've been on the board for our IAEM club for the last two years. And like Julie said, we have students from all different disciplines in that. So it's really kind of opened my eyes about the ways that, yeah, the research and the theory is really being applied in real life in different ways, especially when we do things like go on field trips to different emergency management offices, whether that's in DC or Philadelphia or New York, or we went to Delaware's emergency management office as well. But kind of these things that we talk about in sociology a lot with inequality or the effects of race and poverty and how that, you know, really changes people's experiences with disasters. Yeah, it's just been really amazing to see the ways that these things are being grappled with in real life. And like you say, Taylor, There's so many challenges and we're looking forward to trying to solve them in one way or another. But yeah, I'm at the point in my program where I'm studying for my comprehensive exams. So it's a lot of looking back into the history of disaster sociology and where we started, you know, 80 or so years ago. So yeah, it's been a really great time and just learning lots, but there's still more to go.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
There always is. It's seemingly never ending. I think, and I think you've all highlighted this, but I said one of the first episodes, I think, I've been wrong before, I could be wrong again, that I feel like we're almost in this period of like the renaissance for emergency management, because you're getting these folks from all these different backgrounds and emergency management is becoming such a broad field, right? It's not what we used to think of it as. And so I think that all the things you folks have said have really highlighted that. There's so much more going on in the world of emergency management than there was, you know, I think you said 80 years ago, Sydney, right? We're not just kind of that civil defense era emergency management anymore. And that's been my favorite part about doing this, is really listening to all of those unique perspectives that make emergency management such a quirky but beautiful field to be in, if you will. I'm going to move on a little bit here. I want to take a second to talk about... I'll backtrack. A lot of organizations I feel like either struggle with or are constantly asking about or looking for resources on how to do a successful internship or co-op program. What is the most beneficial for students, but what is also beneficial for the organization, right? They want to be able to get something out of would love if folks could speak on what they think makes an internship or a co-op successful. So I'll start. Ethan, I know you had mentioned you did some co-ops and internships. What do you think would make an internship or a co-op program successful based on your experience?
Ethan Rego:
Yeah, for me, it's really it's who you're paired with more than anything for the internship. So, you know, for organizations that are looking to start an internship program, who in your organization do you think can work with students the best and who would actually provide the most value as a mentor? You know, for me, even after my internships have ended, the people that were either my boss or my supervisor in my internships are still mentors to me to this day. And that's something that I really took away from my internship more than anything, is just someone that you can reach out to and have a mentor in this field. Because like we talked about, and we're going to talk about, it can be difficult to find jobs in this field, and it can be difficult to navigate it when you're new to this field. So having those people that you meet through the program to rely on has been super beneficial. So I'd say for any organization that's looking internship program or enhance theirs, think about who in your organization is actually the best at doing that, or you think would be the best at doing that. And then the other biggest thing for me in an internship was just exposure. How much exposure can you give to that student in terms of opportunities? You know, the state agency, MEMA, that I got to work with, we had so many different opportunities going on, different events. I got to go to the U.S. Open tournament literally my second day of the internship, then I went to a full-scale like the following day. That was just the first week, like getting as much variety in terms of experiences as you can get is huge, because like we've talked about in EM, things that emergency managers are having to deal with are constantly changing. So if you can get as much exposure to that student in that short time frame that they're there with you for, I think it will be more benefit to them.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
I think those are all really excellent points. And you talk about it a lot on this, emergency managers are, Relationship builders right and I think that you made a really excellent point about continuing those relationships beyond your internships or your co-ops. I think that's a, those are both really excellent points. Julie, did you have something you wanted to add?
Julie Elliott:
Yeah, so little shout out real quickly to my alma mater. I got my undergraduate and my master's degree from the University of North Texas, and I did an internship while I was an undergrad. And also after I graduated, I actually worked for a short time as an emergency management practitioner at the university where I hosted several interns. And so speaking from that experience I had as an intern and then also basically running our intern program while I worked there, is that it's really important, I think, to, in my experience, is to give a student ownership of a project. Find that back burner project that's just, you just don't have the manpower for. And I know, having been an emergency manager, we all have those projects. You might not like to admit it, but there's totally things that we just keep pushing to the back burner. And I think giving ownership of that project, which is what my internship supervisor did for me when I went through that process, gave me a really beautiful sample work that I could take with me to job interviews. So like personally, like that was a very beneficial thing for me, but also that took that item off of his long, long to-do list. and definitely highlighted, you know, it was a huge learning experience for me, and I was able to really, really dig deep into a concept. At the end of it, I felt like I was an expert in that thing, and so, and that's what I tried to do, you know, and sometimes that's not the style that your intern needs, so you have to be a little flexible, but we tried to do that with most of our interns when I was at the University of North Texas, and we found a lot of success in that, It's just really neat to see a student just get really passionate and just dig into a project. So that would be my biggest recommendation.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
And I think it also builds confidence too, right? Like having ownership of something as an intern, right? I'm putting air quotes around it. who don't necessarily get to feel like they're involved in the big stuff. To have ownership of one project that you get to take away as, I did this thing, I accomplished this thing, I think is just awesome for an eco-boost too.
Julie Elliott:
Absolutely.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
Yeah. Sydney, go ahead. What you got for me?
Sydney Dyck:
Yeah, for sure. Actually really echoing a lot of what Julie just said, kind of about taking ownership of a project and whatnot. About two summers ago, I interned at the Siegel Jewish Community Center in Wilmington, Delaware, and I was with them for a couple of months, really just kind of revamping their emergency management plans and things like their access and functional needs kind of stuff. They have a daycare center as well as a swimming pool and programming for older adults and whatnot, so There were a lot of things that, like Julie said, you know, were just put to the backburn or maybe because of, you know, staff being stretched thin. So I really got to look into some of those things that were put aside and specifically when it came to the access and functional needs, you know, like, the main things that needed to be addressed were there, but certain things that were to question about if you have certain kids in daycare that have certain access and functional needs or certain disabilities that required extra attention, there wasn't really a plan put in place to kind of help teachers with that or how there would be assistance in times of evacuation. So it was really great that I kind of got to take ownership of that. And I said, you know, like, I know this is an extreme need right now, but if it ever becomes something, at least you have something to build off of that. So I think it was really important to kind of look into that and that kind of got me more interested in disability studies as well so it was a really cool way for kind of the whole community to learn together because a lot of teachers just hadn't really thought about that because they hadn't come across a child with those specific needs so they hadn't thought about what they would need to do if there was an evacuation and that was kind of the situation so yeah it was really cool to just kind of see that come up and sort of that flexibility within the internship format allowed for that learning to come up for all of us.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
So it sounds like some guidance, but also providing a lot of flexibility and freedom, I think is important. Dr. Gutierrez, do you have any thoughts you want to add to this?
Mike Gutierrez:
Yeah, so I'll kind of give a different aspect. First, I have to say, I recognize Julie's background because I knew that was North Texas. That's also my alma mater. I got all three of my degrees from undergrad, master's, and PhD. Fun fact, I actually helped build the EOC there and helped Brad build a team, hire Scotty, build the internship program that you later on matriculated into after I left there. So just a little fun fact for you.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
I love it. It's such a small world. That makes me so happy. I'm sorry. Go ahead.
Mike Gutierrez:
No, absolutely. And now to kind of give you the other side of it, I think, you know, we're talking about. And from the students perspective, we've heard that, but we also have to look at it from a institutional perspective, right? So as an institution, who's managing your internships and what do these look like? And in the profession of emergency management and the discipline of emergency management, no two practitioners or scholars will still agree on how we define emergency management. So a lot of times our internships have actually really nothing to do. For example, as a former law enforcement officer, I'm not knocking law enforcement, but what good is it going to do for somebody to just do a ride along in a patrol car? And that's their everyday kind of activity. And so we need to be mindful when we're managing these internship programs that there is some sort of managerial and maybe even disaster components to those processes. And I know a lot of us have gotten away from the days of just paper punching, stapling, making coffee. That's what our interns would do. And I like to see a lot of our folks in the industry don't do that anymore and actually let students take ownership of the projects and say, where do you want to be? And I know for some of the folks that work with the states and federal agencies, they've been great where they say, well, you're interested in mitigation, sure, go work with that division for your time here. My biggest caution is we have to be, as institutions of higher education, we need to do a better job of defining what those expectations are for EM experience or co-ops or internships so that the students actually get something that's meaningful and they can fill parts of the resume to help them get their foot in the door later on down the road.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
That's a really good point, and we'll kind of come back to that point in a little bit here. Justin, did you want to add something?
Justin Kates:
Yeah, well, I was just gonna say, I mean, we had such a strong internship program back when we were in Nashua. And, you know, what we always tried to do is figure out how we could integrate some project management experience into that work, you know, give the intern a shovel ready project and allow them from start to finish to build something that they could really provide back as a deliverable at the end of the internship. I remember one of my favorite interns, Daniel Colomey. He's just a, what a sharp guy. He really did some cool work on a UAS project. It took some years, but eventually we ended up implementing all the work that he did. What a great guy. He just seems to have a bright future.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
I agree. He's done some incredible work. Justin is giving me crap because Daniel Colomy is my husband. He's not going to appreciate the shout out. He's going to be very awkward about it. But I agree. It was a very cool project. And it is nice to see something from start to finish. And I think that's kind of what all of these have gotten to, right, is just giving folks an experience, giving them tangible skills and not necessarily specific to emergency management, giving them exposure to emergency management. Um, but not necessarily focusing on just how to respond to an incident. And so it's project management skills and people skills, the, um, the other important facets that we keep talking about, right. That makes you a successful emergency manager. Um, so there you go. We've solved one problem, internships and co-ops. They're going to be perfect now because we've solved all the problems. So take that off of your list. Uh, my Delaware folks, you don't have to solve that problem anymore. Um, I also want to ask a question, and we'll ask the flip side of this. So keep that in mind as you answer this. But I really want to talk about whether or not you have had any challenges either as a student getting into the field of emergency management or as an advisor to some sort of student in emergency management on entering into the field. So any challenges you've experienced as a student getting into the field, or you know that perspective as an advisor trying to help a student get into the field? Does anyone want to tackle that question first? It's kind of a big one.
Mike Gutierrez:
Sure, I'll start us off.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
Perfect.
Mike Gutierrez:
Yeah, so you know, obviously, We have a couple of different issues here. One of them is looking at how we do emergency management in terms of the emergency management models, right? So in places like New England, where a lot of the EM programs are still housed under fire department and police department, it is challenging to get into, because you have to go through the police academy, fire academy, you need your time on the streets, et cetera, before you can get into those positions oftentimes. And so that's one challenge there. And then also a lot of our smaller jurisdictions, they want that lengthy experience because there's nobody there to train. So they want somebody that's coming there with the experience already. And so I know it's frustrating for a lot of our students, but a lot of our students, at least from our perspective at Mass Maritime, a lot of them aren't willing to look outside of their immediate geographic location. They're from Bourne, they want a job in Bourne, and that's where they want to be the emergency manager for. And so I think part of the onus also is looking at some of those other opportunities. And I think Ethan could probably share with y'all, I've heard this from a lot of students, a lot of programs hyper-focus only on government, EM, opportunities, where there's a whole private sector out there that's hiring, but a lot of students don't know how to navigate the private sector part of it, whether that's through keyword searches, because it's normally not listed as emergency manager when you're looking at a job for a major Fortune 500 company. And I think those are things that we have to do better institutionally to prep our students on when they're doing this job search. In our program, we actually have a career services program. They're paid professionals, that's what they do. But we have to work with them as advisors to kind of set the expectations for what our students are. And going back to the whole model, I think as we start to see a call for more professional, credentially trained emergency managers, i.e. a degree in emergency management, a professional certification such as the AEM or CEM, I think we'll start seeing that professionalization open up some more doors. But we're still in our toddler phase as a profession and a discipline, right? We're no longer newborns, but we're still developing into who we're going to grow to be. And I think that's going to be a challenge for the foreseeable future until we get some of those professional standards down.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
I think that's a really good point and I want to, I'm going to come to our University of Delaware folks in just a minute, because I think you'll have a unique perspective in that your degrees aren't necessarily emergency management specific. So I want to, I want to come back to you folks in just a second here. But before I do that, anything to what Dr Gutierrez has said?
Ethan Rego:
Yeah, definitely.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
So what you said was it's the question was, was it difficult to get into the field as a student or have you had some sort of, you know, if you've experienced any challenges trying to get into the field of emergency management.
Ethan Rego:
Yeah, for me. I think I got lucky in that regard that I was surrounded with the right people. And again, like I touched on with internships, having good mentors to fall back on really helps you out. Like Dr. G said, standardization is a huge issue. There's not really a set way to become an emergency manager, right? And everyone's got to have their own pathway that they came into the field with. So you really just have to learn from other people. kind of a good path to go on to really set yourself up to get into the field in terms of landing a job right out of graduation. So knowing, say, what courses you should be taking, what experiences you should be looking for, that's all coming from other people. And so for me, I lucked out. I'd say I had a pretty easier time getting into the field. And I already partially was getting into the field in high school because of a vocational program that I was part of. But that's kind of a rare thing. So, you know, again, I think it's just who you surround yourself with. And hopefully, you know, these other academic institutions are kind of building those relationships for students through things like IAEM chapters and different things to bring in people and have students meet practitioners and other academics from other parts of the country so that they don't just have the fixated view of where they're at in the country. Because again, EM looks different everywhere you go as well. And just kind of getting a broader experience for the students through different people that you meet.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
I will say I think that New England is kind of fickle in that none of us like to leave New England if you're from New England. Maybe we're all scaredy cats as someone like born and raised in New Hampshire. So that might be part of it. You know, I feel like I have to defend everyone from New England because of it. Sydney or Julie, which one of you would like to kick us off with your perspective here?
Julie Elliott:
Well, I'll just say real quick like you know my my degree is pretty specific to emergency management so that for me I and also because I come from a background of both both of my prior degrees are emergency management focused and I worked in the field for a short time. I feel like I've had an advantage in that I kind of know what the field looks like and kind of what that layout is. I've been to several conferences, I've been part of IAEM for a long time, but something I've noticed among some of my peers, some of the other folks in our chapter, and really this is kind of one of the purposes our chapter serves, is folks just feel kind of overwhelmed trying to learn about emergency management. They know they want to be a practitioner, and they know they want to work in the disaster space. But whenever we're talking about the disaster space, I mean, talk about filming, am I right? I mean, just kind of getting your feet wet in that, it's really hard. And so something we try to do as a chapter is we try to do tours of places that are you know, unique emergency management. We try to, everyone gets to see at least a couple EOCs, but then beyond that we try to look at, basically offer some learning opportunities that go just beyond your classic EOC, get folks some hands, I guess hands-on experience in a way, really just observing it. And also bringing in guest speakers that work maybe in the nonprofit world, folks from the Red Cross or from National VOAD, people who can speak to maybe a really unique perspective that isn't often highlighted. So I think that's one of the big challenges for some of our students. And Sydney might be able to speak more to that. But it's just the overwhelmingness of like, well, what does it actually mean to be a practitioner? And who do I need to network with? Where do I need to go to make those connections? actually insert myself into that field if I'm coming from a background of geography or civil engineering or one of these fields that we don't typically associate with it, but is absolutely relevant.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
Justin, let's flag that every episode a point comes up about the fact that emergency managers don't even know what emergency management is. So if we could flag that and come back to it.
Justin Kates:
Yeah, I'll just add it to the list. Thank you.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
I appreciate that. I'm sorry, go ahead, Sydney.
Sydney Dyck:
Yeah, no worries. Julie really set it up well there for me in the sense that I think in sociology, still the norm really is that if you go into a graduate program, likely you're going to continue into academia in one way or another. I think really the idea of kind of just spreading the good word about emergency management to other people within the program is really important and I mean that's how I got involved with it. Our former president of our chapter, Ronnie Fraser, who just graduated, she was in sociology as well and she got me involved with IAEM and I think, yeah, it's more about getting hands-on experience and just even knowing what it is. Like Julie said, it's really overwhelming. And I think a really important thing within sociology is that we're not just doing research for the sake of research, it's actually providing, you know, a tangible, realistic benefit to people around you. Within that, being involved with IAEM and the connections at the Disaster Research Center has really let me see that within the real world around me. In Delaware, we have a long-term recovery group that's the first one in the state that was established in 2021 after Hurricane Ida. I've been involved with that for a couple years, Julie as well, so it's kind of like really just looking around you and seeing where opportunities are, but also informing our fellow students about it and creating casual space to talk about it as well. With our chapter, we were trying to do about usually monthly kind of just chats where we invited people to come and talk about emergency management and maybe research that they were interested in doing, their plans for the future and just really connecting and it set up a space to talk to people that we might not have come across in classes or other things like that too. So yeah, it's just really about knowing that it's there and that it's an option and that if you don't want to be in academic writing papers for the rest of your life, you don't have to. So that is a good thing to know. Yeah.
Justin Kates:
So Both Sydney and Julie, you did a nice job of connecting to our next question, which is really around the student chapters piece of this. And that was the reason why we brought the four of you on is because both Massachusetts Maritime Academy as well as the University of Delaware have very strong student chapters. Julie, Sydney, you talked a little bit about some of the activities that you engage in at the student chapters. Maybe each one of you can give me an example of the most interesting activity you've done with the student chapter, whether it be a tour or a talk or whatever. So we'll start with you, Julie.
Julie Elliott:
Yeah, I think my favorite one that we've done since I have been part of the chapter, we did a field trip to New York City. And while we were there, we visited FEMA region two, which was very fascinating to me. Very fascinating, just because I did not know a whole lot about FEMA region two before going, and that was it was in. the Freedom Tower. So that was like kind of a neat destination as well. And a lot of just really, I mean, just awesome conversations. We met with the region administrator. He took, you know, 45 minutes out of his day just to sit with us and answer our questions and talk about some of the complexities of managing disasters in U.S. territories. So for those who don't know, FEMA Region 2 also is overseas operations in, I believe it's the US Virgin Islands, as well as Puerto Rico. So that was just fascinating for sure. And while there, we also visited New York City Office of Emergency Management. We visited one of the Coast Guard stations that was there that is involved with emergency management planning. And what I really enjoyed about all of those was seeing really very different perspectives of emergency management all within a single day. So we saw local emergency management, albeit on a very, very large scale when we're talking about New York City. But we got to see a local perspective. We got to see FEMA, the federal perspective. And then the Coast Guard has, it's more in line with like a military perspective, which we had some folks, we left that tour, people were like, oh, I want to join the Coast Guard now. So there was like this really neat exposure that came from that and just an excitement that people felt after going to all of those tours. So those are just some of my, that was my favorite trip that we've done thus far.
Justin Kates:
Cool. How about you, Sydney?
Sydney Dyck:
Yeah, not necessarily a trip, but I guess two years ago now we had the folks from the D.C. Homeland Security Emergency Management Agency come down. So, Jerrica Shackelford and her team, and they talked to us about January 6th and the insurrection. So, it was really interesting to hear their experience over lunch and we also had it on zoom so i think that was one of our highest attended events because um yeah Ronnie our former president put that out on linkedin and so a lot of people showed up but yeah it was really interesting and people in my program because sociology is joint with Well, just so a lot of people in my program showed up to this event and they maybe weren't interested in emergency management stuff previous to that. But yeah, it really kind of ignited a lot of people's interest in it, because it was a big event and just that team was really great and engaging speakers. So that was a super interesting thing and kind of a inside look into this really fascinating event that happened in recent times. So I'd probably say that.
Justin Kates:
That's pretty good. Ethan, how about at Mass Maritime Academy? I know you guys have also done some activities.
Ethan Rego:
Yeah, for me, my favorite one that we did recently, we did a tour of the Massachusetts State House. And more than just going around the State House, we got to meet with Representative Bill Driscoll. He's a representative on the House of Representatives within the state's legislature, and he's actually the chair of their Emergency Management Committee. So we got to talk about, you know, legislative advocacy with an emergency management with him, how important is for emergency managers to be following policy, one of those being disaster relief fund that they're looking to push through in the state. So really just getting that policy perspective from him and just hearing about it. come from a politician and the importance of emergency management, building those relationships between politicians and emergency managers, I think it was really eye-opening, not just for me, but for all of the students. And it's one of the large reasons why I joined the Advocacy and Awareness Caucus within IAEM was to kind of learn more about that part of the field and why it's so important. So I think our students took away a lot from that tour specifically.
Justin Kates:
That's pretty good. And Dr. Gutierrez, anything that you thought from a perspective of anything the student chapter has done to make the connection between practitioners and the students?
Mike Gutierrez:
Yeah, so obviously, as Ethan mentioned, the student chapter, everything they do is student initiated, and they do a great job of doing all of the fun tours and stuff that we've all talked about. But I think for me, one of the big takeaways has been a highlight of being able to take students to the IAEM National Conference, two years in a row, hopefully three this upcoming year. We also just got back, I took six students to the FEMA Higher Education Symposium. So we got to Gettysburg and all that. So they're not only meeting practitioners at the IAEM Conference, but they're also now meeting practitioners or scholars. So they're meeting the people who wrote the textbooks that they're using. Ethan got to meet my mentor, Dr. Dave McEntire, and got to have great dinner with him and pick his brain. A name that Julie might recall, you know, last year, Dr Gary Webb was out there and, you know, those were my mentors and I like to see that my students can meet my mentors and kind of keep that lineage going. And so, for me, you know, we always tell the students, you know, and I know we're talking about jobs also, but. Who, you know, will get your foot in the door and what, you know, we'll keep it there. We'll keep you there. And so that, that networking that they get these conferences, it's a must. If you have an IAEM student chapter, students should absolutely be at a minimum attending their regional conferences, but if they can, the national one. And I think that'll help with the job issues. I mean, part of it.
Justin Kates:
Absolutely. So, I mean, this has been great to kind of understand some of the perspectives on the student chapter activities. You know, one other piece of information for the listeners out there is, as a student, if your university doesn't have a student chapter, well, number one, go make one. The instructions are on the website. Convene some of the other students, and it's pretty easy to get a chapter set up. But you also can join IAEM just as a student member. You don't have to have a chapter. and really benefit from many of the things we've talked about today, connecting with practitioners, really making that hands-on, in-person connection at the conference. There's a lot of opportunities for students to get involved and they can participate in all the committees and caucuses as well. So Taylor, I'll turn it over to you.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
Awesome and that's a good point. Justin will make sure that we link all the information to the student chapter guidance student memberships. We're happy to link the universities chapters as well. So folks can get some more information and some points of contact to to go to reach out and ask some some additional questions. I know I promised I would return you back to your lives in a reasonable amount of time, but I do have one last question I want to ask. So maybe we can kind of rapid fire it. We've talked a lot about experiences as a student in emergency management and what your life experience brings to being a student in emergency management. For all of the folks listening, What can we be doing? What can we as emergency managers be doing to better help students succeed? I know it's a big question. I'll give you a couple seconds to think about it. And then maybe we'll just kind of go in order unless someone has an urge to jump in.
Julie Elliott:
I can jump in real fast. I love it. I think that something that really comes to mind, when I would talk to students when I worked at UNT, several of them would mention that they were just kind of afraid to network. There's like this fear that students have of reaching out. And it's just this fear of not asking the right questions or not, maybe they don't have time to talk to me. And I just what I would encourage practitioners to do is, and I know that everyone already feels this way, but but also show it demonstrated out loud on your LinkedIn or just when you're at conferences, but be enthusiastic and talk about what you do with students and just be excited because they want to know. And even if they seem shy and quiet, it's just that it's I mean, we just talked about how emergency managers don't even know what emergency management is. So a lot of students are going to be like, muddling through this murky water trying to figure out what is this field that I want to be in. And so just be enthusiastic and just forthcoming about what you do and why you love your job and maybe the things that frustrate you about your job and maybe you'll find somebody who's excited to fix that issue. I just think just be enthusiastic and seek out opportunities to talk to students. If you've got a local university, you know, see if there is an IAEM chapter or if there's a degree program related to emergency management and just make yourself available. Because again, you know, some students are not shy, but some folks you encounter, it's just an overwhelming world and it's just kind of hard to dip your feet in. So help them get started.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
I love all of that. We're going to jump to Dr. Gutierrez, and then I will jump to Sydney, and then Ethan, you're going to close us out.
Mike Gutierrez:
Yeah, and kind of echoing again what Julie shared, being available. For us as practitioners, I know we're busy. We're all going 100 miles an hour looking for the next promotion, the new job, the right lateral, whatever it is. And then most importantly, doing our job. That job is what we're there for. And our time is limited. But take some time, make connections as practitioners, those out there listening. Our young, aspiring future leaders, they need folks that they can listen to that's not a professor, that's not mom or dad. And they need somebody that's going to kind of take them by the wing and help them. And we have to do that. And I know we're busy. And so many of us don't do it because we are. busy and have a finite time, but I think that would be a huge step in the right direction to start closing some of these employment gaps, bridging theory with practice, all of the quote-unquote wicked problems that the discipline has experienced. I think this would be a good starting point to start overcoming some of those obstacles.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
Excellent. Sydney?
Sydney Dyck:
Yeah, I'd say sharing lots about what you're passionate about and what keeps you going, even though the field can be so overwhelming, and you can be so busy and the future can feel so uncertain at times. I think for students and young professionals to hear about what keeps you going and what makes you love the job and show up to it every day and give it your all is really important because I think seeing that helps spark kind of inspiration for young people as well to see that within themselves or think about it a little bit more and kind of invest within the field and their own future development but it also kind of gives us hope that you know even though it can be scary and you know It's a wild thing to try to tackle. There are really great things about it and lots to love about working in a field like this. So yeah, I'd say emphasizing all of that would be really great.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
I love the positivity so far. Ethan, take us home.
Ethan Rego:
Yeah, everyone's kind of hit the nail on the head here. Ultimately, being a good mentor, bringing up the next generation of emergency managers through our students, it's only going to do the field better and it's going to do your agency and your organization better. Just making people feel comfortable in this field, like everyone's kind of talked about, it can be a pretty wide-ranging field to get into. Find a student that you can mentor. Start with at least one, I would say to anybody listening to this, especially if you're a practitioner later in your career or even an emerging professional. Find someone that you can, you know, share some knowledge and insight that you've gained. If you're at the IAEM conference, go to the Sunday Night Mixer where the students typically are at in the kind of the biggest population there and talk to people. You see someone with a student tag on their name tag, go up to them, introduce yourself so that they don't have to Students don't know what they don't know. And when they're in a room full of people, it can be overwhelming. I'll speak for that myself. So, you know, when you're at these events and things, just go up to a student, find them and talk to them and really get to know them and share your contact information with them and just be a resource for them to rely on. It's the biggest thing for anybody getting in this field is the people that they know.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
Excellent. So emergency managers, in whatever facet that looks like, help out folks trying to get their foot in the door. And I'll also flip the narrative to students. If you have questions, reach out too. Don't be afraid. I promise most of the people in the field are really friendly and really kind. And the rest of us are just so stressed out all the time that we don't have time to breathe and check our LinkedIn messages. So it's not intentional. I promise. Thank you all so much for being here. I always get super chatty, so I'm sorry. Thank you all for humoring me and putting up with my ridiculous questions. But it's so fascinating to listen to your experiences and what that looks like. And I'm very much looking forward to all the contributions that are going to come out of this group, because I know you folks have already done incredible work. So thank you all so much for being here. I am going to turn it over to Justin now for a few minutes to update us on all things IAEM USA. So Justin, take us away.
Justin Kates:
All right, perfect. So another busy month at IAEM. One of the first things I wanted to mention real quick was we've been talking about this experience versus education equivalency project going on with the Certification Commission to look at the CEM and whether there should be some sort of experience equivalency pathway included in the CEM. That project continues to move forward, and actually this month they're starting focus groups. And so some folks in the membership have potentially gotten emails asking for their participation. So hopefully we'll see good turnout from that to help contribute to this very important project, give us a very objective view, outside perspective on what we should do regarding experience versus education. I also had the opportunity, as I am president, to speak, give some remarks to the Higher Ed Symposium, which has been mentioned a couple times during the podcast today. And we talked about some of the work that the Higher Ed Academician Caucus has been doing, the Advocacy Caucus, that really tie into the work that the Higher Ed academics, research communities are really focused on in the emergency management space. It was a good opportunity for me to also see some of the key players that are out there working in higher ed, and how IAEM can better support them in some of their projects. On the government affairs front, we heard a lot last month at our government affairs focused episode about what they're doing, but there has been some really good and positive updates since last month, one being the house markup for The grant funding for next year for FEMA, including our emergency management performance grants, state homeland security program, urban area security initiative, they have restored the levels for fiscal year 25 at the fiscal year 23 level. So what we've seen is sort of a drop in 24, which was unfortunate. And it's really important for the membership to continue to push hard on your elected officials at the federal level, your senators, your reps, make sure they know the importance of. those FEMA grant programs because we're going to have to really stress this over the next few weeks to make sure that this stays in those bills. And we also had the opportunity at a recent meeting with the FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, her leadership team, as well as the other counterparts that I have at the National Emergency Management Association, NEMA, and the big city emergency managers, to really talk about how, as part of the supplemental that will be necessary for the Disaster Relief Fund that's going to run out this summer, is there an opportunity to try and fund some of the cuts that were made on those fiscal year 24 grants? And unfortunately, it doesn't seem like we're going to be able to pull that off. Uh, so, uh, uh, administrator, Criswell , uh, recommendation to us was continue to push hard on. Keeping that funding in the 25 language. Uh, and and hopefully we'll, we'll continue to see that. Uh, that meeting with, uh, the FEMA leadership team was great. It's great opportunity for us to engage. We do that on a quarterly basis. And in addition to that meeting on a quarterly basis, we're actually going to be meeting separately with the big three leadership, NEMA, Big Cities, and IAEM, moving forward to talk about key initiatives and ways that we can partner together on our legislative advocacy work. There's also going to be an opportunity coming up in July, July 17th from 12 to 1 Eastern Time. It's going to be a webinar sponsored by the Government Affairs Committee on Government Affairs and Advocacy Basics. This is something that's highly requested. Now we're finally going to be releasing it out for folks to participate in to learn about how you can play a role in educating your elected officials on the importance of emergency management. And I'll close out with something that we've been working behind the scenes on for many, many months. And we're going to see the result of this in July. By middle of July is our state of emergency management study. There's going to be a survey that's going to come out to the emergency management community at all levels, tribal, territorial, state, and local. And we've been partnering with FEMA and Argonne National Labs, as well as our big three partners, FEMA and big cities, to try and do, for the first time in many, many decades, a comprehensive assessment of the capacity of emergency management organizations. This is going to have huge ramifications for research and for policy and doctrine work in the emergency management space. And we're really excited to see this come to the finish line. It's a multi-year project, but this first phase of the study is going to be a really important piece of this. So I'm really glad to see this coming. Hopefully everybody will participate, share it, make sure that it gets as great a response rate as possible. So that's the update from IAEM this month.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
As per usual, you have been very busy and I'm thoroughly impressed. Um, one last, uh, segment, I guess, if you will, I want to close out with an ask the president question. Um, so with the news of you stepping down as IAEM USA president. What's next.
Justin Kates:
Yeah, great question. So, uh, for those that are, uh, participating in, uh, in IAEM You probably saw a message that came out last week that I'm going to be finishing my term early, earlier than expected. And it comes down to, I started looking at the time that I have to commit to what's a really important mission out there, and then also trying to balance that with work requirements and requirements at home. Unfortunately, I'm still living with my in-laws after moving to a new job since last August. So imagine trying to do that for 10 months. So I made the tough decision that it's time for me to step down and pass the torch on to the incoming leadership. So what's next for me? I'm not getting out of the emergency management space. I've got still a ton of projects. and a ton of work to do, the FEMA National Advisory Council, many side projects that I'm working with, all different types of organizations. So I'll still be around. Everybody will still see me very active in the emergency management space, and certainly you'll see those activities on social media. You know, this podcast has really been focused around IAEM activities over the last episodes that we've done. What episode are we on? Eight or nine now?
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
I think it's nine.
Justin Kates:
Maybe nine. That's pretty impressive. Yeah. So Taylor and I have to figure out what we're going to spend our time doing with this podcast moving forward. There might be a little pause as we regroup and try and figure out what types of topics and things like that that we're going to focus in. on moving forward or how we might be able to organize it so it makes sense and is valuable to our listeners. So I would say stay tuned to see what's next.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
I just want to say, Justin, thank you for all the work that you have done with IAEM. You have made incredible progress in the time period that you have been not only president, but all of the other positions you served in IAEM. We thoroughly appreciate the work that you're doing. And it's unfortunate this is being recorded, because that means there's a record of me complimenting you. But if you had your own compliment calendar, I'd say add it to the compliment calendar.
Justin Kates:
Yeah.
Taylor Frizzell-Colomey:
I'll just wrap up by saying thank you all so much for listening. And to reiterate Justin's point, keep your eyes peeled on the website and social media for updates on the upcoming episodes. So thank you all so much for being here. We appreciate it. And you'll be hearing from us soon.
Justin Kates:
Absolutely. Thanks a lot, everybody. See you soon.