Higher Education in Disaster Management

I am starting my third year at UNC directing their Disaster Management Certificate Program, and I here I am “blogging” for the first time and thinking about how different my views are today on higher education and how it applies to the disaster management community. I use the term community because that is how I view our discipline. We are a community of “young citizens” who are interested in disaster management and confused at the same time about exactly what the job entails. We are a community of “middle aged citizens” who are experienced and beginning to recognize that the profession is more than just SUVs with allot of lights and antennas. And finally, we are also a community of experienced steeped “elder statesmen” that actually participated in the last big transformation in disaster management from the civil defense mission of the ‘60s to our current all hazards mission. This particular segment of our community is beginning to step aside in North Carolina, and we are facing a new era of the “middle aged” folks stepping up. As the process continues, this creates space for our “young citizens” to step up as well.

This analogy leads me back to my views on higher education. I have worked at each level in our disaster management community, beginning “wide-eyed” in 1987, settling in after hurricanes Andrew and Fran in the mid-90s, and now feel that I am stepping into the beginnings of the “elder statesman” role as we see more and more of our experienced folks step aside. In the beginning, to me, education and training were one in the same. In the interim, educational classes were something that I could not attain because of the time and effort required, so training became my conduit to knowledge and educational courses were “not as useful” or practical.

Now that I am working in academia, guess what!? That’s right, the light has come on, and my years of being a “nay sayer” about the usefulness of higher education have come to an end. Academia does have a role in our profession, both the educational component, as well as the research component. This “gap” of inclusion has been part of the confusion for our “young citizens” because they are very much in tune with higher education, and are having trouble finding the connections. So, it is up to us, collectively, to pursue higher education connectivity in disaster management for the good of our order. Yes, experience is still a cornerstone of our business, but higher education has to be just as important to reflect our discipline in a professional manner. Fire, law enforcement, and even EMS have undergraduate and advanced degree opportunities across the US. It is time for disaster management to catch up and fulfill this need as well.

The community colleges have supported disaster management well in North Carolina, and continue to do so. The shortfall in our system is not having a next step to take after that associate level for disaster management. Western Carolina University has stepped up to the plate, and we now have our certificate program at UNC, but more can be done. And just as importantly, more can be done in support of these efforts by our disaster management community. I used to think that we did not need an undergraduate or advanced degree in disaster management because we learned as we worked, and what good was a framed degree going to do up on the wall. But, I am older and hopefully wiser now, and as I see our “elder statesmen” stepping aside, I realize we need that educational component to speed up the process of giving our “young citizens” the benefit of all of the work experience that we are so quickly losing. At the same time, through comprehensive higher education programs, they will be validating their grasp of this complicated and ever changing discipline that we call disaster management.

Now is the time for us to move forward and support higher education initiatives, by teaching, by attending, and by supporting attendance by our “young citizens.” I believe this will be one of the keys to our discipline evolving into a true profession.