The professionalization of emergency management is certainly a continued discussion among emergency managers. Many feel it’s not an actual profession, as it doesn’t fit certain definitions of a profession by not having a universal code of ethics, licensure, and other features. While I personally reject this claim, feeling some resentment that so many of us do in fact work in this field as a career yet it doesn’t meet someone’s definition of a profession. That said, there is a desperate need for standards in the field, yet what should those standards look like? I wrote a couple years back about the various activities very commonly found within emergency management, many of them professions in their own right. With that, I feel we can at least create a foundational standard.
My prompt for this post comes from an initiative in Massachusetts being advocated by Dr. Jennifer Carlson, a professor at Anna Maria College. You can see from the article and the video of her testimony, that professionalization will require several steps.
- Developing a code of ethics and professional standards
- Formalizing higher education accreditation standards and an accrediting body
- Establishing a non-profit gatekeeper organization tasked with professional licensure
- Having an accredited institution degree requirement fully integrated by 2040
The most current version of the Code of Ethics and Professional Standards of Conduct for Emergency Managers comes from FEMA’s Higher Education Program. I feel this code is comprehensive and aspirational, representing what emergency managers should be striving to work within. I feel this code, or a version thereof, is reasonable to adopt.
Formalizing higher education accreditation standards and an accrediting body is something else that has been discussed within FEMA’s Higher Education Program for some time. While I do teach emergency management in higher ed, accreditation in that field is something I only have tangential knowledge of, though my wife is an experienced Middle States Commission on Higher Education evaluator and can speak to this better. I will say that many specific professions do have their own national-level accreditation boards which establish standards for all academic programs covering that profession. This certainly seems an attainable goal.
Establishing a non-profit gatekeeper organization tasked with professional licensure… I do have some concerns with the wording of this. Many feel that the Certified Emergency Manager credential from IAEM meets this criterion, though it’s very rare to see membership organizations also serve as credentialing bodies. I feel it’s quite easy to have conflicts of interest and certification influenced by factors other than evaluation of competency. While there are national-level certification organizations for a variety of professions, such as IBFCSM (which presently provides the Certified Emergency Disaster Professional – CEDP, a certification that I hold), which maintains a certification board for each credential and is not a membership organization, the term ‘licensure’, as specifically mentioned, brings about a very different connotation. Properly stated, licensing powers are held by federal, state, and local governments, not by private or non-profit organizations. (Note that I did work for a time with the Massachusetts Division of Professional Licensure many moons ago.) Licensure of professions is generally seen as a state’s rights issue. While it would be best to have one national standard, most professional licensure is done at the state level and is likely the best way to proceed with this.
Lastly, having an accredited degree requirement by 2040 is also quite reasonable. I appreciate that Dr. Carlson advocates the grandfathering of persons already working in the (would be) profession. In recognition of the various related professions, however, I’d like to see the option for X hours of accredited course work (on top of a related degree) as a bridge to quality for certification/licensure absent having an accredited emergency management degree. This will support those who have come to EM through other related pathways and professions, as they commonly do.
I’ll note that none of this should preclude anyone from working in emergency management, but that absent meeting these requirements they could not serve as an actual emergency manager. It’s an important distinction that will require a legal definition of ‘emergency manager’ to accompany any laws that are passed on this matter.
I think this is a noble and meaningful effort being promoted by Dr. Carlson and I hope Massachusetts lawmakers take the step forward down a path that no other government entity in the US has. This absolutely would be a game changer for the ‘profession’. Let’s watch this one carefully.
©2023 Tim Riecker, CEDP
The Contrarian Emergency Manager 
I thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated your research and knowledge of the different credentialing in our profession. More of us need to lean into this movement. IEAM is not the only way.
Tim,
A tad tardy to the discussion, but adding a contrarian note, as per the blog’s theme! 🙂
I’m onboard with the call for professionalization, accountability, and ongoing competence checks. However, I’d like to challenge the necessity of a degree. The educational landscape has evolved significantly, with declining enrollments in traditional four-year programs over the past 10 years with no sign of stopping.
As you rightly note, experience often rivals or surpasses academic qualifications. Skilled individuals, regardless of formal degrees, can match or exceed their university-educated counterparts depending on individual capacity, experience, and knowledge.
A degree signals commitment and financial means more than competence and qualification, which can be demonstrated through work, training, and accreditation evaluations.
I advocate for a merit-based approach in professional designation or licensure, focusing on knowledge, skills, ability, and experience rather than the means – particularly financial – to attain a degree.
Thoughts?
I’m pretty mixed on education. I think the problem with a lot of education is that it’s not progressive and is more theory than practice. I’ve seen some very lazy academic programs out there that have little to no interaction with professors and/or lean on FEMA training programs (training does not equal education) as the core of their courses. I certainly agree that we’ve seen an overall decline in enrollments. My wife is a college dean and I teach several EM college courses. I see the lack of progressive, quality programs a big hinderance. Further, academia has a long standing tradition of hiring people simply because they have graduate degrees, yet most (unless they are teacher educators like my wife) have no actual training or experience in fundamentals of their jobs such as instructional design, pedagogy, and instructional skills.
In speaking with recent grads, they express frustration in having learned very little about their field of practice beyond theory through their degree programs. Instead, they learn how to do the job on the job. They really should have been better prepared by the education system. I think it’s failing a lot of people – especially given the time and cost. Sure there are some things learned that can be applied, but the cost/benefit ratio isn’t favorable.
Does this mean we do away with education requirements? I’m still hard-pressed to say yes. Perhaps decreasing them is a more practical approach in the short term. We need to challenge community colleges to reinvigorate their programs and make what they teach more readily applicable to the current workforce needs. And I like blending a merit-based approach similar to what you mentioned. It certainly seems more meaningful.
This also leads us to the issue of ‘entry level’ jobs in EM… of which so many managers and HR folks don’t seem to understand the definition of entry level. But that’s for another day.
TR
Excellent points!
I believe there are two issues at hand. Related, but ultimately separate. Addressing them in reverse order…
I agree we shouldn’t do away with education requirements… entirely. Formal training in EM concepts is likely the single best way to ensure a standardized foundation of knowledge. However, I don’t think that needs to take the form of a degree. And we should always have an identified path for not traditional achievement of proficiency.
From an objective-oriented approach, the goal (IMO) is to produce qualified emergency managers who have a standardized foundation of knowledge, a certain amount of experience, and the skills, ability, and willingness to adhere to best practices and ethical standards. With that in mind, all of those features can be found outside of a degree program and our focus should not be on how you got there (with the requisite financial barriers that entails) but rather on whether or not you did in fact get there. Again, not an argument against degrees. They really do provide quite a lot of value and give knowledge and skills that aren’t commonly found elsewhere. They just aren’t *required* to bring practitioners to the standard of knowledge, skills, and abilities we desire and require for capacity and capability.
Speaking specifically to this point, I’ve even been told by folks at IAEM that one of the key reasons for requiring a degree to get the CEM (even if that degree is in basket weaving) was purely for the external perception that those with degrees are somehow more capable. They recognize that degrees don’t make you inherently more capable or add any specific value to your ability to be an effective EM. And, in so doing, they’ve excluded entire categories of emergency managers with thousands of hours of formal training and experience simply because they didn’t decide (or have the means) to get degrees when they were younger, and didn’t decide (or have the means) to do so once they had an established career.
With regards to your observation on progressive education, I believe this is a longstanding issue that post-secondary education is going to have to address or they will become the Kodak of the education and training world. Colleges and universities are too comfortable in their default position as the defacto next step after high school. This is evident in their cavalier approach to innovation, sluggish adoption of new technology, and even in the adoption of evolved pedagogy based on established learning science. It’s also plain to see in their refusal to abandon the sage-on-the-stage as the default delivery of information, and in their insistence that education is the responsibility of the consumer. To your point, they’re happy hiring their own customers once they’ve reached a certain standard of achievement (graduate degrees) irrespective of their ability to actually effectively educate as that isn’t a measurement of success for them.
The whole field is ripe for disruption and I think the old dinosaurs are too entrenched and immobile to adapt. It’s going to take a technology company disrupting the entire field, and many schools going completely out of business before they truly change. And even then it will be reluctantly, begrudgingly, and probably ineffectively.
I know that’s a fairly stark and pessimistic take, but having worked in and with higher education before, and my previous professional experience in high tech, I’ve seen this same show play out in other fields in almost identical fashion.
Thanks as always for the insightful perspective and opportunity to riff on a particularly important personal subject!
IAEM is very big on perception vs reality. That’s about all I’ll say on that.
Yes, higher ed certainly needs some kind of disruption, similar to what you’ve mentioned has occurred in other fields. A course correction will be beneficial to everyone.