**[Bringing Practitioners into the Fold]{.underline}:**

**Practical Suggestions for Successfully Bridging the Divide**

**Between Students and Practitioners**

Carol Cwiak

North Dakota State University

The age old comparison of book smarts versus street smarts is one that
is well-noted in emergency management. As the field attempts to migrate
more cogently toward a balance between these two seemingly battling
values, often termed education versus experience, what is being caught
in the chasm between development and true evolution are the "new
generation" of emergency managers (Blanchard 2005:14) and indeed
professionalization of the field itself. This paper seeks to address
some of the factors involved that have become problematic issues for
those seeking to advance the professionalization of the field and offer
a series of practical suggestions designed to successfully integrate
emergency management practitioners into higher education programs and to
bridge the current divide between students and practitioners.

**INTRODUCTION**

For the past decade, FEMA's Higher Education Project has been working to
enhance the "profession" of emergency management by increasing the
collegiate study of hazards, disasters and emergency management; and, by
supporting college and university efforts to develop and foster strong
emergency management programs (Blanchard 2005). Dr. Wayne Blanchard, the
Project Manager of FEMA's Higher Education Project, has been purposeful
in his analysis and delineation of characteristics and skill sets
attributed to the "stereotypical" emergency manger as opposed to the
"new generation" of emergency managers. Blanchard's (2005) candid
comparison (see *Table 1A* below) of those presently in the field, with
those who have been college-educated and who represent the trend toward
professionalization, portrays some of the theoretical shifts the field
is undergoing, as well as the challenges that "professionalization" as a
process entails.

Given Blanchard's comparison of the two, it is difficult, at face value
on paper, to see utility in the "stereotypical" emergency manager. The
"new generation" of emergency managers appear so much more well-rounded,
intelligent, educated, effective and worthy of respect. Blanchard's
assessment of the characteristics and skills of the "stereotypical"
emergency manager are representative of what the face of emergency
management has been and are helpful in the process of delineating the
road to professionalization, but they are one-dimensional in that they
do not recognize the value of prior life experience in other positions,
on-the job experience, commitment and the difficulties in advancing
independent thought in the "stereotypical" emergency management
environment that existed prior to the push for higher education. The
comparison is most meaningfully utilized as a framework for evolution
from "stereotypical" to "new generation", but it does imply a "change of
guard" that is unsettling to those that have spent ten, twenty, thirty
or more years being the "stereotypical" emergency manager. The perceived
message, "out with old and in with the new" is unsettlingly to those
that feel that they have done good and meaningful work over the years.
The enduring message for the "stereotypical" emergency manager, albeit
unintended and perhaps even misconstrued, is one of devaluation. That
message frames the posture of many practitioners toward collegiate
emergency management programs. In the process of evolution, the utility
and importance of higher education in professionalization are being
diminished by those who see it as a statement of their own individual
lack of utility and importance. More objectively assessed, the
"stereotypical" emergency managers are the forefathers of the "new
generation" emergency managers and that needs to be meaningfully
conveyed to those who feel devalued. Indeed, the spectrum is far wider
than these two generalized categories portray and the field will
continue to experience change as it moves toward becoming a recognized
profession.

**Table 1A**

+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| **Emergency Manager               | **The "New Generation" Emergency  |
| "Stereotype"**                    | Manager**                         |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| 1.  Not college educated (4-year  | 1.  College educated---many with  |
|     degree)                       |     EM degrees                    |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| 2.  Middle to late middle-aged    | 2.  More professional and         |
|                                   |     knowledgeable                 |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| 3.  Emergency management is       | 3.  Knowledge base: science and   |
|     second or third career        |     research                      |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| 4.  Job obtained other than with  | 4.  Technologically more          |
|     EM Competencies               |     proficient/adept              |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| 5.  Spend EM career in one        | 5.  Younger                       |
|     jurisdiction                  |                                   |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| 6.  Disaster response             | 6.  More diverse and culturally   |
|     planning-oriented             |     sensitive                     |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| 7.  Works primarily with          | 7.  Emergency management is       |
|     emergency services            |     career of first choice        |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| 8.  Bureaucratic                  | 8.  Building disaster-resistant   |
|                                   |     communities focus             |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| 9.  Plans *for* jurisdiction      | 9.  Proactive                     |
|     (primarily disaster           |                                   |
|     response-oriented)            |                                   |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| 10. Has not done a risk           | 10. Lifelong learner; reads       |
|     assessment                    |     disaster literature           |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| 11. Has not done a mitigation     | 11. Joins professional            |
|     plan                          |     associations                  |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| 12. Has not done a strategic plan | 12. Plans *with* jurisdiction     |
|                                   |     stakeholders                  |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| 13. Has not joined an EM          | 13. Better paid                   |
|     professional association      |                                   |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| 14. Doesn't read disaster         | 14. Better funding for EM         |
|     research literature           |     programs                      |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| 15. Knowledge base is             | 15. Upwardly and geographically   |
|     experiential                  |     mobile                        |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| 16. Frequently wears other hats   | 16. Broader range of working      |
|                                   |     contacts                      |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| 17. Not well-paid or funded       |                                   |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| 18. Many part-time and volunteer  |                                   |
|     positions                     |                                   |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+

**DISCUSSION**

Sylves (2004:28) defines a profession as "an occupation that is
esoteric, complex and discretionary. It requires theoretical knowledge,
skill and judgment that others either do not possess or cannot easily
comprehend". Clearly, this definition of a profession does not
comfortably fit the current face of the field of emergency management,
but there can be no doubt that the field is moving in that direction.
Wilson (2000) suggests that as society has become more complex and
disasters have affected greater populations, an emergency management
system has emerged as a consequence, and as the need for new skills and
specialized labor has presented itself, the occupation of emergency
management has evolved and created an infrastructure that has become the
foundation for the formal advancement toward an emergency management
profession.

In detailing criteria that constitutes a profession of emergency
management, Blanchard (2005) suggests inclusion of: a systematic body of
knowledge, a system for advancement and dissemination of knowledge,
college degrees in the subject area, identification of minimum
standards, standards of conduct or ethics, professional societies, and
public recognition. Arguably, the field of emergency management has a
way to go to meaningfully meet the criteria set forth by Blanchard.
FEMA's Higher Education Project has been purposeful in funding projects
and promoting activities that have advanced the field toward the ideals
of these criteria, but even as collegiate programs grow exponentially,
there is still much work to be done particularly in regard to the body
of knowledge and its dissemination.

As the focus of emergency management continues its shift toward a more
advanced concept of mitigation rooted in long-term solutions to
sustainability issues, researchers will find themselves addressing
increasingly more complex subjects, working more with interdisciplinary
teams and practitioners, and producing research that offers solutions to
"complex macro-level social problems" (Mileti 2003:255). There is still
much work to be done on emergency management theory by researchers.
"Just as the profession of emergency management is undergoing a massive
transformation, so too is scholarship in this area" (McEntire 2004:14).
Researchers have recognized that vulnerability should be considered of
"paramount importance for the discipline of emergency management, and
could be regarded as a central feature of future theory in this area"
(McEntire 2004:14).

To date, the dissemination of information from researcher to
practitioner has been spotty and problematic. In interviews with
practitioners and researchers both groups noted that personal
relationships played a big part in dissemination of information, with
the most effective mechanisms for dissemination being conferences,
meetings and workshops; not surprisingly, academic journals,
historically one of the key avenues utilized for dissemination of
information by academics and professions, have not been shown to be
effective in disseminating information to practitioners (Mileti 2003).

Effective dissemination of information is not only crucial to the
professionalization of the field, but also to bridging the divide
between the "stereotypical" emergency manger and the "new generation"
emergency manager. Yet, information, once disseminated is only valuable
and useful if it is utilizable. In that vein, its power is enhanced or
limited by the ability of the receiver to think critically. Darlington's
(2000:12) viewpoint regarding the constructivist view of knowledge is
meaningful in a discussion of critical thinking:

> "...knowledge is a state of understanding and can exist only in the
> mind of the individual knower. As such, knowledge must be constructed
> by each individual through the process of trying to make sense of new
> information in terms of what the individual already knows. Thus in the
> constructionist view of teaching and learning, learners think about
> new information in such a way that they transform that material in
> some manner, thereby constructing new knowledge. The practical
> implication of this perspective is that emergency managers need to be
> taught how to engage effectively in this knowledge construction
> process---that is, they need to be taught how to think critically."

The need for critical thinking skills is becoming more urgent as the
field of emergency management continues its extraordinary trajectory of
professionalization. The march toward professionalization has been
hastened by the events of September 11, 2001 and the shift in agency
focus toward mitigation. This steep learning curve has dramatically
emphasized the importance of the characteristics and skill sets of the
"new generation" emergency manger.

The events of September 11, 2001, brought new recognition and
responsibility to emergency managers. "With the creation of the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the incorporation of FEMA
into a mega-organization tasked with protecting the United States,
emergency management professionals went from a level of relative
anonymity to acknowledged key players in the war against terrorism"
(Cwiak, Cline & Karlgaard 2004:2). A plethora of additional
responsibilities and mandates quickly flowed from the DHS, leaving many
seasoned emergency managers struggling to keep up. "Emergency managers
are now faced with problems they have seldom before confronted. They are
expected to understand complex physical and social systems, conduct
sophisticated outcomes analyses, and offer long-term solutions to
recurring problems" (Darlington 2000:11).

Mitigation is a relatively new focus for seasoned practitioners. Even
newer is the concept of sustainable communities based on a premise of
resilience tied to policy maker's commitment to sustainable development
(Godschalk, Beatley, Berke, Brower & Kaiser 1999). The mitigation focus
has moved from the structural to the non-structural with a repeated
emphasis on "sustained action that reduces or eliminates long-term risk
to people and property from hazards and their effects" (FEMA- Disaster
Resistant Jobs 2003: 4).

FEMA\'s Higher Education Project is representative of the highest order
of mitigation -- education. Only with education can meaningful change
occur. Indeed, the movement toward mitigation as a tool to be utilized
for long-term sustainability, has reinforced and reiterated the
importance of higher education for those tasked with the difficult
paradigm shift that adopts a posture of resilience above patchwork
attempts at resistance. This paradigm shift requires the proverbial
"village" of practitioners, researchers, city planners, community
organizers, businesses, etc. to buy-in to a new ideology of
vulnerability and sustainability. Such buy-in requires at least an
acceptance of the value of higher education programs and an ability on
the part of practitioners to think critically; yet, it has not come easy
and the absence of buy-in is problematic. In recent years, emergency
management students without pre-existing practitioner status (it is this
type of student this discussion references) have experienced the reality
of what a lack of practitioner buy-in can mean to both intern and job
prospects for graduates.

The gap between what is valued, education versus experience, has
appeared much wider in the working world of practitioners. This gap,
albeit inevitable to some degree, is based in part upon the short time
frame under which dramatic professionalization changes have been
imposed. This appears to have been exacerbated by practitioners' feeling
of being marginalized by an academic community that has charged forward
to save the day based on case studies and theories, but very little
real-life experience. Adding to the distance between students and
practitioners is the diversity in what they "know".

While students may be exposed to a wide range of materials that provide
at least minimal coverage in many topic areas in emergency management,
practitioners are more likely to be extremely well-versed in practical
applications in a particular area or two. This is particularly true of
practitioners at the state and federal level whose entire orientation in
emergency management may be in operations, planning, mitigation, etc.
Knowledge also is diverse between the two groups at the level of
acquisition and usage. While students' knowledge is obtained through
formal education channels, practitioners' knowledge is obtained through
training and actual application. Students may "know" the same thing as
the practitioners by virtue of theory and case studies, but this type of
knowing without experiencing is not perceived as equally credible by
practitioners. Practitioners' additional usage of what they "know"
allows for continuing modifications of their knowledge base.

Additional issues arise out of the immediacy of knowledge that is
required in the field. Emergency management, by its very nature,
requires the ability to jump in and get the job done. The luxury of
in-house orientation is not always an option. Students who have not had
the benefit of practical experiences or internships may be hard-pressed
to quickly translate their education to application.

Students' degrees may also be perceived in a less than positive light,
by non-degreed, or lesser-degreed emergency managers who have acquired
their knowledge on-the-job or via training seminars offered by federal,
state, local or private agencies. There is a stigma attached to higher
education that tends to function as a class distinction in a field where
many of the current members are non-degreed and the message they are
receiving about higher education is that it is producing the "new
generation". The message being promulgated by higher education programs
is a need for change and advancement and makes sense in the march toward
professionalization; however, the message being received by too many
current emergency managers is that they have a diminishing value based
primarily on their lack of education. This sets up an artificial
spectrum with the college-educated on one end and the non-degreed or
lesser-degreed emergency managers on the other end. The degree ends up
equating with validation, or conversely, lack thereof.

To further entrench this artificial spectrum is the matter of age. As
Blanchard points out in his analysis and delineation of characteristics
and skill sets attributed to the "stereotypical" emergency manger as
opposed to the "new generation" of emergency managers, there is an age
distinction (see *Table 1A* above). Blanchard predicts the "new
generation" of emergency managers will be younger than the middle to
late-middle-aged "stereotypical" emergency manager. In recent research
of two groups, members of the International Association of Emergency
Managers and North Dakota County Emergency Managers, the mean ages of
those surveyed were reflected as age 46 and age 51 respectively (Cwiak,
Cline & Karlgaard 2004). Equating "new" and theoretically "improved"
with "younger" is the age old process of change that is not always
embraced by the "old".

The process of evolution is rarely without challenge, however, the
evolution of emergency management and the march toward
professionalization is being inhibited unnecessarily by the issue of
valuation. Practitioners need to feel that their experience and
expertise are credible and valued. Collegiate programs are in a unique
position to embrace and benefit from that experience and expertise by
bringing practitioners into the fold.

**RECOMMENDATIONS**

The most significant issue that emerges in the education vs. experience
debate is one of valuation. There appears to be a perception on many
practitioners' parts that the comparison of the "stereotypical"
emergency manager with the "new generation" emergency manager is
analogous with "bad" and "good". The noble intent of identifying
strengths and weaknesses to better prepare collegiate programs to
educate in an area that is experiencing rapid professionalization, is
lost on the practitioner that perceives the message to be that without a
college degree he or she is without value.

Understanding that the resistance is less about the way we "know", than
the valuation of the individual, is the first step in bridging the
divide between practitioners and students. The message that
college-educated is better is destined to be received combatively by
those who are not college-educated, but know their job. College
graduates are not the issue in-and-of themselves; the degree that is
being perceived as validation of superiority and the face of the future
is the issue.

This is not to say that there are not distinct ideological differences
between those that indicate preferences between the values of education
versus experience. Indeed, even one of the most seasoned of disaster
researchers, Dr. Thomas Drabek (2005), has acknowledged from his
research into what strategies make professional emergency managers most
effective that it is "not what is taught, but what is learned by doing."
Yet, there is likely more middle ground, than not, in this debate. It is
difficult to argue with a blending of the two. "Up-and-coming emergency
managers need real world experience and exposure to the theories and
research of the learned" (Marks 2005).

The issue of collegiate program legitimacy amongst practitioners has
been addressed before. Most notably, University of North Texas (UNT)
professor, David Neal (2000:5), presented a series of recommendations
for program legitimacy that were utilized at UNT and met with great
success such as hiring faculty with a "strong practitioner background",
faculty involvement in practitioner organizations, practitioner advisory
board members, using practitioners as guest speakers and initiating
internships. It is logical to assert that collegiate program legitimacy
is inextricably tied to the legitimacy of the degreed students it
produces.

The suggestions offered herein are not epiphanies from on-high, but
instead commonsense steps to building strong and meaningful
relationships between practitioners, programs and students that will
ultimately produce benefit beyond the individuals, to the field and
indeed the "profession" of emergency management. Many of these
suggestions have likely received at least lip service at colleges and
universities offering emergency management degrees; unfortunately, the
difficulty in beginning a new program that faces numerous other issues
(lack of academic materials, lack of funding, lack of teaching staff,
etc.) coupled with student populations that are growing, allows very
little time for program chairs and faculty to work on their practitioner
linkages. Ideally, this linkage would be established pre-program
creation, but it is never too late to build these critical linkages. The
intent of these suggestions is to create a seamless bridge over the
divide to insure that the strengths we have collectively all inure to
the benefit of the people and communities we seek to assist with our
work.

 

-   **Create either a formal or informal advisory board that includes a
    number of key local, regional, state and federal practitioners from
    your area. **

Involving practitioners creates the buy-in and ownership and will
accomplish three things: first, it will provide the board with a
practitioner prospective, which can be decidedly different from that of
an academic; second, it will remove the practitioner as a possible
naysayer in the community, and finally, it will enlist them as a
supporter by giving them some ownership over decisions made in the
program. Supporters of a program will say good things about it to their
colleagues and will more highly value the product of the program (the
students).  The end result will be a practitioner ambassador that will
encourage hiring of the new generation and promote your program
to possible practitioner students.

-   **Collegiate programs offering associate and bachelor degrees should
    offer practical/life experience credit hours for practitioners.   **

This credit should not exceed more than thirty percent of the study-area
focused material (as opposed to general requirements).  This credit will
give practitioners a gentle push toward their degree while recognizing
and validating their experience and expertise. Credit for expertise
gained from years of practical experience should be considered to be the
equivalent of transferred field experience or internship credits.

-   **Bring in practitioners to speak to your classes. **

Giving deference to practitioner's expertise validates that they are
valued by your program.  It is a good first step in building a
relationship with the practitioner and requires the simple
relinquishment of one class period. It allows the faculty to also stay
abreast of changes in the field across a multitude of topic areas that
they might never get exposure to through typical academic channels.

 

-   **Once a relationship is developed with local, regional and state
    practitioners, set up internships for students with
    practitioners. **

Service learning should be considered a mandatory part of every
collegiate emergency management program. "Service learning marries
educational objectives with practice environments in such a way that the
student, the university, and the community all benefit" (FEMA-Service
Learning 2005:1). Service learning via internships with practitioners is
an excellent way for students to experience different aspects of
emergency management and can help the student build pre-graduation
experience. Practitioners should be asked to fill out a detailed intern
evaluation form after the internship is complete to help in the
assessment of a grade, validate the importance of the internship
experience, and to reaffirm the importance of the practitioner\'s input.
Additionally, this evaluation will be valuable to the intern and will
allow your program to better gauge how the educational framework being
utilized fits with the position and the practitioner's expectations. A
formal letter from the head of the program or department should be sent
to the practitioner both upon the initial agreement to accept an intern
and upon the completion of the internship. Even though the relationship
you are building with the practitioner should be a down-to-earth and
personable one, the gratitude should be substantive and in writing.

 

-   **Contact local practitioners and extend the offer of utilizing
    students from their program for training and full-scale
    exercises. **

This is a valuable experience for the students and a tremendous resource
for the practitioner as getting \"victims\" is one of the hardest parts
of any training or exercise. Training exercises are closed to the
public, so by virtue of volunteering, students can gain a level of
access only responders typically experience. In a full-scale exercise,
students will be exposed to real-time response and interagency
collaboration at a level they could only otherwise experience in a true
response scenario. If an after-action assessment is being done on the
exercise, participating students can ask to attend that as well.

-   **Sponsor a community preparedness day on campus.**

A community preparedness day that incorporates local, state and regional
practitioners and agencies and is open to the public is an excellent
opportunity to accomplish four things: 1) help educate the public about
preparedness; 2) gain greater recognition of your program; 3) create a
linkage for the community between your program and practitioners; and 4)
create a forum for relationship building between the program and the
practitioners. Students can be assigned as facilitators to assist each
agency or practitioner with set-up or any other accommodations they
need. This allows for interaction between students and practitioners
while they are both geared toward the same goal -- educating the
public - and creates an opportunity on both the practitioners' and
students' parts to appreciate their common directives.

-   **Develop an award or series of awards to be awarded annually from
    your program that recognizes local, regional or state emergency
    management personnel excellence.**

Many practitioners are nothing short of community compatriots, in that
are not in emergency management for the money or the prestige (both of
which have been historically lacking), but for the good of the
community. Not only are they deserving of recognition, they are unlikely
to receive it from many forums. Collegiate programs are an ideal forum
from which to recognize practitioner excellence. It is a small token for
the collegiate program to extend, but will generate appreciation across
all practitioners as a measure of respect for their commitment to the
field.

-   **Have a practitioner be a co-advisor to an on-campus student
    emergency management organization.**

Many college campuses have strict rules on college organizations and
require a faculty member as a club advisor to insure accountability.
This should not hamper any collegiate program from asking a local
practitioner to be a co-advisor or to hold a similar role in the
organization. Having a practitioner as a co-advisor will give the club
greater access to speakers and facility tours than might be accomplished
absent the practitioner's participation. The collegiate program must be
cognizant that time is an issue for practitioners and limit the
responsibility they hold to attending to a couple of meetings a month at
most.

-   **Host quarterly practitioner and academic panels.**

It is important in these types of panels to keep a balance of
practitioners and academics. Such a panel offers the opportunity for
attendees to learn of recent innovations and projects in the
practitioner arena, as well as the recent research findings that are
meaningful to practitioners and community members. This type of panel
should not be utilized to address high-level theory concepts that have
no practical application guidelines. The focus by all panel participants
should be the functionality of the information to the audience and to
their fellow participants. These panels should be well-advertised on the
campus, in practitioner and academic circles, and in the community.
Faculty, should, as much as possible, integrate student attendance at
these panels into emergency management coursework.

-   **Create a practitioner mentoring program.**

Once students have a general idea of the areas they are interested in,
they should be paired with a practitioner mentor who can answer their
questions about current practice in the field. Mentoring is meaningful
for all level students, but is ideal for undergraduates that are at
least halfway through their program. The issue with mentoring will
always be more logistically difficult in the pairing process. It is
critical that the person creating the pairings understands the
practitioner's duties and personality and the student's goals and
personality. This is no easy task to a collegiate program with a large
number of juniors and seniors, yet is incredibly valuable to the mentor,
student and the program.

The mentor will have an opportunity to get to know one or more students
quite well and perhaps be able to offer that student a recommendation
and assistance when they are seeking an emergency management position.
The student will have the benefit of having a go-to person that is
presently working in the field who has agreed to help guide the student.
The collegiate program will benefit by virtue of offering a linkage to
students (outside individual professor's busy advising schedules) that
will strengthen their ties to the practitioner community in the first
generation, and that will increase the odds of alumni becoming future
mentors.

-   **Publish a monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly bulletin that features
    local practitioner profiles, articles, etc.**

A number of collegiate programs and professional organizations have
newsletters or bulletins geared toward academics, practitioners or both.
The creation of a local bulletin allows collegiate programs a vehicle
for building and nurturing relationships with practitioners,
disseminating information and advertising open emergency management
positions, to name a few. Sections that feature a rotating
practitioner's corner, a practitioner profile, and best practices in the
field will insure that practitioners are not left with the impression
that the bulletin only applies to the collegiate program.

-   **Establish a meaningful relationship with your state division of
    emergency management and homeland security.**

The state has access to all the county personnel and has the power to
set a tone and even promote educational incentives, within their state,
to its state and county level personnel.  A relationship with the state
opens up more opportunities for internships as well as opening more
doors for students and faculty to present at state-sponsored workshops. 
It builds the perception that the collegiate team is a part of the state
team, instead of outside and perhaps, above it. 

**CONCLUSION**

There is an opportunity and challenge before collegiate emergency
management programs to create a more seamless transition from the
"stereotypical" emergency manager to the "new generation" emergency
manager and to facilitate the professionalization of the field. To meet
this opportunity and challenge the focus must be on relationship
building.   There can no longer be an excuse for programs that
unknowingly or unwittingly alienate practitioners. Integration of
practitioners into collegiate programs is a must for not only program
success, but for the ultimate success of the "profession".

Building a cadre of younger, higher-degreed professionals that have had
the benefit of the vision of the future is critical, but we are remiss
if we neglect to nurture an understanding of where applied experience
and theory can best cohabitate. "We do the profession a great injustice
if we only look to the future without extending a hand to the past. The
depth and breadth of knowledge in practitioners must be acknowledged,
embraced and built upon, to do so is to have the best of both worlds --
the open-mind and the learned-soul" (Cwiak, Cline & Karlgaard, 2004b,
p.17).

**REFERENCES**

Blanchard, B. Wayne

2005. Higher Education Slide Presentation. Electronic document,
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> April 24, 2005.

Cwiak, Carol, Kathy Cline & Tammy Karlgaard

2004 Emergency Management Demographics: What Can We Learn From a
Comparative Analysis of IAEM Respondents and Rural Emergency Managers?
Electronic document,
*[www.fema.gov/emi/edu](http://www.fema.gov/emi/edu),* accessed April
24, 2005.

Cwiak, Carol, Kathy Cline & Tammy Karlgaard

2004b Emergency Management Attitudes: What Can We Learn From a
Comparative Analysis of IAEM Respondents and Rural Emergency Managers?
Electronic document,
*[www.fema.gov/emi/edu](http://www.fema.gov/emi/edu),* accessed April
24, 2005.

Darlington, JoAnne

2000 The Profession of Emergency Management: Educational Opportunities
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Drabek, Thomas

2005 Presentation at North Dakota State University, April 27.

FEMA

2002 The Use of Service Learning in Emergency Management*.* Electronic
document, *[www.fema.gov/emi/edu](http://www.fema.gov/emi/edu),*
accessed April 24, 2005.

FEMA

2003. Disaster Resistant Jobs Facilitator Guide. Federal Emergency
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Godschalk, David R., Timothy Beatley, Phillip Berke, David J. Brower and
Edward J. Kaiser

1999 Natural Hazard Mitigation: Recasting Disaster Policy and Planning.
Washington: Island Press.

Marks, Craig

2005 Eye on Education. IAEM Bulletin 22(4): 3.

McEntire, David A.

2004 The Status of Emergency Management Theory: Issues, Barriers, and
Recommendations for Improved Scholarship. Presented at FEMA Higher
Education Conference, June 8.

Mileti, Dennis S.

2003. Disasters by Design. Washington: Joseph Henry Press.

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