Petition to Alejandro Mayorkas, United States Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, to require the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to conduct extensive listening groups with: the emergency management higher education community; state, tribal, territorial, and local-level emergency management agencies; and, other organizations invested in the advancement of the emergency management professionalization process, regarding the potential impacts of FEMA's plan to rename, reorganize, and refocus the Emergency Management Institute (EMI) to the National Disaster and Emergency Management University.

Background : In 2021, Jeff Stern, the Superintendent of the EMI, announced he would be implementing a multi-part initiative called EMI Anywhere. EMI Anywhere included widely supported elements such as a modernized e-campus, a streamlined course catalog, and satellite campus partnerships. It also included an initiative designed to rename and refocus EMI as the National Emergency Management College. 

The college initiative received immediate pushback from members of the higher education community delivering undergraduate and graduate degrees in emergency management and partner disciplines. The higher education community has been addressing this matter since that time (three years ago). Stern's rationale for the desired name change, per conversations with concerned higher education representatives, was to gain status and funding akin to the War Colleges. At that juncture, per Stern, there was no attempt to grant degrees or to otherwise compete with the existing EM Hi Ed educational system. He did plan however to hire a Provost and Deans, create Schools within the structure, and reorganize the existing structure of EMI.   

The initial concerns from the higher education community stood squarely with the name. While there were also concerns about the position titling which aligned with well-established academic position titles, those were of lesser consequence. Many individuals had conversations about alternate names with Stern (to include reasserting that "Institute" was already a great name). Despite Stern's assurances that he was flexible and willing to look at different names that did not include "college" - all alternatives put forth by involved parties (to include an expansive list of synonyms) were dismissed by Stern.

A series of meetings were held about this matter to try to get it resolved. Letters were sent to FEMA Administrators and International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) partners were engaged in the conversation, all with the intent of resolving the matter. There are many reasons the renaming, reorganization, and refocus efforts are problematic. A compilation of these reasons are included in the following section (see Concerns ). 

On Monday, June 3, 2024, the FEMA Administrator, Deanne Criswell, announced to members of the higher education community at the annual FEMA Higher Education Symposium that on July 1, EMI would be renamed the National Disaster and Emergency Management University. The reason given for this was to address gaps in the emergency management practitioner community's knowledge and capability to ensure the ability to better fulfill FEMA's mission. 

This announcement was not received well by members of the higher education community. Whether intended or not, the Administrator's comments were received as pejorative. While the Administrator welcomed comments after her presentation, she summarily dismissed comments about the university. She ultimately refused any further comments or questions about the university and deferred them to Stern as he was scheduled to speak after her.

Stern's presentation covered the entirety of his plans to upgrade EMI's learning management system, improve course access, and other actions focused on the training mission within the EMI Anywhere construct. He left the university comments to the end of his presentation and moved quickly through them. Of note, he mentioned an accreditation timeline for the university he was planning. At the end of his presentation, he noted there was not any time for comments or questions.

These two sessions shocked many in the room as there was a general impression that this matter had been resolved. Instead, the original concept had been elevated (from a college of emergency management to a university of disaster and emergency management) and expanded to allow for degree granting (i.e., accreditation). The reaction to this new information was swift - higher education community members initiated institutional briefings, engaged with state partners, and started the process of contacting their elected officials. Concerns of everything from interference with emergency management higher education programs to the usurping of federal dollars from other areas at EMI that need attention were shared in the aforementioned efforts. There is also a heightened focus on the Vanguard program which has utilized a great deal of EMI funding for what is viewed as a vanity project that duplicates, in large part, the Emergency Management Professional Program (EMPP) Executive Academy. The view is these funds could have helped shore up the current staff shortage at EMI, paid for course updates, and improved EMI delivery systems (all which Stern notes need attention).

Of historical note, in the early 1990s, FEMA Deputy Administrator Kay Goss partnered with then EMI Superintendent John McKay and Dr. Wayne B. Blanchard to start the FEMA Higher Education Program. The goal of the program was to support (with teaching resources and conferences) the development of higher education programs in every state to create an educated cadre of emergency management professionals who would be prepared to meet the challenges facing FEMA and the country. The goal at the outset was simple, but purposeful, develop a discipline that could build the body of knowledge and an educated practice community to avoid the seemingly constant state of reinvention and relearning in the field and to decrease ever-increasing disaster costs. This program established the higher education community and in doing so has advanced emergency management practice, furthered research specific to the challenges facing emergency management, and advanced professionalization efforts essential to gaining the tenets of a profession (monopoly, autonomy, and authority). This effort, led by one program manager and one staff member, has produced powerful outcomes and has fundamentally changed emergency management practice.  Today, there are hundreds of higher education programs and more than 87,000 graduates. 

Concerns: The concerns from the higher education community and its partners (government, non-profit, and private sector) about the plans are many. A sampling of these concerns is provided below but they do not represent the full breadth of the concerns regarding the proposed National Disaster and Emergency Management University. These are provided to illustrate the diverse nature of the concerns and the complexities of these concerns.

1.    At the higher education level, emergency management degree programs will be forced to explain why their programs should be funded when there is a national university that is free to attend and is posturing itself as the premier educational and training institute. That concern stands whether degrees are actually granted or not, as higher education boards look at both the delivery footprint and the availability of interested students. If there is a National Disaster and Emergency Management University that is run by the federal government and funded under the mantle of FEMA, higher education programs will be hard-pressed to make an argument for a student market and will be irreparably harmed. This means higher education programs will not be able to continue their vital role of educating emergency management professionals, shaping and advancing practice through research, and furtherance of professionalization efforts.

2.    The notion of making a federal agency with appointed leadership that frequently changes direction, mission focus, and structure, the arbiter of emergency management knowledge, research, and education is akin to setting emergency management (as a whole) back twenty-five years. FEMA created the Higher Education Program to avoid the constant state of reinvention and relearning and to decrease disaster costs. The Higher Education Program provided the resources and a supportive community framework that launched over three hundred degree offerings across the United States. This brilliant move to crowd source the responsibility of emergency management advancement to higher education institutions reshaped emergency management’s understanding of foundational knowledge for practice, developed the discipline of emergency management, helped to aggregate and advance the emergency management body of knowledge, and resulted in over two decades of degreed emergency management professionals specifically educated to do the important work they are tasked with. This has changed the trajectory of emergency management practice and has resulted in emergency management becoming a career of first choice, as opposed to past practice in which it was often a second or third career that individuals migrated into and consequently had to learn on the job. 

3.    Interference with higher education degree programs will change the composition of practice which will negatively impact outcomes for communities. The value of emergency management education is now universally understood both inside and outside the practitioner community. Case in point, many seasoned practitioners, who started practice before educational degrees were offered, went back to college to obtain degrees. These practitioners have become some of the staunchest advocates for higher education and dedicated mentors of the next generation of professionals who are entering practice with degrees. Simply put, education is a foundation for successful practice to be built upon. It removes the necessity to learn central elements of practice while actively managing an event where lives are at risk. 

4.    The reshaping of EMI as a war college is highly problematic. This action ignores the evolved understanding of effective emergency management practice and seeks realignment with a military linkage that harkens back to the limited focus of civil defense (which was long ago abandoned and replaced with a multi-hazard, capabilities-based approach). The practice community operates as a managerial role in a distributed function. The management structure used by practitioners is well-established and has proven to be effective. It is not a command-and-control model, but rather a collaborative, multi-level government, community-centric model that encourages risk management and risk ownership at all levels. It is most certainly not a military model. And while the practitioner community has benefited from the entry of veterans into practice, the emergency management mission, other than being of service to others, is not the same as that of the military. Stern’s focus on the war college concept is not only out of touch with current practice, but it also threatens to provide an impression and alignment with military that sets practice back by almost 30 years. 

5.    Impacts to emergency management higher education will affect the ongoing development of the body of knowledge and critical elements within the pathway that are essential to recognition as a profession. Professional fields that deal with high consequence risk - such as law, medicine, and emergency management - need to be able to ensure high quality practice to protect those who rely on their specialized subject matter expertise. Professions enjoy the benefits of monopoly, autonomy, and authority, which allow them to rely on their continually cultivated, specialized subject matter expertise to identify parameters for effective practice and to control entry into practice. Professions have degree requirements and codes of ethics that frame expectations for knowledge and conduct. Emergency management has been advancing professionalization efforts for many years through collaborations between the practitioner and higher education communities. With the completion of the Code of Ethics and Professional Standards of Conduct for Emergency Management Professionals last year, emergency management took a tremendous step forward toward securing its rightful recognition as a profession with the concurrent protections and recognition of its specialized body of knowledge. 

6.    Existing well-respected credentialing efforts that sit within professional organizations and at the state level, could be threatened by - at a minimum - a federal perspective that will impact professionalization efforts and will be positioned to drive the dialogue on what matters in effective practice. The federal mission regarding emergency management practice and professional expectations is not always well-aligned with the day-to-day realities of practice at the local, territorial, tribal, and state levels. Such interference could distort the well-established understanding of what matters in effective emergency management practice and could damage well-respected credentials such as the Certified Emergency Manager (CEM) credential managed by IAEM and the jurisdiction-level credentials increasingly required to practice in states. Such interference would not only potentially hurt the quality of practice, it would also strain intergovernmental relations as it would create a federally-dominant posture that would affect the autonomy the states, tribes, and territories currently enjoy.

7. The shift from EMI to the National Disaster and Emergency Management University could result in a reduction in the effectiveness of the core mission of EMI, which is training. As the premier training institute for emergency management practice for decades, EMI plays a critical role in developing focused areas of capability. EMI is already challenged to keep their courses updated (Stern acknowledges this). EMI also struggles to effectively reach and meet the training needs of the emergency management practitioners (hence, the initiative re: satellite campuses). Higher education is different than training, and both are necessary to the development of a robust field of practice. Stern's focus on developing a new university when the emergency management university capacity already exists across the United States, will weaken the focus on the training mission that EMI is built upon to deliver. This should be EMI's primary focus, not the creation of a federal university. 

8. The use of taxpayer dollars to fund a federal higher education institution that will directly or indirectly interfere with existing, developed emergency management higher education programs is rife with issues. For example, accusations of federal interference with institutional and state interests will result in a degradation of relationships (particularly with elected officials) and detract from FEMA's overall mission. FEMA's stature could be called into question and its funding could be reduced. This would hurt the country as a whole.

9. The heavy top-down approach of the FEMA university proposal will limit freedom of thought and speech as institutions of government are increasingly viewed as vulnerable to prevailing politics. Even in an ideal situation, the government has a way of censoring information that would not be censored in an independent higher education institution. Simply put, academic freedom is at stake. And when academic freedom is at stake, the ability to examine our beliefs, practices, effectiveness, etc. can be diminished. Scholars play an important role in society and that role needs to be protected. Any control over emergency management higher education by the federal government is a problem, but a federal university that has the potential to subsume other higher education programs and dominate the scholarly discourse is a dystopian vision that should alarm everyone.

10. Damage to enrollment in higher education programs will result in a reduction in programs and fewer full-time faculty positions. This will impact the type, quality, and volume of scholarly contributions to the emergency management body of knowledge. A less than robust body of knowledge will hobble emergency management professionalization efforts and will impair effective practice.