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Bridging the Divide: Practical Suggestions for Students and Practitioners

This article explores the gap between students and practitioners in the field of emergency management and provides practical suggestions for bridging this divide. It highlights the importance of valuing practitioner expertise and offers recommendations for fostering meaningful relationships between students and practitioners.

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Bridging the Divide: Practical Suggestions for Students and Practitioners

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  1. Bringing Practitioners into the Fold: Practical Suggestions for Successfully Bridging the Divide Between Students and Practitioners Carol Cwiak North Dakota State University

  2. Education:The Highest Order of Mitigation “Mitigation is sustained action that reduces or eliminates long-term risk to people and property from hazards and their effects.” (Disaster Resistant Jobs Facilitator Guide, p. 4 - 6) • The highest order of mitigation requires a paradigm shift that adopts a posture of resilience above patchwork attempts at resistance and requires the proverbial “village” of practitioners, researchers, city planners, community organizers, businesses, etc. to buy-in to a new ideology of vulnerability and sustainability.

  3. The Gap? Book Smarts vs. Street Smarts AKA Experience vs. Education

  4. The Issues • Difference between depth and breadth of “knowing” • Immediacy of knowledge is required in the field • Stigma attached to degree • Age Are these issues what are really causing this gap?

  5. Is there more to this story? YES and NO The issues mentioned play a part, but the biggest issue is one of valuation. Do practitioners feel their expertise is valued by the higher education community?

  6. What’s really happening here? The valuation of “knowing” It is important to note at this point that the argument of book smarts versus street smarts is less about the way we “know”, than the valuation of the type of knowing. The message that college-educated is better is destined to be received combatively by those who are not college-educated, but know their job. Understand that college graduates are not the issue in-and-of themselves, the degree that is being heralded as validation of superiority and the face of the future that is the issue.

  7. Practical Suggestions • Create either a formal or informal advisory board that includes a number of key local, regional, state and federal practitioners from your area.  • Collegiate programs offering associate and bachelor degrees should offer practical/life experience credit hours for practitioners. • Bring in practitioners to speak to your classes. 

  8. Once a relationship is developed with local, regional and state practitioners, set up internships for students with practitioners.  • Contact local practitioners and extend the offer of utilizing students from their program for training and full-scale exercises. • Sponsor a community preparedness day on campus.

  9. Develop an award or series of awards to be awarded annually from your program that recognizes local, regional or state emergency management personnel excellence. • Have a practitioner be a co-advisor to an on-campus student emergency management organization. • Host quarterly practitioner and academic panels.

  10. Create a practitioner mentoring program. • Publish a monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly bulletin that features local practitioner profiles, articles, etc. • Establish a meaningful relationship with your state division of emergency management and homeland security.

  11. Conclusions • Honor and respect practitioner’s experience. • Make them an integral part of your program. • Build meaningful student and practitioner relationships. • Let the state division be a bridging organization.

  12. Carol Cwiak North Dakota State University P.O. Box 5075 Fargo, ND 58105-5075 madamgovnr@msn.com

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