U.S. FEMA Training & College Credits

FEMA Courses
http://www.free-clep-prep.com/FEMA-Courses.html


FEMA Courses Walkthrough

Check with your student advisor about transferring FEMA courses before potentially wasting your time and/or money. Not doing so will almost certainly lead to frustration and you being upset.

Not all colleges accept them and even the ones that do sometimes change the rules on the number and type they will allow.

Secondly, please read the entire page. FEMA courses are a confusing subject for many.

What are FEMA Courses?

Death by acronym time! - FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) has an educational division. The Emergency Management Institute (EMI) and National Fire Academy (NFA) have been around since the early 1940's. They actually purchased a women's college back in the late 1970's as a place to educate government officials (male and female) and members of the public on a variety of Emergency Management topics. The great news? These courses are free to take and can equal college credit!

What courses do they offer?

This is what drives most people crazy about the whole FEMA course process - It's bloody impossible to find a reliable list of which courses will count and where. That's because it seems to change so often.

Contact the school before you take these to confirm that the courses from the list below are acceptable for credit..  Feel free to download a copy. of courses.

FEMA courses accepted by Thomas Edison State College (worth one credit)
  • IS-1 Emergency Program Manager: An orientation to the Position
  • IS-3 Radiological Emergency Management
  • IS-5.a An Introduction to Hazardous Materials
  • IS-7 A Citizen's Guide to Disaster Assistance
  • IS-8.a Building for the Earthquakes of Tomorrow: Complying with Executive Order 12699
  • IS-10 Animals in Disaster - Module A Awareness and Preparedness
  • IS-11.a Animals in disaster - Module B Community Planning
  • IS-15.b Special Event Contingency Planning for Public Safety Agencies
  • IS-111 Livestock in Disasters
  • IS-120.a An Orientation to Community Disaster Exercises
  • IS-139 Exercise Design
  • IS-208.a State Disaster Management
  • IS-230.a Principles of Emergency Management
  • IS-235 Emergency Planning
  • IS-240 Leadership and Influence
  • IS-241 Decision Making and Problem Solving
  • IS-242 Effective Communication
  • IS-244 Developing and Managing Volunteers
  • IS-271 Anticipating Hazardous Weather & Community Risk
  • IS-275 The EOC's Role in Community Preparedness, Response and Recovery Activities
  • IS-279 Engineering Principles and Practices for Retrofitting Flood-Prone Residential Structures
  • IS-288 The Role of Voluntary Agencies in Emergency Management
  • IS-301 Radiological Emergency Response
  • IS-324.a Community Hurricane Preparedness
  • IS-346 An Orientation to Hazardous Materials for Medical Personnel
  • IS-386 Introduction to Residential Coastal Construction
  • IS-393.a Introduction to Mitigation
  • IS-394.a Mitigation for Homeowners
  • IS-630 Introduction to the Public Assistance Process
  • IS-631 Public Assistance Operations I
  • IS-632 Intro to Debris Operations in FEMA's Public Assistance Programs

  • IS-9 Managing Floodplain Development Through the National Flood Insurance Program (worth 2 credits)
FEMA courses accepted by Frederick Community College (worth one credit)
Original list from here and cleaned up to show the one-credit IS conversions. Check the link for changes
  • IS-1 Emergency Program Manager: An orientation to the Position
  • IS-3 Radiological Emergency Management
  • IS-5.a Hazardous Materials
  • IS-8a Building for the Earthquakes of Tomorrow: Complying with Executive Order 12699
  • IS-10 Animals in Disaster - Module A Awareness and Preparedness
  • IS-11.a Animals in disaster - Module B Community Planning
  • IS-111 Livestock in Disasters
  • IS-120.a An Orientation to Community Disaster Exercises
  • IS-139 Exercise Design
  • IS-208.a State Disaster Management
  • IS-230.a Principles of Emergency Management
  • IS-235 Emergency Planning
  • IS-240 Leadership and Influence
  • IS-241 Decision Making and Problem Solving
  • IS-242 Effective Communication
  • IS-244 Developing and Managing Volunteers
  • IS-253 Coordinating Environmental and Historic Preservation Compliance
  • IS-271 Anticipating Hazardous Weather & Community Risk
  • IS-279 Engineering Principles and Practices for Retrofitting Flood-Prone Residential Structures
  • IS-288 The Role of Voluntary Agencies in Emergency Management
  • IS-292 Disaster Basics
  • IS-301 Radiological Emergency Response
  • IS-324.a Community Hurricane Preparedness
  • IS-331 Introduction to Radiological Preparednesss (REP) Exercise Evaluation
  • IS-386 Introduction to Residential Coastal Construction
  • IS-393.a Introduction to Hazard Mitigation
  • IS-775 Emergency Operations Center (EOC)

How does it work?

You review the course material and then take an online, un-proctored exam. Provided you pass and have the grade sent to a regionally accredited college that accepts them, you've just earned one college credit!

What's the catch?

There are actually three catches.

The first is that these FEMA courses, depending on your school, are almost always applied as either general elective credits or Applied Professional credits. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but if you need X number of Arts and Sciences credits to get your degree, these likely won't fill that requirement.

The second catch is that the FEMA courses themselves are not evaluated by the American Council on Education (ACE). This means that many colleges will not accept them. A way around this limitation is to get the courses evaluated by a school such as Frederick Community College (FCC) which then assigns them to one of its own courses. You get credit for the course at FCC, which being a regionally accredited college, allows you to transfer those credits to other regionally accredited colleges.

The third catch is that these credits, like CLEP and DSST's, needs to apply to your degree.

How much does it cost?

FEMA EMI training courses are free!   
      Online courses incur no costs, just your time to complete the required training.  

      Onsite courses at the FEMA Emergency Management Institute may incur travel, meals, and lodging costs once approved by FEMA EMI and your sponsoring organization.

Thomas Edison accepts these credits directly from FEMA so there is no hefty re-transcribing cost associated with funneling them through another school. Once you take the courses, just get the certificates sent to TESC and they'll appear on your transcript at no cost, just like any other transfer credit.

FCC will charge you $76 per credit hour you're trying to transfer. So if you have 30 credits worth of FEMA courses you'd like transcribed, you're looking at around $2280.

I know that sounds like a lot, but let's put it into perspective - You just killed a year of college credits for under $2500. That's pretty darn competitive when individual classes can run you $300-$500 for only 3 credits!

How to take a FEMA Course

The first part is the same for everyone:

1. Contact your student advisor and ask them which FEMA courses they will accept. If they haven't heard of FEMA courses, try referring to them as courses from EMI (Emergency Management Institute). If they still haven't heard of them, then you can refer them the EMI website. If you're going to one of the Big 3, this shouldn't be an issue.

2. Head on over to the EMI website. The following link takes you to the ISP Course list. - http://training.fema.gov/IS/crslist.asp

3. Find the courses that you've confirmed will be accepted (you did check, right?). For this example, we're going to use IS-1 which seems to be a popular one. - IS-1 Emergency Manager

4. If you look in the top right hand of the screen, you'll see the "Download Materials" link. Go ahead and do so. Most are either in PDF or Word format. Just grab all of the links you see on the page that opens. Some of them have a single zip file with all of the pages combined. Obviously go for that one if available.

5. Read through the material. The subjects are pretty interesting in a "What to do when the world is falling apart" kind of way.

6. Time for the final exam! Download the copy of the final exam questions. Using your knowledge of what you've learned and the handy "Ctrl-F" find tool for anything you need to look up in the course materials, answer all of the questions on the downloadable final exam. Save your answers.

7. Once you've done so, you can then take the online exam and plug in the answers quickly. Of course you could skip the previous step, but this ensures you have all the time you need to find any questions you aren't sure about.

8. If you've passed, you should receive an EMail at the address you gave within 24 hours telling you the good news. If you didn't pass, try the test again. There's no limit or penalty for doing so.

9. So you passed! Congrats! Take the next one on your list and keep track of the ones you've already taken! You'll need that list later.

10. Fast forward to the end and we've taken all the FEMA courses we need to. Now we need to turn the courses into credits.

How to get credit for your FEMA courses

Frederick Community College

To transfer your credits with Frederick Community College, you'll need to "buy" each of the courses you've already completed at http://em-study.com/emsfema/. Just click on the "Buy Courses" tab and then select each of the courses you've already passed on the FEMA site. You did keep track, right? Each of them will run you $76, so once again.

Summary

FEMA courses can be a great way to fill out some free electives for a degree. There are even degrees out there like Emergency Management and some courses from FCC that are done almost entirely with these courses. Even if you're not going for something specifically in this field, there's a use for almost any situation.


If you're going to another school, you may want to weigh the benefits with the cost. If your testing center is 100 miles away and gives tests once a month, then the savings in time and gas money may be enough to justify that hefty transcription fee. Otherwise, another few CLEPs or DSST's will probably be your best bet.


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