Firehouse Interview: Dr. Denis Onieal

DR. DENIS ONIEAL was appointed superintendent of the National Fire Academy (NFA) in Emmitsburg, MD, in 1995. He completed a bachelor of science degree from New Jersey City University in 1976, a master’s degree in public administration from Fairleigh Dickinson University in 1978 and a doctor of education degree from New York University in 1990. Onieal joined the Jersey City, NJ, Fire Department in 1971, rising through the ranks from firefighter to deputy chief, and then acting chief in 1995, leading a uniformed force of 620 firefighters and officers. During his NFA tenure, the academy expanded its outreach program to work more closely with state and local training agencies. The NFA curriculum has been completely revised to include college credit recommendation and continuing education units for all resident and off-campus deliveries. In cooperation with over 100 colleges and universities, the NFA has standardized the associate and bachelor degree curriculum. Recently, the NFA was authorized by Congress to expand into EMS curriculum. Beginning on Sept. 12, 2001, Onieal led the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) team at the World Trade Center, working to help the FDNY re-establish its systems of command, control and on-site communications. In 2005, he was sent to Atlanta, GA, to lead the in-processing, training and dispatch of 4,000 firefighters to assist in the response to Hurricane Katrina.

FIREHOUSE: Recently, I had a chance to catch up with Dr. Denis Onieal, superintendent of the National Fire Academy (NFA). I asked Dr. Onieal to provide an update on NFA activities, curriculum and, of course, technology. Let me begin by asking what’s new at the NFA?

ONIEAL: Where do I begin? The improvements to our curriculum are constant – at any given time, we have about 30 different courses in development or revision. We’ve been authorized by Congress to offer courses in emergency medical services (EMS), and just like our other courses, they are typically higher-level management and leadership – we’re not going to be doing chest compressions and intubation on campus any more than we do hoses and ladders. All of the EMS courses are new – and we’re getting great feedback on them. When and where appropriate, we’re adding EMS into our current curriculum and course titles.

With the added responsibilities that fire departments are experiencing, we’re expanding our prevention and public education curriculums into a greater focus on community risk reduction. Communities have many risks; fire is one. To remain relevant, we see more and more fire departments expanding into the all-risk, all-hazard arenas – they’re the ones who are saving the lives and protecting the property.

FIREHOUSE: How are you educating the next generation of fire service leaders?

ONIEAL: One of the challenges our fire and emergency services are facing is the rapid turnover in personnel and how to get people up and trained ready for their next leadership responsibility. For years, the NFA has had the four-year Executive Fire Officer (EFO) program designation. As many of your readers know, that is the most sought-after credential by cities looking to hire or promote people into the top leadership positions.

Thanks to the leadership of Fire Administrator Chief Ernie Mitchell, Deputy Fire Administrator Glenn Gaines and the NFA Board of Visitors, we’re embarking on a new program for company-level officers – those mid-level sergeants, lieutenants, captains, battalion chiefs. It is a two-year Managing Officer (MO) program, designed to get men and women engaged in their own professional development earlier in their fire leadership journey – in both the career and volunteer fire and emergency medical services. The curriculum includes on-line and off-campus NFA courses, and two two-week sessions in Emmitsburg, concluding with a project. All the information and requirements are on our web page: http://www.usfa.fema.gov/training/nfa/programs/mo_program.html.

Deputy Superintendents Rob Neale and Dr. Kirby Kiefer, along with our managers, training specialists and course designers, have done yeoman’s work in bringing that effort to fruition. It has been a heavy lift, but well worth the effort.

FIREHOUSE: Please describe the accreditation of the NFA.

ONIEAL: Each year, our curriculum is reviewed by the American Council on Education (ACE) for its academic rigor. We continue to sustain college credit recommendations on all of our courses at the associate, bachelor and master degree levels. Additionally, our courses receive continuing education units (CEUs) from the International Association of Continuing Education and Training (IACET).

The reviews serve two purposes; the first is that they provide an outside, academic and objective review of our curriculum to assure that we’re meeting top academic standards. Secondly, the credit and CEU awards give our students the ability to transfer their NFA coursework into degree programs at home or CEUs that are required to sustain their professional or licensing requirements.

FIREHOUSE: What technological innovations are being made at the academy?

ONIEAL: As far as the classrooms go, one by one, we’re upgrading the technologies quite a bit – AV equipment, WiFi in the classrooms and “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD), allowing students to download their student manuals to laptops and tablets. We’re implementing BYOD one course at a time because there are always technology glitches associated with page numbers and AV/slide alignment. We have to get that right before we move on to another course. Students can highlight and take notes right in the manual. Students are downloading pre-course material from our web page so they are better prepared to start their courses on the first day of class.

FIREHOUSE: What about physical improvements?

ONIEAL: As far as our facility – all of the dorms have been renovated; we’re finishing up the last building now – A dorm. All rooms have geo-thermal HVAC, temperature controlled in each room, flat-screen TVs and WiFi. We’ve redone the cafeteria – new equipment and layouts and we’re working on making additional serving improvements there. Thanks to the FEMA Administrator, Craig Fugate, there have been a lot of improvements that cost a lot of money that no one ever sees – roofs, sidewalks, accessibility improvements and the like. The great part of the National Fire Academy is our beautiful old buildings, some going back to the 1830s, but they require a lot of maintenance. Fortunately, we have terrific folks keeping us on track in our facility maintenance.

FIREHOUSE: Please discuss the standardization of fire service associate and bachelor degree programs.

ONIEAL: We’ve been working very, very hard with the colleges and universities throughout the country to standardize the associate and bachelor degree programs; the program is called Fire and Emergency Services Higher Education (FESHE). Working with about 100 colleges and universities from around the country, we established model curriculum and syllabi for the “fire” degree, something that our profession never had. Now, all of the publishers are producing textbooks that follow the FESHE syllabi. When a college follows the model and has a signed agreement with their state fire training system (to encourage a combined effort of training and education), we will award them a FESHE “Recognition” certificate, signed by the college president, the state fire training system and the NFA superintendent. It is pretty impressive, and over 75 schools have received recognition so far – and they advertise it far and wide, “We’re a FESHE recognized program!”

The last two pieces are about our NFAOnline. We have our very popular “Coffee Break Training” (CBT) series, which are one page, three- to five-minute lessons about one topic – it could be anything from management, to hazardous materials, to pipeline safety to fire prevention. We sent out about 7 million CBTs last year and people continue to ask for more. Folks can sign up on our NFA web page and they’ll get about one per week: http://www.usfa.fema.gov/training/coffee_break/.

FIREHOUSE: What about online courses?

ONIEAL: In our online courses, we’re training upwards of 40,000 students a year, and that number keeps growing. The majority of our courses are independent/self-study with exams at the end. We’ve just begun experimenting with mediated online courses – those are instructor-led. We’re in the process of standing up a more sophisticated online platform that will support the delivery of our mediated courses. This will provide students and instructors a wide range of collaboration tools. We have the curriculum and courses designed the way we want them, but we’re still experimenting with the course length. Most colleges are experiencing a dropout rate of about 70-80% for their no-cost or low-cost online courses. Our experience is about 50%, somewhat lower. What we have done to try to fix that is to take a 45-hour course and break it down into three 15-hour courses – shorten the horizon. Our completion rate is much higher – 70% for the shorter modules – but we’re still tinkering with them to try to get them right.

Finally, we’ve entirely revamped our web pages – optimizing the content for mobile devices. We’re using responsive web design to tailor the display of content to the user’s screen size. This is especially important for mobile users. This creates and easier and faster way to use the information on our web page.

FIREHOUSE: What’s next?

ONIEAL: Our training specialists and the course designers are keeping their eyes on the future. The 2010 census revealed that about 25% of our population is comprised of baby boomers who are now beginning their journeys as senior citizens. We have 40-50 years of data that demonstrate that seniors in the United States are the high-risk group for accidents, the high-risk group for fires and the high-demand group for EMS. That is going to create a tremendous demand on services that few recognize today.

Our challenge at the NFA is to make sure our leaders understand that this is the new environment, our new reality. Along with this, keep one thing in mind – seniors are politically active, and this generation has been politically active their entire lives, beginning with their college demonstrations against the Vietnam War.

As seniors, many aren’t concerned about schools anymore because their children are raised. Many aren’t concerned about roads, because they won’t be driving anywhere. What all of them ARE concerned about is when they call for help, they’ll soon hear sirens. And if the fire service isn’t there, they’ll start calling their elected officials to find someone else who can. The life expectancy of a boomer today is about 85, which means the boomer generation will reach his/her life expectancy in the year 2050. We’ve got 35 years of high-risk accident and fire and high-demand EMS. We need to get ready for that.

Our partnership with the state fire training system in each state is as strong as ever. State training systems are authorized to deliver NFA training in their state. We provide them with the curriculum and supporting AV materials; they use their instructors and facility to deliver the training. We trained over 50,000 fire and EMS personnel that way last year. States are authorized to issue NFA certificates and to register their students in the NFA student database – most do. The advantage to the student is that an NFA course is recognized in all 50 states, and in addition, we can provide a complete transcript for the student if their state provides us with their application. This often proves handy for those members of the service who move to another state or who are seeking college credit for training received.

As for the future of the NFA, in my view, it is as bright as it has ever been. We’ve made peace with the fact that we will be forever challenged by the “bean counters” who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. There are some who think that every part of NFA training should be online because they think it’s cheaper; it isn’t. We find that our online training puts an even higher demand on our resident and off-campus classroom deliveries because people learn about them from our web page. The more difficult challenge for us is making the call – course delivery in residence at Emmitsburg, in an off-campus classroom or online? There are plenty of opinions, but I can honestly say that there’s no perfect answer. With continued support from Congress, we’ll continue our resident program for those courses that require peer interaction and close, face-to-face interaction; off-campus classroom-based courses through our state fire training partners; and online for the courses for the increased need for flexibility when and where appropriate.

It’s pretty amazing how much change we have and will continue to experience. The men and women who joined our service after 9/11 – just over 13 years ago – are now halfway through their 25-year careers and many of them are mid- to senior leaders in their organizations.

We’ve got some terrific men and women at the NFA working to develop and deliver courses and provide support through our programs. We’re blessed with a great faculty and great working relationships with all the major constituent groups. We’re adapting and changing, just like every other organization, because if we don’t, we’ll become irrelevant. We have to continue to focus on the future; preparing the next generation of leaders. That’s our responsibility.

CHARLES WERNER, a Firehouse^® contributing editor, is a 40-year veteran of the career and volunteer fire service. He is the present fire chief of the Charlottesville, VA, Fire Department. Werner also serves on the Charlottesville-Albemarle-UVA Emergency Communications Center Management Board, Virginia Statewide Interoperability Executive Committee, Virginia Fire Service Council, National Alliance for Public Safety GIS, IAFC Technology Council and is chair of the National Information Sharing Consortium and co-chair of the joint White House/DHS Incident Management Information Sharing Sub Committee.

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