From the Chief
Greetings,
This program has experienced a tremendous amount of growth in its short life and its demand is still growing. We as a group are working hard to meet that demand and embrace that growth without compromising our core values. Our goal when the program started was to provide, for those in our profession who are striving for excellence, a test of their basic skills in an extremely demanding environment. We hoped this would create a culture of training that we felt was lacking in the fire service.
We have and will continue to provide this course at no charge to participants because we wanted this opportunity to be available to everyone in the fire service. The course is funded through charitable contributions from past graduates and organizations that choose to support the course, no one is required to pay anything and no one receives pay. Every contribution is appreciated, but none of them are expected from anyone. This is at the very heart of our group’s mission; to provide this training opportunity to everyone whether they are paid, volunteer, participant or instructor without financial hardship.
The manner in which we provide this training and the facilities that we have available are limiting factors in determining the number of people the training can be delivered to in a given year. We strive to make sure the roster for a given class reaches the broadest geographical area possible because that enables sharing of information to the greatest number of people. Roster choices can be difficult and sometimes disappointing; this course is however worth the patience needed for selection. To improve the process we have decided to make the following changes to the selection process beginning with the fall class of 2012.
The application process will have an opening date and a closing date for each class. A notice of the opening date will be posted in advance on the web site and via email to instructors and past graduates. NEW application packets will be available on the web site. To be valid, the application packet must be returned by mail and post marked on or prior to the closing date. This packet will require more input from the candidate than in previous years and will assist us in the decision making process. We will make individual candidate selections on a rolling basis with a priority given to a high diversity of agencies represented. Applications WILL NOT be held or carried over from class to class.
This program has experienced a tremendous amount of growth in its short life and its demand is still growing. We as a group are working hard to meet that demand and embrace that growth without compromising our core values. Our goal when the program started was to provide, for those in our profession who are striving for excellence, a test of their basic skills in an extremely demanding environment. We hoped this would create a culture of training that we felt was lacking in the fire service.
We have and will continue to provide this course at no charge to participants because we wanted this opportunity to be available to everyone in the fire service. The course is funded through charitable contributions from past graduates and organizations that choose to support the course, no one is required to pay anything and no one receives pay. Every contribution is appreciated, but none of them are expected from anyone. This is at the very heart of our group’s mission; to provide this training opportunity to everyone whether they are paid, volunteer, participant or instructor without financial hardship.
The manner in which we provide this training and the facilities that we have available are limiting factors in determining the number of people the training can be delivered to in a given year. We strive to make sure the roster for a given class reaches the broadest geographical area possible because that enables sharing of information to the greatest number of people. Roster choices can be difficult and sometimes disappointing; this course is however worth the patience needed for selection. To improve the process we have decided to make the following changes to the selection process beginning with the fall class of 2012.
The application process will have an opening date and a closing date for each class. A notice of the opening date will be posted in advance on the web site and via email to instructors and past graduates. NEW application packets will be available on the web site. To be valid, the application packet must be returned by mail and post marked on or prior to the closing date. This packet will require more input from the candidate than in previous years and will assist us in the decision making process. We will make individual candidate selections on a rolling basis with a priority given to a high diversity of agencies represented. Applications WILL NOT be held or carried over from class to class.
We feel strongly that this will improve our program foreveryone involved.
Thank you for your support and interest in our program,
Chief Baxter