Emergency Management Programs

Emergency management certification

The FEMA Advanced Professional Series

Edited by Taylor Rupe, B.A. Psychology, University of Washington Seattle · B.S. Computer Science, Oregon State University

Last updated

The FEMA Advanced Professional Series is what the Professional Development Series prepares you for, and it is a different animal. 10 courses instead of seven, classrooms instead of a browser, and a schedule set by your state emergency management agency rather than by you. The subject list tells you who it is for: debris management, mass fatalities, evacuation and re-entry, warning coordination. These are not survey topics. They are the things a working emergency manager has to get right.

Emergency personnel gathered outdoors for a training briefing, the kind of classroom and exercise work this series is delivered as

The Five Required Courses

Several of these accept an alternate course, shown here together rather than as separate requirements. Take one from each row.

Advanced Professional Series required courses
Course codeSubject
IS-2200 Basic EOC Functions
G191 or E/L449 Incident Command System and Emergency Operations Center interface, or ICS Train the Trainer
G557 Rapid Assessment Workshop
G205 or E210 Recovery from Disaster, the Local Government Role
G393 or G318 Mitigation for Emergency Managers, or Mitigation Planning for Local Governments

Read them as a sequence and they trace one disaster from start to finish. You staff an operations center, you connect that center to the incident command structure in the field, you assess damage fast enough for it to matter, you take a local government through recovery, and then you reduce the next event before it happens. That last one, mitigation, is the part of the job the public never sees and the part that consumes the most of a real emergency manager's year.

The Fifteen Electives, Of Which You Take Five

This is where the certificate bends toward the hazard you actually face and the role you actually hold. A school district planner and a coastal county's warning coordinator would finish the same certificate having taken almost nothing in common.

Advanced Professional Series elective courses
Course codeSubject
G288 Local Volunteer and Donations Management
G364 or L363 Multi-Hazard Emergency Planning for Schools, or for Higher Education
IS-703.a NIMS Resource Management
E/G202 Debris Management Planning for State, Local and Tribal Officials
G386 Mass Fatalities
G372 Flood Response Operations
IEMC/E900 Integrated Emergency Management Course
G108 Community Mass Care and Emergency Assistance
G358 Evacuation and Re-entry Planning
G290 or E388 or E/L952 Public Information Officer, at basic, advanced or all-hazards level
G271 or IS-271 Hazardous Weather and Flood Preparedness
G272 Warning Coordination
E/L/K146 Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program
G235 Emergency Planning
E/L/G0141 Instructional Presentation and Evaluation Skills

Getting On An Advanced Professional Series Course

The APS runs through state emergency management agencies, and that single fact governs the whole experience. Your state decides which courses it schedules, how often, and where. It also issues the certificate: EMI states that from 1 January 2019 the responsibility for issuing APS certificates passed to the state agencies, and that students submit proof of attendance to their state emergency management office for verification and approval.

So the first move is to find your state's training officer and ask what is on the calendar, not to look for an enrollment button on a federal website. Keep every completion certificate as you go, because the submission at the end is yours to assemble. Costs, travel and whether your employer releases you for classroom days are all set locally, which is the other question worth asking early.

Where The Advanced Professional Series Sits In The Ladder

There is a sensible order to the credentials in this field, and it maps to career stage rather than to ambition. The Professional Development Series is free, online and open to anyone, which makes it the thing to do while you are still studying. The APS comes once you hold a post, because it assumes one. The Certified Emergency Manager comes later still, since it wants years of documented experience and six categories of professional contribution behind it.

That ordering is also why a degree is worth choosing carefully rather than quickly. The training ladder above is largely free or employer-funded; the degree is the expensive part, and in-state tuition across the 87 ranked programs varies by a wide margin for material that is broadly the same. Compare them here.

Common Questions About The FEMA Advanced Professional Series

What is the FEMA Advanced Professional Series?
A ten-course certificate from FEMA's Emergency Management Institute: 5 required courses covering emergency operations center functions, incident command, rapid assessment, disaster recovery and mitigation, plus 5 chosen from 15 electives. Unlike the Professional Development Series it is classroom delivered rather than online, and it runs through your state emergency management agency.
What is the difference between the PDS and the APS?
Delivery, depth and access. The Professional Development Series is seven online independent study courses you can start tonight from anywhere. The APS is 10 classroom courses scheduled by your state emergency management agency, covering operational subjects like debris management, mass fatalities and evacuation planning that do not reduce well to a self-paced module. FEMA recommends the PDS as preparation for the APS, so the ordering is the intended one.
How do you enrol in the Advanced Professional Series?
Through your state emergency management agency rather than through FEMA directly. EMI states that APS courses are delivered through the state agency, and that since January 2019 the states also issue the certificates. That makes your state training officer the person to contact, and it means the schedule depends on what your state is running this year.
What are the prerequisites for the APS?
EMI recommends completing IS-100, IS-200, IS-700 and IS-800 in any version, or the Professional Development Series, before starting. Those are recommendations rather than gates. The practical prerequisite is a job: the courses are scheduled for working emergency managers and first responders, and several assume you have an operational role to apply them in.
Is the Advanced Professional Series worth it for a recent graduate?
Not as the next thing after graduation. The APS assumes an operational role and is delivered in classrooms your state schedules for people already working, so a graduate with no post yet will struggle to get on one and gain less from it if they do. The order that works is the free Professional Development Series while studying, a coordinator or specialist post, then the APS from inside the job.
Does the APS lead to the CEM?
They are separate credentials from separate bodies, and neither confers the other. IAEM sets its own training-hour requirements for the Certified Emergency Manager and decides what evidence satisfies them, so ask IAEM before assuming APS coursework counts. What the APS gives you regardless is documented classroom training in the operational subjects a director-level job draws on.

Sources On The FEMA Advanced Professional Series

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