Best Bachelor's In Emergency Management Programs In Iowa, Ranked (2026)

Upper Iowa teaches this degree at eleven physical locations as well as online, six of them on or beside military installations in Kansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma.

The BS in Emergency and Disaster Management is built on the four phases the field plans around, preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation, and Upper Iowa says each phase demands different skills and that the curriculum covers all four rather than specializing. The core names Disaster Response and Recovery, Emergency Preparedness and Planning, Political and Policy Basis of Emergency Management, Principles and Practice of Hazards Mitigation, and Urban Management, and the degree finishes with a senior project. The blend of disciplines behind it is unusually broad for this field: political science, public administration, psychology and business administration. A certificate is available for someone who wants the subject without the major, and the university runs a Master of Public Administration as the stated next step.

The delivery is the real argument for it. Alongside the online and distance-learning routes, Upper Iowa lists locations at Fayette, Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, the Quad Cities and Waterloo in Iowa, and at Fort Riley in Kansas, Alexandria, Baton Rouge, DeRidder, Fort Polk and New Orleans in Louisiana, and Fort Sill in Oklahoma. Half of those are military. Courses run on a two-at-a-time schedule so students carry fewer classes at once, with evening options. Recommended minors are Health Services Administration, Management and Psychology.

One caution about the page rather than the program. Its salary section quotes an emergency management director median of $76,250 and elsewhere a May 2019 figure of $74,590, plus a growth projection running to 2026 and another for 2018 to 2028. Those are several BLS releases out of date. The current OEWS figure for this occupation is on our own salary page, and the Iowa number in particular is a long way from the national one.

• Eleven locations plus online and distance learning
• Six locations on or beside military installations
• Two-at-a-time course schedule with evening options
• Senior project, and an MPA pathway afterward

This is a Bachelor of Applied Science rather than a BA or BS, which means sixty of its hundred and twenty credits are professional electives built to absorb training you already have.

The applied-science structure is the whole point of this degree and it is worth understanding before comparing it with the others here. Thirty credits are the BAS core, thirty are the emergency management major, and the remaining sixty are professional electives that any Waldorf course can fill. That is half the degree left open, which suits someone arriving with a large body of completed coursework or technical training and suits a school-leaver much less well. Waldorf puts the completion estimate at four years full time, requires a C or better in every course in the major and any concentration, a 2.00 cumulative GPA, and a minimum of thirty upper-division credits.

The major itself is a clean run through the field: Introduction to Emergency Management, Disaster Mitigation and Preparedness, Disaster Response and Recovery, Terrorism in Emergency Management, Interagency Disaster Management, Incident Command in Emergency and Disaster Management, the Socio-Psychological Nature of Emergency Management, and a capstone. Two required courses sit outside that sequence: Community Risk Reduction for the Fire and Emergency Services, and Life, Meaning and Vocation. Concentrations in Fire Science and Homeland Security are available, and the elective list is where the fire service weighting shows, with Fireground Strategies and Tactics, Personnel Management for the Fire and Emergency Services, and Fire and Emergency Services Administration all on it. The program is available online only.

• Bachelor of Applied Science: 60 of 120 credits are professional electives
• Fire Science and Homeland Security concentrations
• Incident command and interagency management in the required major
• Online only, about four years full time

Waldorf's homeland security BA is a conventional 30-credit major with an emergency management concentration inside it, which makes it the mirror image of the applied-science degree above.

The BA opens from the Department of Homeland Security itself, which Waldorf describes as the largest federal law enforcement agency in the country, and works outward into the strategies DHS uses to prevent, plan for and respond to terrorist threats. The named subject matter is American homeland security, tactical response operations, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. The required major is ten courses: Introduction to Terrorism, American Homeland Security, Terrorism Response Operations, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Ethical and Legal Issues in Homeland Security, Disaster Planning and Management, Homeland Security Technology, Preparedness and Response Partners, Critical Infrastructure Protection, and a capstone. Waldorf says some of its faculty have DHS experience alongside private, county, state and federal backgrounds.

Three concentrations are offered, in Criminal Justice, Cybersecurity and Emergency Management, and that third one is what makes this and the applied-science degree above worth comparing directly rather than treating as one school's two listings. Both are online only, both are 120 credits, and both draw on the same EMG course spine. The difference is which way round the weighting runs: this degree teaches emergency management as a concentration inside homeland security, and the BAS teaches homeland security as a concentration inside emergency management. Waldorf also points transfer-heavy applicants toward a separate BAS in Homeland Security, which is not in this ranking.

• Ten-course homeland security major, 120 credits total
• Criminal Justice, Cybersecurity and Emergency Management concentrations
• Weapons of mass destruction and critical infrastructure taught explicitly
• Online only, with faculty drawn partly from DHS