{"id":29637,"date":"2018-01-25T14:27:08","date_gmt":"2018-01-25T21:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=29637"},"modified":"2018-01-29T10:38:22","modified_gmt":"2018-01-29T17:38:22","slug":"new-emergency-manager-anxious-to-learn-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=29637","title":{"rendered":"New emergency manager anxious to learn, help"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Scott Smith, director, Emergency Management, watches as students practice a fire drill Wednesday afternoon.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As students streamed past him following a residence hall fire drill this week, Scott Smith took stock.<\/p>\n

As the new campus emergency manager, Smith marveled at the students\u2019 positive outlook, even as they were hustled from their rooms by blaring alarms and robotic voice commands urging them to leave the building.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis campus has a great culture,\u201d Smith said. \u201cEveryone seems engaged and really wants to be here. I\u2019m glad to be part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Scott Smith, director, Emergency Management,\u00a0greets Colorado Springs firefighters who responded to a fire drill call Wednesday afternoon.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Smith joined the Department of Public Safety Jan. 15 following a regional search. He spent 36 years as a paramedic and firefighter, retiring from the Colorado Springs Fire Department as captain of station seven located on Palmer Park Boulevard. The station\u2019s crews were among the city\u2019s busiest, responding to drug overdoses, car crashes, hazardous material spills and, of course, fires. The station\u2019s crews responded to the Nov. 2015 shootings at Planned Parenthood as well as many other high-profile emergencies.<\/p>\n

Responding to crisis was \u201cpart of the job,\u201d Smith said, but he found passion in preventing emergencies and training others to be prepared. He served two years in the City of Colorado Springs Office of Emergency Management and trained officers in firefighting techniques. He completed extensive training in the National Incident Management System, a federal protocol designed to improve inter-agency cooperation.<\/p>\n

Smith plans to conduct a needs assessment during the spring semester and build relationships on campus. He hopes to use information from faculty and staff to develop plans for how UCCS can prepare for emergencies, building upon efforts of his predecessor, Tim Stoecklein, as well as knowledge of Colorado Springs. Stoecklein left the university last summer to work as an emergency manager for a Kansas county.<\/p>\n

Before beginning his career as a paramedic and fire fighter, Smith earned a bachelor\u2019s degree from Southwest Texas State University. He later added a master\u2019s degree in fire service leadership from Grand Canyon University.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to learn more about this campus,\u201d Smith said. \u201cI\u2019ve peeked into some of the research labs and it just makes me want to learn more about the people here and what they do. I think I\u2019ll always be a student.\u201d<\/p>\n

— Photos by Tom Hutton<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following a 36-year career as a paramedic and firefighter, Scott Smith began as the UCCS emergency manager Jan. 15. (More)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":29635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,49],"tags":[44,43],"class_list":["post-29637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all","category-campus-announcements","tag-administration-and-finance","tag-department-of-public-safety"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/IMG_0478.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1mBpJ-7I1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29637"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29658,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29637\/revisions\/29658"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}