Will Schlosser: Real-World Ready

00:00:00 Sumer Beatty: Welcome to Tomorrow Makers, where we explore how we learn, live, work, and play now and in the future. I'm Sumer Beatty. 00:00:10 Carlos Ramos: And I'm Carlos Ramos. Hey Sumer, I got a question for you. How, how are you at planning? 00:00:15 Sumer Beatty: I think I'm a good planner. 00:00:16 Carlos Ramos: Good planner? 00:00:17 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. 00:00:17 Carlos Ramos: Like, so emergency situation, what does that look like? 00:00:21 Sumer Beatty: Oh yeah, it's strange because I actually feel like I jump into action. There was a car one time. I was in an apartment in Lewisburg when we lived there, a car went by, I heard all this commotion. Duh duh duh duh duh, like people screaming, people screaming. And I looked out, and these people were chasing a dog back and forth. So it had gotten loose, and this was a busy street, and they're chasing this dog back and forth. My heart's thumping, and I'm like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. The dog gets hit by a car. It was awful. I, I grabbed the quilt off my bed and I ran down and these people were freaking out. I went and I was like, telling people in their cars, pull over, a dog's been hit. I give them my blanket off my bed and they took the dog, you know, away. But it was one of those cases where it's like, You know, fight or flight, like, just jumping into action, like, someone's dog got hit. I don't know, I think I'd be okay in that situation as we were having our guests speak to us. I was like, Oh, I think this sounds like a pretty fun career path. 00:01:19 Carlos Ramos: Yeah. Well, you're not going off that career path because I need you to where you're at. 00:01:22 Sumer Beatty: Well, there's a little emergency management in, in every, every arena. 00:01:26 Carlos Ramos: We won't even get into that here. We have Will Schlosser here, faculty for emergency management and homeland security. This is a fantastic, I always say this is a fantastic one, but this is, this is, 00:01:39 Sumer Beatty: Oh my gosh. Yeah. It's like, what hasn't he done? He's been an assistant principal. He's managed all of these operations. He's been. Been a band director. It's like the more we talk to him, we're like, oh my goodness, how are you not 90 years old? Like, 00:01:52 Carlos Ramos: I know. 00:01:53 Sumer Beatty: I know and, and he is not old. Like, what the heck? He's just had so many cool experiences. 00:01:58 Carlos Ramos: Yeah. No need for us to belabor it. We're just gonna jump right in. We're not even gonna introduce him once we get back to it. So. Will Schlosser, Emergency Management, Homeland Security, On Tomorrow Makers. Here we go. My gosh, Will, what have you not done? 00:02:15 Will Schlosser: I've never flown in a helicopter. 00:02:18 Carlos Ramos: You've never flown in a helicopter? Correct. Oh my gosh, that is, that is so bizarre, especially knowing some of the aspects of what we're going to talk about today. 00:02:26 Sumer Beatty: Yeah, I think you can check that box off really soon. 00:02:29 Will Schlosser: I highly doubt it. There's a whole lot of paperwork to get that goes with that. Really? Oh yeah. Yeah, because of all the liabilities involved. 00:02:36 Carlos Ramos: Okay. I know we were really close to, this was like right, this is in 2020. We were, January 2020, we were, scheduled to join Army ROTC, in the Chinooks that they, they would take, between our campus, Mansfield. I don't know if they actually landed over in Lock Haven or if the land, the Lock Haven, cadets came over here and then they, they flew up to, Mansfield. But. one or two of us in marketing were going to be embedded, with the team and we had that clearance to go and then, you know, what happened in 2020. 00:03:12 Will Schlosser: Yep. Yeah, interesting. So those requests actually get routed up through the Department of the Army, and then they actually go to the Pentagon at this point, to be approved every single time. So that chain takes a while. It was interesting. We flew, So one of the things, you have in there, Operation Crosstail, but, that's part of an air defense mission that we run. And so we had, if you look up, the Today Show, Ted Rossen reports. We flew an air defense mission with him out of State College. Ted Rossen is a pilot. So I'm like, I want to fly and they're like, yeah, no, I've flown on the target aircraft a bunch cause I'm a rated observer, but the, when you put other people in those planes, the approvals are through the roof to get it. But PR is one of the ones that you can get. Pretty quickly. 00:03:56 Carlos Ramos: Okay. I didn't know that. There's our in. 00:03:58 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. And there's your in too. So we'll just keep you in mind if we need extra help here on staff. 00:04:05 Will Schlosser: I can shoot a DSLR pretty, pretty decently. 00:04:08 Sumer Beatty: Okay. There we go. Good. I'll take, I'll opt out of a helicopter ride. 00:04:12 Carlos Ramos: You're not in? 00:04:15 Sumer Beatty: I could take it or leave it. It sounds like he really wants to go. 00:04:17 Carlos Ramos: Have you like been there done that thing or? 00:04:19 Sumer Beatty: No. 00:04:20 Carlos Ramos: No, you haven't? 00:04:20 Sumer Beatty: No, I haven't. 00:04:21 Will Schlosser: Do you like flying? 00:04:22 Sumer Beatty: In a commercial airplane? I mean, it's okay. I'm not afraid of it. 00:04:27 Will Schlosser: How about a little plane? 00:04:28 Sumer Beatty: Never done it. I heard that's completely different. 00:04:30 Will Schlosser: It is a hundred percent different. 00:04:32 Sumer Beatty: Lots of, lots of movement. 00:04:34 Will Schlosser: Can be. 00:04:35 Sumer Beatty: Lots of feelings. 00:04:36 Carlos Ramos: Oh, there is. 00:04:37 Sumer Beatty: My husband was, one of his professors in college had a little airplane and he took students up, which I'm sure is not allowed. It wasn't Pennsylvania College of Technology, it was a different institution. 00:04:47 Will Schlosser: All the disclaimers. 00:04:48 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. And he was like, Oh, I was so nauseous the whole time. 00:04:51 Carlos Ramos: Yeah, my only experience was to go up and jump out of it. it was tandem jump, which, you know, so, you know, I'm still a bundle of nerves. I'm like, Hey, we're, we're going up, you know, what, to 10,000 / 12,000 feer. And, you know, then to willingly just dump out of it. And it was really fun because, you know, they, They, it wasn't like you just, 00:05:10 Will Schlosser: that's one definition. . 00:05:12 Carlos Ramos: But it wasn't like, okay, you're just on the edge. At least for the, this, this particular one, wasn't like you were on the edge and you, you made the decision to, to jump out. They, like, they put you on the edge, but then they, well, no, they didn't push you. They tilted the plane. 00:05:25 Will Schlosser: Oh, yeah. 00:05:26 Sumer Beatty: Dumped you. 00:05:27 Carlos Ramos: Yeah. 00:05:27 Will Schlosser: Nice. 00:05:27 Sumer Beatty: Did they tell you in advance? 00:05:28 Carlos Ramos: Yeah. They let us know exactly how that was gonna go, . 00:05:31 Sumer Beatty: Oh, okay. 00:05:31 Will Schlosser: I wonder why you would do that. 00:05:33 Carlos Ramos: Well, so I guess, yeah, so you don't like freak out and like try to like a cat and try to claw the edge of whatever it is that you're yet, but it, yeah, it was, it was a real graceful experience. Now we dumped right into a cloud, so, you know, and 00:05:48 Will Schlosser: Moist, 00:05:49 Carlos Ramos: Yeah, moist. And then, you know, the whole immediately your ears go and you're like, Oh, the pain of, of the ears. And they tell you to do one thing. And I'm like, well, This isn't working, this is making it worse. so I did the opposite thing and for me that was like, Oh, great, instant relief. But yeah, I guess everyone's a little different. 00:06:07 Will Schlosser: Interestingly, I am deathly afraid of heights, but I love flying. 00:06:11 Sumer Beatty: Oh, wow, you feel safe. 00:06:13 Will Schlosser: Trust the physics. 00:06:14 Sumer Beatty: Okay, so can we rewind a little bit? Because you said earlier it kind of seemed like you might be inviting me to take a plane ride. Or was I misinterpreting that? 00:06:22 Will Schlosser: We can absolutely take you. 00:06:23 Sumer Beatty: Do you have, in what? 00:06:24 Will Schlosser: Yeah. Well, we could do a PR flight for, for CAP. I mean, we can probably get that done pretty easily. 00:06:29 Sumer Beatty: A PR flight for what? 00:06:30 Will Schlosser: Civil Air Patrol. 00:06:31 Sumer Beatty: Oh, okay. What kind of PR? 00:06:34 Will Schlosser: So we, we do a thing called fly a teacher. So anybody that's involved in education, we can take up and experience flight and STEM. to fly around the campus, take pictures of the campus, come back. 00:06:46 Sumer Beatty: When do you want to do that? Maybe Maybe. 00:06:51 Will Schlosser: I don't know. I'll, I'll have to talk to my director. Oh yeah, absolutely. You know, the one's the best time to fly is in the winter. The planes are the, this is going to sound odd. The propellers are much more aggressive in the air because of the density of the air. So the, the planes just lift off. You have a higher max load. It's cooler all around, so there's less turbulence. so like today is going to be an awful day to go flying, because there'll be a significant difference in the air temperature versus the ground temperature. And so that's what causes turbulence. So, at 3,000 feet. It'll be a, okay. 00:07:24 Sumer Beatty: I'd like the 3000. I'm comfortable with that. But this talk at 10,000, I was like, I know how high 10,000 feet is. 00:07:29 Carlos Ramos: There's no difference in 3,000 and 10,000. If things go wrong, 00:07:34 Will Schlosser: Oxygen, 00:07:34 Sumer Beatty: Right, right, right. Yeah. The oxygen aspect, I'm thinking like some of those Hills in Colorado or over 10,000 plus, 00:07:40 Carlos Ramos: Yeah, you can still breathe at 10,000 and it's, 00:07:43 Sumer Beatty: it's impacted. I feel it a little bit. 00:07:45 Carlos Ramos: Yeah. Do you? 00:07:46 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. 00:07:46 Will Schlosser: At 10,000 feet, you're only allowed to fly up there for like 15, 20 minutes without supplemental oxygen. 00:07:50 Carlos Ramos: Oh, really? 00:07:51 Will Schlosser: Yeah. 00:07:52 Sumer Beatty: So I'm just thinking that's what you jumped out of. 00:07:54 Carlos Ramos: Yeah. 00:07:55 Will Schlosser: Wow. 00:07:56 Sumer Beatty: That's why they dumped you. There's no time to hold on. It was like, get these people out of here and get back down. Oh my goodness. So all this conversation, I have to wrap my mind around what, your position entails. Like, you know so much about so many different things. So, holy cow. Okay. 00:08:16 Will Schlosser: Don't tell my wife. 00:08:18 Sumer Beatty: So what, just for our listeners, I think we, we need to introduce you and set that stage because we just kind of jumped into it. I don't. 00:08:27 Carlos Ramos: And I liked, I'm liking this. 00:08:28 Sumer Beatty: You like that? Okay. 00:08:29 Carlos Ramos: Yeah. 00:08:29 Sumer Beatty: No, it's cool. but I'm thinking somebody's, they're going to see your photo. They're going to see your name. They know who you are, but we just. 00:08:35 Carlos Ramos: And we, I think we tell them like before we actually get into this, 00:08:38 Sumer Beatty: we're just. 00:08:39 Carlos Ramos: But if you wanted to. 00:08:39 Sumer Beatty: No, no, it's cool. I just, I'm thinking emergency management and homeland security. 00:08:44 Will Schlosser: Hi, my name is Will. 00:08:45 Sumer Beatty: I know, no, it's cool. I just feel like I want to kind of have you tell us what is emergency management and homeland security because it's so vast and hearing you speak is making me even realize how, how more vast it is. 00:08:59 Will Schlosser: Yeah, so emergency management and Homeland Security as a career field, if you think of it as, anything that can affect life or property or your program, so we tend to take a look at those things and go, okay, what could go wrong? And then once you figure out what could go wrong, then you figure out what can you do to prevent that from happening. It's called mitigation. So a good example here in campus is the fire systems. Right, we know that buildings have fires in them, historically speaking, so that's a threat, it's a hazard. So, some emergency manager somewhere went, how do we make this not a hazard? Well, fire sprinklers, fire alarms, things like that. There hasn't been a fire death in a school in Pennsylvania since the 50s. That's because we took a look at it and went, this is a problem, how do we fix it? We do fire drills, we have doors that automatically close, so that's one aspect. Another big example you could use is the levee system here. So, the levee system, we haven't had a major flood in Williamsport proper. Now, south of Williamsport is a little bit different, but Williamsport proper since the 70s. It's because we put the levy system in, because flooding caused so much damage here. So it really, anything that you can consider a hazard, we try to go in and figure out why would it happen, and what can we do to prevent it from happening. Even so much as like, banks have emergency managers. How do we reduce risk to our financial institutions? So part of it's a physical structure, but maybe it's an investment structure, or if this person isn't available to us, what's, who's the number two? So identifying all those things ahead of time. 00:10:28 Sumer Beatty: How do you even get in your car every day? I mean, is that trickle into your daily life? Like, are you always thinking about what could go wrong? How do I make sure something can, can be prevented or 00:10:41 Will Schlosser: No, but that's part of the fun of it, right? 00:10:43 Sumer Beatty: I know you're a very relaxed person and I've not met you, but I, I was like thinking, what does this, this, this entail? What does a person who manages emergencies and plans for them, are they like, you know, a very. almost like a accountant like person or, you know, trying to think through all that, but you seem very relaxed. I feel like you're all, you're good with just uncertainty. 00:11:04 Will Schlosser: Yeah, exactly. And I think that the thing that we do really well, we're really good project managers in really stressful situations. So I don't get upset almost in anything. It's, it's very hard to get me anxious, about anything really. It certainly happens and I try to avoid it. and that's done through training. Like you just put yourself in stressful situations enough that you're like, okay, this is just running the program again. So there's processes that we do, there's a thing called the planning P that in my life I use all the time. There's also a thing called the OODA loop. So if you're in business or a fighter pilot, the OODA loop is something that's very, very familiar to you. which is just a continuous improvement cycle. So you observe your situation, you orient yourself to what your options are, decide on one, then do it. And then you've got a new situation, because something has changed. So if you look at life like that, then, okay, if it didn't work, it's fine. What's the next type around? 00:11:53 Sumer Beatty: Make it sound so simple. 00:11:55 Will Schlosser: Ears open. 00:11:58 Sumer Beatty: Why doesn't the everyday person know about this? I think that would ease some anxiety overall. Maybe. 00:12:05 Carlos Ramos: I was kind of thinking that it's like, how do you, you know, like, cause we will, if we try to go into that, that cycle is something that we're, we're passionate about doing in a business or in a personal sense, I mean, you're still doing work. You're, you're, you're doing work just like we would do, but I think you've got to keep yourself there. There's a, is there an emotional detachment in these cases, or, you're, you're just so practiced and trained that you're able to separate that out. 00:12:35 Will Schlosser: I think realizing that humans are important is a really huge aspect of our career. So, I think one of the stories that I tell often in class is Hurricane Sandy. so I went through and I was a brand new incident commander during Hurricane Sandy. And New Jersey pretty much got destroyed. Got a lot of water and there was a lot of destruction, so they actually ran out, our organization ran out of incident commanders that were available, that were qualified for the level that needed to be. So I said, yep, I can come over and help. So I went to McGuire Air Force Base, got into the ops center there, and, and just evaluated, right? So the first thing I did is I went to the incident commander that was there, and we do what's called a change of command. So what's the current situation? What assets do you have? What are you planning? What's the money situation? All that kind of stuff. he was not really able to tell me anything. He was just too tired. He was done. So I'm like, okay, let's go for a walk. So we just, we went for a walk around the block, and then we sat down in his office, closed the door, and then we started the conversation again, much more productive, right? And so then, coming back out, I started talking with the rest of the staff, we started getting all the processes, just like I said before, with the OODA loop going through and getting everything set up. We got to the end of the day and I was like, okay, so our, our start time tomorrow is 06. Let's make sure everyone's rested and ready to go. And everyone kind of looked at each other and I'm like, okay, I don't know any of you, but that's not the normal look. And they're like, yeah, or how our homes are gone. We don't have any place to go. And I'm like, Oh, okay. So moving on, what's our next step? Okay. We need to get bedding here. We need to get foods here. And so like you start to just go, how do you make life okay for a closer circle. that was one of my first really major operations. And so like you start to have that emotional intelligence about your situation next to you. and being empathetic to that helps you on a broader scale. Then knowing that, hey, for me, I need to go for a hike after I get back, which was really an interesting story because I came back to, I live up near, Wellsboro, PA. So I went for a hike in the Grand Canyon. And there's a visitor center at the top and I was just kind of sitting there looking at some maps and there were two guys there. And this is just when I came back from McGuire and I'm like, Hey, where are you from? Struck up a conversation. They're like, yeah, we're from Jersey, but we're, we're, we're not really sure what's, what's happened to our houses. And I still had all the access to all of my photos. because what we did was we made a photo mosaic from Cape May to Cape Cod, 10 miles deep. So we could take a look at damage on any particular property. Right. And so I was able to pull their property up and they're like, it's gone. I'm like, yep. It is definitely gone. I'm so sorry. And they're like, no, this is great. We actually know now. So we'll just hike and then we'll find a hotel and we'll call our insurance company. I'm like, great. Here's here's the public facing website that you can go to prove your property damage. So, yeah, a lot of the stuff we do is hard. So you got to take care of yourself. But there's also an enormous benefit, even if it's bad. It's a lot of times it's closure to people. So. 00:15:36 Carlos Ramos: Okay, so good to know that someone that does have that, that high emotional capacity, they'll thrive in this position, as long as they have that self care component. 00:15:46 Will Schlosser: 100%. You can get burned out really easily too, so I've seen. Guys just, they burn and burn and burn, and then they're done. So you, if you want to be a long duration, you got to make sure that you take care of yourself, for sure. 00:15:57 Carlos Ramos: Now, in my inadvertent research for this, because it wasn't, you know, absolutely non intentional, I was listening to another podcast, People I Mostly Admire, with Steve Levitt, and I was like, And he was, interviewing, oh my gosh, what was, the name? Raj Shah, who had been tapped, by Obama, if I remember everything correctly, to head the response for the Haiti earthquake. and just the way he was talking about, the, the operations and just how quickly things had to ramp up. but that same thing of, you know, getting, You know, making those connections to who would be on the ground normally to support those things and to find out those people are gone. They were victims of the earthquake. 00:16:44 Will Schlosser: Yeah, it's really an interesting thing. And when you talk about islands, it's a little bit different too. So, I had the privilege of working in, I wasn't in Puerto Rico, but working with Puerto Rico during Hurricane Irma and Maria. So what we do, what Civil Air Patrol does mostly is aerial imagery. We also do some local level disaster recovery like sandbag operations, go and see critical infrastructure and make sure it's okay. But it was really interesting because I'd never been to Puerto Rico, really don't know anything about Puerto Rico, didn't know that Puerto Rico was going to be my problem. But if you look at FEMA regions, my position at the time was I was the, this is a really long title, Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations for the Northeast Region. Basically what that meant was I was in charge of all operations from Pennsylvania into the Northeast United States for CAP. and Puerto Rico, obviously not that. But FEMA regions, FEMA region two is New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, and the U. S. Virgin Islands. Interesting. Yeah. So I get this phone call saying, Hey, are you ready for this hurricane? And my reply back was, yeah, but it's like a week and a half away. They're like, Oh, Oh no, Puerto Rico. And I'm like, not me. They're like, Oh, it's you. Okay. So then I had to make connections in the Puerto Rico and What I quickly realized is I don't speak Spanish. And so there weren't any qualified incident commanders there that spoke English. All of the people in the wing were all Spanish speaking natively. Like, okay, and primarily that wing at the time ran cadet programs, but not necessarily emergency services like we do CONUS or in the continental United States. So, to your point, we reached out really quickly and from across the nation, we found people that were interpreters. We found other assets to talk to, us from the island itself that would speak English and would, be part of that incident management team, we got them just in time training for how to use their cameras a little bit differently than they had done before, how to use all the FEMA stuff, what the radio operations would look like. And so right after landfall, there was this massive effort from New York City to Arizona to Puerto Rico to get them back up so that we would have communications with the island to figure out where we could land Marines and Air Force personnel to get, get them back up and running. And it was like six months that we worked that operation, but it was whole of government, whole of community. It was really awesome. 00:19:06 Carlos Ramos: And how quickly that gets turned around is to me, amazing. Cause like, I think about what we do in our everyday work and it's like, okay, yeah, we can, yeah, we might be able to get this ready to get started in like three weeks. And, and you guys are like, okay, we're, we're past the hump and now we're okay. Now we've got to make sure we're, we're continuing services and rebuilding and. 00:19:29 Will Schlosser: Yeah, there's a thing called community lifelines that's a really good lot, like guideline. So community lifelines are different sectors of your daily life that if you can look at it and say, okay, health and safety, if I can get that lifeline good. I'm good. If I can do transportation, I'm good. So it's a, a good way to just look at it. And then you just keep on running around the circle. Next lifeline, next lifeline, keep on going. 00:19:51 Sumer Beatty: I think the key here is planning. As long as you have a plan in place and you have all these structures and these tools that you rely on to make everything feel a little more comfortable or you feel more prepared at least when disaster happens. 00:20:04 Will Schlosser: Emergency management is 99 percent planning. We call them blue sky days and gray sky days. Blue sky days, there's a lot of office work. You're going through, you're identifying resources, you're identifying problems and going, okay, if this happens, this is what I'm going to do. Knowing that every single plan you make is going to be wrong. And so like when you come to that realization that the plan is wrong, Right at the front end, because there's some difference in the situation. It could, you could have planned for three inches of snow, but you got five. And so that's going to change your plans, going to change your timelines. That gives you the flexibility to go around and adapt a plan. And I think that's really what makes successful emergency managers. Are there, they're planning at the front end, and then they're adapting their plans through. 00:20:46 Sumer Beatty: It would also seem like you're not shaken by things because you've experienced kind of the worst, right? She just called me old. No, I'm not saying you're old, but it does feel like, I know even in, I've not been in emergency situations like you have, but it's almost like, Your body's like, well, I've done this before. I'm good. Like, I know I've done this, so I can also do this. Right? So, I'm thinking about preparing these students for these crazy situations they're going to be in. How do you do that? 00:21:16 Will Schlosser: Yeah, it's interesting because, so I'm going to take a step back further in my career. I was a band director for 13 years. And, a middle school band director for 13 years. and an elementary band director for 13 years. elementary students are, there is nothing you can say to them that they will follow directly. I tell my, my Homeland Security class, I'm like, I'm qualified to teach Homeland Security because I taught kindergarten for a year. And they're just so like, hey, do this. And you turn around, you come back, and they're completely doing something else. And you're like, what? So you've got to adapt the plan over and over and over again. So the more times your brain does that, and it doesn't necessarily need to be in a critical situation, but it needs to be in a flexible situation. So, interestingly, I had some time where I was working at Pima and we were all just kind of sitting, talking back and forth and we found out that most of us were professional musicians and just that, that trait of being able to go through and adapt to the people around you as they played, and you're fitting into that group organically. It was just an interesting side note that all of us were that. 00:22:17 Sumer Beatty: Yeah, maybe not a coincidence either. 00:22:20 Will Schlosser: Yeah, it was, it was, it was interesting. doesn't mean you have to be, right? We have plenty of emergency managers who are not musicians, but at that particular time and that day, all six of us were professional musicians. 00:22:30 Sumer Beatty: Maybe a good interview question. 00:22:33 Will Schlosser: What do you play? 00:22:34 Sumer Beatty: Yes. 00:22:35 Will Schlosser: But then you do, you get into, hey, I've, I've had these experiences and You just get used to some of the stressors, and also how to deal with the stressors afterwards. 00:22:46 Sumer Beatty: You mentioned that you were involved with, hurricane work. Are there any other, is that sort of a specialty area or does that just, that's kind of just where your path was in the past or any other kinds of interesting things that. 00:23:00 Will Schlosser: One of our biggest hazards is water, so that's, that's why it comes that way. flooding is the, the number one natural hazard in, Pennsylvania. Hurricane Irma and Maria in Puerto Rico was an anomaly for me. Although last year it was kind of interesting, because of advances in technology, I actually ran a air operation in Florida from my classroom so the students could see it in real time, because we have a radio system that I can jump on the internet and talk to planes. because of the repeater system and how it's all laid out. So they could hear in real time, Okay, this is what an operations check is. This is what a damage report is. This is how we, we work in operational cycles. So, that was, that was super interesting. Again, a hurricane. 00:23:42 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. 00:23:44 Will Schlosser: For a long time I worked in counter drug operations. So we gridded out Pennsylvania looking for illegal, marijuana grows primarily. but also some, some drug houses and things like that. So. It's the same setup, right? You have to create an operations plan, execute on the plan, and go from there. So, that was an interesting thing. And, civilian side of life, I also am an emergency manager for the borough of Mansfield. So, working through, we had a boil water advisory. Why did that happen? How do we fix it? What are some redundancies in the system that we need to put in place in the future? we have a major issue right now with flooding, as, as the world gets a little warmer, we have more intense rains that are statistically, we can take a look, but four inches per hour is something that is not uncommon anymore. It's not every day, but once every two or three years, which that used to be once every hundred years. So, we have to train, change some of our, our stormwater management. management systems. We have to reroute some rivers. so we're in the process of trying to figure out how do you get 15 million to do that so that we don't flood every year. So, so those are some of the projects that I'm working on currently. 00:24:50 Sumer Beatty: Yeah, that's really cool that we have this at Penn College that Faculty with real world experience avenue where, you know, students aren't in a classroom, you know, just on their own and in a textbook, they're listening to your stories. They're, you know, hearing you speak with airplane pilots. Like, how cool is that? I'm sure that experience in the classroom really pays off and, I think you're also planning a big event here on campus. 00:25:17 Will Schlosser: Yes, it's a little one. Yeah, Rotor Fest is actually in a couple weeks, and this was an interesting story because of my connections with the National Guard. A couple years ago, I was sitting in my office in the, Klump Academic Center and I noticed this Blackhawk was flying pretty low to campus. And it, it, it always catches my ear when there's, anything flying in the air. So I'll go, go take a look, right? And it kept on circling. And I'm like, and the door's open. Something's strange. They're looking for something. So on my drive back to Mansfield, I called one of my friends who is a Blackhawk pilot and said, Hey, was that you flying over Penn College? And he said, Yeah, I was looking for you. I knew that you were starting work there. And I wanted to see if we could find you. So, we had a good laugh over it, and then we started talking. Wouldn't it be cool, because he's a Penn College grad, wouldn't it be cool to bring helicopters back on campus, and it would be an operation for us. So, talk about real life experience here at the college. Yeah, RotorFest is really cool. The primary purpose of RotorFest is for my Incident Command class to run an operation. So, they will start at 5 o'clock in the morning. We've been planning for a couple weeks now of where do you put each of the helicopters, why are you putting them there, where do you put the ground assets, what is the timing of everything. For example, there are four helicopters that are scheduled to come in. Some of them have a lead time of two hours for flight. If you track that back, though, you get into what's called duty day restrictions. So you have to figure out where does the pilot live? Then how long does it take them to get to the airfield? How long does it take them to prep the airplane and then come here and then go back? So if that's longer, longer than 10 hours, that's going to restrict your landing time. So we go through that all with all the students so that they create the schedule for the day and then they run the day. So you'll see our mobile command post out front. with a bunch of students in it, it looks like they're moving different cards on different boards. They're really just tracking assets as they're coming in and out, making sure that everyone's on the right frequencies, tracking costs for things, tracking meals, stuff like that. So it's really cool. We'll have over 600 high school kids here on campus, which is awesome. we're estimating between two and 3,000 other people coming to campus and our students coming out. Really it's for the 20 students that are in my incident command class. 00:27:30 Sumer Beatty: That's what you need though. You need other people involved. Yeah. So this is your second year, right? Okay. So things could go wrong. Did anything go wrong last year? Is everything pretty according to plan? 00:27:42 Will Schlosser: We're not going to ask that question. 00:27:44 Sumer Beatty: No, I think sometimes I've told people who are planning events before, not, you know, weddings or whatever, something's going to go wrong. There's always, there's always a hiccup, right? 00:27:55 Will Schlosser: Yep. Yeah. So last year, the big hiccups were timing, having people come in at the right times, which then messes up placement. so trying to figure out, okay, where do I put that ground asset for the next two hours? Cause you got here really early. 00:28:09 Sumer Beatty: Right. And that's the real learning experience. How do you handle that? 00:28:12 Will Schlosser: Yep. so I'm not gonna call out who that was. 00:28:15 Sumer Beatty: No, we don't need names. I just assumed that something probably. 00:28:19 Will Schlosser: Yep. 00:28:19 Sumer Beatty: And that was a great experience. 00:28:20 Will Schlosser: Yep, and another thing we cleared, so every time you land a helicopter you have to make sure the ground is okay. So you do a quick sweep to make sure there's no rocks or people didn't drop a pencil or something like that. So it doesn't fly away and hurt somebody, right? So, the Life Flight was supposed to come in. they called in. Hey, we're coming. We're cleared the whole area out. They were right on top of us. And then my phone rang. And it was the Life Flight manager saying they're about to turn. They've got to go, do a patient transport. So they literally were hovering over us, turned, and went to the hospital. And it happens, right? So you just adjust, and so we told students, Okay, that, that's not going to be here, but then we had a short story of this is why these are all emergency response personnel and at any point in time, that's what we do. When something bad happens, we go try to make it a little bit better. 00:29:09 Sumer Beatty: Such a cool career field and I don't think that's your area is something that somebody would naturally think of when they're trying to figure out what career paths they might, you know, want to pursue. How do you even, how do you even, you know, explain that to someone or, or are there other areas that might be more traditional that. are segues into what, what you're doing or it's, it's just so unique. 00:29:31 Will Schlosser: It is. We have a lot of, people get into the field from the first responder field and we're not first responders. A lot of people have that confusion, right? first responders, traditionally you've got fire, police, EMS, emergency medical services. we're the people behind the scenes making sure that all that stuff's working. And when it gets a little bit longer, we'll come in and organize it and make sure that that's okay. So there's an enormous amount of people that are interested in that, but then interested in the project management, interested in first response work, but interested in project management or being in charge of that organization. That's when we start talking about emergency management and homeland security. 00:30:06 Sumer Beatty: Yeah, there's probably some crossover for sure, just in those two fields. 00:30:11 Will Schlosser: Yeah, one of the hardest things that we as instructors deal with is trying to get that first responder to, they're really awesome at fixing it. Coming all the way back up to 30,000 feet going, okay, your job's not to fix it. Your job is to make sure that it's managed correctly. So you can't just jump in there. 00:30:29 Sumer Beatty: Oh, that'd be hard though. I mean, you see. See blood and you're like, that's my job. I need to do something. Not your job. No. There are other people who can do that. 00:30:35 Will Schlosser: Yeah. A good, a good case and example, we did a mass casualty exercise here on campus last year and we did it in conjunction with our paramedic science and some, some of our students crossover, so they're emergency managers and paramedics. The paramedics all went out to the, the mock scene that we did, but the emergency managers were in the emergency operations center on campus, or simulated one. and we went over, okay, what, what's the dispatch like? What extra resources are you going to need? But then after that, how do you repair the part of campus where that event happened? How do you bring students back to class? What resources do you need for continuity of education? Like all of those follow on things, which is just, it's really interesting to a lot of people. 00:31:16 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, that we do all these types of hands on, you know, you're not just in the Emergency Operations Center, you're, you know, you're doing the Rotor Fest, you're doing all these activities. What does that Emergency Operations Center look like? 00:31:30 Will Schlosser: It's not very exciting. It's really just a classroom with a lot of computer screens, and a lot of, some of our procedures are on big maps on the wall, so just constant reminders of these are the things. What's really exciting is we're moving. So right now we have a temporary classroom and we're outfitting a new classroom which is going to have a dedicated emergency operations center, which will look more like a traditional emergency operations center. A traditional emergency operations center is still just a room with a lot of projection capability and a lot of communications capability. So it'll be interesting in our new space where we have some flexible seating options, which is great. Again, traditionally what you see, you've got a whole lot more big screen monitors so you can do real time weather and real time incident management. I'm excited that we're, we, we currently have a software package called WebEOC, we're adding another one called D4H that are just used in the field, right? So our, our students are going to have the ability to manipulate those systems and put them up on big screens like we do in the real world. 00:32:30 Carlos Ramos: So that typical day in a emergency management homeland security class is not really just sitting in, you know, like kids in the row, looking up at the professor and going like this. it's really engaging in, in constant activity. 00:32:46 Will Schlosser: Yeah, we generally have a project every day that we're, we're doing. On, on our normal days we have hour and a half classes, it depends, so history class, when we study history there's a whole lot of, okay, we need to talk this one through, but we also take field trips, so, I'll be taking my students here soon to Johnstown. Johnstown was the biggest flood death, in the United States in 1889. What's really neat is our students get to go and actually stand on the dam that failed, like it's still there, so we talk about all the different things that failed there. It's different when you get to see it, and you can be like, oh, that's how big the spillway was. And that's why it was a problem that they put a net there. So we try to make it as hands on as possible in all our classes. 00:33:27 Carlos Ramos: And so I would, I would suspect then, like in any large organization, I mean, you don't wait for the emergency to happen. 00:33:35 Will Schlosser: Oh, definitely not. 00:33:35 Carlos Ramos: There, there's, there's a lot of. Preparation and practice that's happening in every organization. I'm part of the emergency management team here, and we do, you know, the, the annual or, or the semi, you know, buying, whatever that is, tabletop exercise. And, and I know that there's lots of exercises that are happening that are the tactical police are doing their thing. You know, when students aren't here, they'll, they'll commandeer a building or a whole part of campus and, and run exercises. So that's pretty typical in a large organization, right? 00:34:10 Will Schlosser: Very. Yeah, and that's what an emergency manager does, is organize those exercises. You're not going to be the everything to everyone. You're going to be the connective tissue that everyone comes in and sees. So, you have to have kind of a, an experiential level with everything. So, For example, we just did public information officer training in one of my classes, where every student got up and gave a press release, and then answered questions from the simulated press. They're probably not going to be that person, but they're probably going to be the person that preps that person. So if they don't know what's going to happen, they're going to do a poor job preparing that person. So, those are the kind of things that we do. And you're talking about exercises. There's a process called HSEAP, which goes all the way from, hey, we're going to talk about how we're going to plan it, to full scale exercises. You run that whole range all the time, and it's like everything else we do, it's a cycle. So you're continually improving all the different processes. 00:35:03 Sumer Beatty: I would think there's some crossover into the business world for these individuals with this skill set too. I mean, do you have, where do you, I'm sure they're going into more typical positions like you described, but where all do students, graduates typically go? 00:35:17 Will Schlosser: It's interesting, post COVID, everywhere. Okay. Because everyone kind of realized, oh, This is a skill set that we can use in a wide range of different businesses. So our graduates, we have graduates at the National Security Agency. We also have graduates at the National Beef Packing Plant. So some go into banking, some go into private consulting. We have a couple that just recently got hired as County Emergency Management Coordinators. So if you name an organization, it probably has some sort of risk involved in it, which means you need somebody. to manage that risk. also, one of my specialties is school security and safety. I've been an emergency management coordinator for a school district for the last 15 or so years. That just became a requirement that every school district has to have a school safety and security coordinator. So you see the Commonwealth start to build what that model looks like. We're not all the way through it, but, that will be another career field opportunity for some of our students. 00:36:12 Carlos Ramos: Now you mentioned COVID, how, how much of a role to do emergency, managers play in a disaster of that scale that's health related? I can think of some ways, but then in other ways, I'm like, no, this is a different skill set. 00:36:27 Will Schlosser: Two different ways to look at that for, for COVID. It was part of the busiest time of my life. So if you think about how a school system works, it's pretty traditional, right? School students get on a bus and they come to school, they get education, they leave. It's. We've been doing it for a couple hundred years, not, not real hard. However, when you're put into the place of, hey, I can't have kids in the building, how do you do that? Well, that's when you start to look at an emergency manager. How do I go through and get to students? So, for part of my career, or part of my time there, it was actually organizing the school district's operations. So, people got pretty locked up. Like, they just didn't, we talked about the process. The process just stopped. Everyone's like, we don't know what to do. Okay, well, here's the process. Where are we at and what are our key components that we need? What are our community lifelines for the school? So we identified those and part of that was reaching out to students' homes where there wasn't internet access. That's actually an emergency management function is dealing with communication systems. So part of my job, I was an assistant principal, but I was also working trying to figure out, okay, with this telecommunications company. Can I have another repeater on top of this antenna to shoot down into this small valley so that I can provide internet resources to the three students that are there? And then can I park a bus with a MiFi over here so I can pay people to park a bus so that they can have a job and I can get access to these students? And then we started talking with, actually a company out of Penn State University, that does distance education. So we reformed how our educational, delivery happened. So that even if students didn't have internet access, they could drive by our buildings and get the materials transferred automatically. So, there was a whole lot of emergency management functions that are just kind of embedded into it. 00:38:17 Carlos Ramos: That's wild. You've brought up so many things that are just happening. in our, in our civilization that I'm just, I am not aware that there are people that are doing these things. We just kind of take it for granted that, okay, yeah, everything's going to work out. Everything's going to flow, but no, there's a lot of intentionality by some really key people like you. So thank you for, for doing that. 00:38:36 Will Schlosser: It's a lot of fun. 00:38:37 Sumer Beatty: And how lucky was the school district to just happen to have you as an assistant? Principal, seriously. 00:38:43 Will Schlosser: I don't know if that's luck. 00:38:45 Sumer Beatty: No, I mean, everybody's got a different personality, different skillset. That's not what's required in your education for a principal. 00:38:53 Will Schlosser: It is not. 00:38:53 Sumer Beatty: So I think that was pretty key that you happen to have that, that background. 00:38:58 Will Schlosser: Yeah, it's interesting. We're starting to have conversations here at the college of, can we take that? And share that with more educators, because in education administration, you deal with the nuts and bolts, right? Like what are certifications, what's student discipline, what's laws, what are, you know, how do you schedule your day? And truly, it's not that different from emergency management, but it uses a slightly different language. so I run a class with educators, education professionals, on how you run an assembly. using the incident command system and they're like, Oh, that makes total sense. I'm like, great, do it at least once a year so that you keep the chops up of learning the cycle and running the cycle. 00:39:36 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. So as I said before, I feel like there's so many applications across all these different industries like business and not just the school, but like everybody should have access to the processes that you're using, I think in some way, shape, or form, but maybe with a different language or like you said, different terms. 00:39:51 Will Schlosser: Yeah. And that's actually part of our challenge is because our degree. If you look up emergency management coordinator, there's a bunch of jobs there, but not a ton. But if you look at who hires emergency managers, there's thousands and thousands of people hiring those. But they all have a different title, so it's a little bit hard to categorize. So risk manager is probably going to be an emergency manager. Safety coordinator is probably going to be an emergency manager. a friend of mine is an emergency manager for the Department of Homeland Security in Customs and Border Patrol. He works in HR. And his whole skill set is making sure that the people that are getting hired are the right people to make decisions, and when they don't, what's the fallout? And how do we manage that part of it? So the business continuity part of Customs and Border Patrol. 00:40:40 Sumer Beatty: Any stories of students? You mentioned a couple different places where students were working. Do you have any, anybody that you've been in contact with and they're sharing what they're doing with you? It just makes you feel really good about everything. 00:40:50 Will Schlosser: I, I, I, when, when we have new students coming to campus, one of the, I tell them one of my biggest frustrations is that my senior year students are getting hired before they graduate. And so they flip over into our online program, but literally, four or five of our graduates in this past year cycle have gotten jobs in the field before they even graduated. And then we're able to keep it because they but they, we have one that's doing emergency communications, in a county in the, the lower right side of the state. So that's awesome that he's, he's reaching out to schools and he's reaching out to local community groups to say, Hey, if something bad happens, here's what to do. But we have graduates that are working right here in Lycoming County. So, Two of our graduates from last year are now the primary emergency management coordinator and primary planner for the county. which is super exciting because they came back and they said, Hey, here's what we need in the county. Can you have your students now help the county out? And that's providing just more internship opportunities and more professional growth for the first responders that are in the county to interact with the college and just get better together, which is awesome. Awesome. 00:41:59 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. I love that you brought up because I hadn't thought about it this way. I know we have the online program, but it's, it's cool. I know you're saying, I wish I didn't leave so soon, but if somebody does get that job offer, they can switch to the online program. 00:42:12 Will Schlosser: Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I have a junior in the online program right now because she, she's doing an internship with a hospital system in rural Pennsylvania, redeveloping all their emergency operations plans for all their small facilities. So she's there all the time. That's probably going to turn into a career for her. They seem to, when I talk to the internship supervisor, they're really liking the work that she's doing. She's really liking it. That's probably going to end up as a job. And then she'll just finish out online. So that, that has been the model actually that's been used repeatedly in my last year and a half here. 00:42:47 Carlos Ramos: That's amazing. That would be really interesting to be figuring out how to extend that model to, to others where, yeah, you're, you're in school for two years and then you finish out the two years or however long that might take to, to finish out that bachelor's degree working. Like you say, it's an internship, but I mean, if an internship that sounds like it's actually develop properly. 00:43:08 Will Schlosser: Correct. 00:43:09 Carlos Ramos: You're, you're in there doing real work. 00:43:11 Will Schlosser: Which is really interesting because a lot of traditional models, you're saying, okay, here's the internships you can apply to. And that's not our model. Our model is, okay, student, what are you interested in? Find some companies that you might want to intern with, and then we'll make contact with that company and say, here's what we are, this is what the student can bring. Do you want an intern? And almost exclusively, companies are like, yes. 00:43:34 Carlos Ramos: Oh, that's amazing. 00:43:35 Will Schlosser: Yeah, it's just a, it's a different way of looking at it, so. So far, it's been fantastic. 00:43:40 Carlos Ramos: You've got extensive experience, not just in your field, but, you know, some of the other fields that you've already talked about. Have you had mentors throughout this process? 00:43:50 Will Schlosser: Oh, absolutely. so you, you don't ever get through it, so. in the field, so there's the traditional mentor, right? Like, you have qualifications that you have to do, which means you have tasks that you have to do, which means you have someone qualified in those tasks that takes you through the thing, right? But there are absolutely those people that I have attached myself to and went, Hey, I need someone to tell me I'm wrong. I need someone to call when I just need to complain about something and you can be like, yeah, that's great. It doesn't matter. Get over it. Let's go. And there's, I always tell my students, I'm like, there are two big business mentors for me that if they called me and said, Hey, I've got this menial job that you need to pay me for, but I need somebody to do it. Will you do it? Absolutely. And so those are the people that I model for my students saying, these are the attributes. This is why that I consider these people, my mentors and would work for them for nothing. so it's, I'm, I'm very blessed to have those, those types of humans in my life. 00:44:47 Sumer Beatty: So valuable, and whoever you are in whatever industry you're in. 00:44:50 Will Schlosser: It's, it's interesting, I just had an extended conversation, so Civil Air Patrol is 65,000 people across the country. And one of the things that we try to do all the time is create a mentorship program. And the conversation that I have is any organic program is going to be far better than any structural program in place. And so you've got to make whatever your organization is, you have to make it the culture of mentorship. And that's when you truly get the benefit from it. It can't be a checkbox thing. 00:45:17 Sumer Beatty: No, and you almost have to have that mentor to know the value of it, to know how important it is for you to take that role on. And if you don't, then you wouldn't see the value in it, maybe. 00:45:27 Will Schlosser: Correct. 00:45:28 Sumer Beatty: Any suggestions for someone who's considering this field? 00:45:32 Will Schlosser: Come, come to us, come and come to one of our summer camps, come for one of our activities, come talk to one of our students, it's an amazing career field that's super exciting and really, really gratifying. Sometimes it's hard, but it's so awesome to, to get through something really bad and make it better for the people that are involved. 00:45:50 Carlos Ramos: And that's not just the 16, 17 year old. 00:45:53 Will Schlosser: No, it's anybody from like, I started in teaching search and rescue as a Boy Scout, actually. And so then, that was me at 14. And just, I got involved with a local SAR group. And then there was, for me, Boy Scouts. But people can do volunteer firefighting. They can help with their local emergency manager doing whatever project is there. There's always something to do to get involved. 00:46:18 Carlos Ramos: And you have people that are in your program that are, have come from other lines of, or other career paths. 00:46:24 Will Schlosser: Very much so. It's interesting. we're starting to get a lot of cross majors, students that are in other majors that want to have an emergency management minor or find, hey, this is, this, I want to actually primarily do this. But, it's interesting to your point. Like, people see the value in the program part of it. I want to do this other thing, but I want that training to make sure that I'm really effective in that other thing. 00:46:48 Sumer Beatty: And we do have a minor? 00:46:49 Will Schlosser: We do. 00:46:49 Sumer Beatty: Oh, cool. And the pre, the summer camp option. Do you do an overnight summer camp? 00:46:55 Will Schlosser: We don't yet. That's in the plans for next summer. Oh, okay. But we do it as part of the My Tomorrow Makers. Oh, okay. Gotcha. Nice. And I'm doing a couple other just in the area. There's some first responder camps that are out there with different organizations. So I'll go out with our mobile command post and be like, this is emergency management as part of the day. 00:47:12 Sumer Beatty: Okay, that's great. And we'll include some links to different resources in the podcast notes. 00:47:17 Will Schlosser: Cool. Great. 00:47:18 Carlos Ramos: Any last message? 00:47:20 Will Schlosser: Be safe. 00:47:23 Sumer Beatty: Thank you so much. 00:47:24 Carlos Ramos: Thank you, Will. 00:47:28 Sumer Beatty: Thanks for hanging out with us today. 00:47:29 Carlos Ramos: Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. 00:47:34 Sumer Beatty: Check out our show notes for bookmarks to your favorite sections and links to resources that we mentioned in today's episode. 00:47:40 Carlos Ramos: You can also find past episodes and see what's on here. Deck for upcoming ones at pct.edu/podcast. 00:47:47 Sumer Beatty: And of course, we are open to your thoughts, ideas, and suggestions. So send those over at podcast@pct.edu. 00:47:56 Carlos Ramos: It's been real. 00:47:57 Sumer Beatty: Catch you next time. 00:47:59 Will Schlosser: Can I have a, a restroom break right now? Like no.