... thanks to Uncle Sam.
Did you know that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) offers
over fifty 1-credit, self-paced "Independent Study" courses? Most
courses, like "
Are You Ready? An In-depth Guide to Citizen Preparedness" and "
Livestock in Disasters" consist of units or modules presented as PDF files that can be downloaded and printed. Others like
"
Radiological Emergency Management" and "
Community Hurricane Preparedness"
are interactive courses that can be taken online. According to the FEMA
website, courses may take anywhere "from two to fourteen hours,
depending on the course and the student’s background." The full course
list is available at:
http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IS/crslist.asp.
After completing a course, you have the option of taking a multiple
choice final exam, which is graded as pass/fail. If you pass with a 75%
or better (and you can take it as many times as you need to), you will
be mailed a certificate of achievement from the Emergency Management
Institute. Better yet, you can also earn college credit from Frederick
Community College.
Frederick Community College,
located in Frederick, MD, is the designated credit-granting authority
for FEMA's Independent Study courses. FCC, which is accredited by the
Middle States Association of Colleges, offers one semester hour for
(most) successfully completed FEMA courses. All you have to do is
submit a short application and pay a fee of $60 per 1-credit course.
[That's a helluva of a bargain, folks! Consider that most 3-credit
courses will run you alot more than $180!] FCC will also send official
transcripts to any school(s) you designate.
This is a really affordable way to earn some college credit! It costs you
NOTHING to
take a few courses, and then only $60 per course to "convert" into
college credit and transfer these credits to the school of your choice*
as electives in a program of study leading to an associate or
bachelor's degree, i.e. lower division credits, equivalent to 100- or
200- level classes. Another even cheaper possibility is to convert the
FEMA classes to college credits at a school by using a credit bank as
an intermediary.
*
Remember that each college or university has different
credit transfer policies and that it is the student's responsibility to
check with the school that you plan on attending to verify transfer
requirements.