To the Mentor:

This Mentoring experience is designed to familiarize the Wisconsin Certified Emergency Manager Professional Level candidate with first-hand involvement in communications, planning, incident management system, incident support, resource coordination, exercise or incident hotwashes, and HSEEP. It is focused on an individual who is an emergency manager or has responsibility for preparedness activities. The mentoring project may be initiated at any time after the candidate has initiated the WCEM Professional Level training process; the candidate does NOT need to have completed the prerequisite training prior to beginning the mentoring experience. The mentoring experience should be conducted over the course of at least two sessions, totaling a minimum of 8 combined hours over at least a 30-day period; this mentoring experience may be extended to additional sessions or time if mutually agreed upon.

As a Mentor, you will conduct a learning process for the candidate and provide an honest and objective overview of their performance while also fulfilling the learning objectives and tasks included on the worksheet. You have the flexibility to supplement actual activities, if none are available, with an informal discussion to achieve the objectives.

If suitable mentors are not readily available to the candidate within their geographic area, the candidate has the option of traveling to another jurisdiction to complete this mentoring process, as their time allows. The candidate may also utilize instructors or other qualified professionals who are involved with a given learning objective to fulfill their mentoring experience. The intent is that no candidate is required to travel outside their local area to accomplish this assignment. The ultimate goal is to provide the candidate a meaningful and educational learning experience to assist that candidate in developing into a better-rounded emergency manager who possesses the tools needed to address the challenges that lie ahead. This mentoring experience requirement is intended to be conducted by one or more qualified professionals and should be as close to a “real life experience” as possible; this should be accomplished as a sperate activity outside of classroom training.

Ideally, the Wisconsin Certified Emergency Manager Professional Level candidate would be evaluated during or immediately following an actual emergency response, but that will not always be possible. In the absence of actual response-based activities to base the mentoring sessions upon, the Mentor may instead conduct scenario-based discussion sessions with the candidate to effectively cover the appropriate material.

This guide allows for a certain degree of flexibility if real-world exigencies prevent the typical completion of this requirement. There are many variables that affect the time needed to accomplish the specific goals. The mentor(s) shall determine the amount of time needed, taking into account the ability or background of the candidate. If some discussion tasks can not be completed in the time allotted, you the mentor should work with the candidate to complete as many of these tasks as possible, and further provide documentation to accompany the mentoring worksheet explaining and requesting approval for this variance.

The mentoring experience itself is required for the successful completion of the Wisconsin Certified Emergency Manager Professional Level and is not optional; how the candidate fulfills the obligation is very flexible and open to meet the needs and schedule of the candidate and their mentor. The goal of this mentoring project is to provide a candidate who has little or no experience with a first-hand exposure to the thinking process that goes into supporting the preparedness for, response to, and recovery from an actual incident.

We sincerely hope that you, as a Mentor, will view this assignment with the seriousness and professionalism it deserves, which will ultimately benefit the operational effectiveness of the candidate’s agency. You also have an opportunity to make a major contribution to the advancement of the emergency management discipline by imparting your expertise to a new class of emergency managers and preparedness professionals. While conducting this mentoring experience, you yourself can also receive credit for the WCEM Advanced Professional Level Mentoring Program if you meet the prerequisites.

Mentoring Project Instructions

To the Candidate:

Select an experienced and qualified emergency management professional who has a variety of experience and training as a Mentor, and who is willing to help you with your education. Seek someone in the emergency management career field who has more than 5 years of county, tribal, local, or state experience. If you are already an emergency manager, select an emergency manager with more experience than you. While not required, it is preferred that you choose a mentor who is a Wisconsin Certified Emergency Manager for at least a portion of your mentorship.

Provide your Mentor with this guide so they are familiar with the intent of the program and can accommodate your training needs. Select a time and place to conduct this mentoring process; you are required to participate in at least two mentoring sessions to complete this project.

Some objectives may not be feasible to accomplish under actual conditions and may need to be performed using training and simulation sessions. In such cases, the Mentor may opt not to complete the objective if an alternative method to meet it can be achieved. An example would be a scenario-based discussion versus an actual hands-on activity.

The Mentor shall complete the Mentoring Evaluation Checklist form and legibly sign and date each objective or task they cover with you. You as the candidate will then write a three-page report on the mentoring experience; provide an overview of the process and further pick one of the discussion objective points and complete an in-depth analysis of what point. Include in this report what you learned from the experience, how it will benefit you and your organization in the future, what your chosen objective/task covers and why you think it is important for an emergency management professional to understand that objective/task. Submit this completed report in PDF or Microsoft Word document format using a 12 pt. font, one-inch margins, double-spaced with correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation. This is a required component for completion of the Wisconsin Certified Emergency Manager Professional Level program.

You will submit this completed Mentoring worksheet and report, plus proof of completion of your prerequisites, along with your request to take the Wisconsin Certified Emergency Manager Professional Level written test.