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Date: 2/11/2020
SOUTHWICK – After spending 14 weeks in the state Fire Academy’s Executive Fire Officer Program, Deputy Fire Chief Richard Stefanowicz graduated on Jan. 31.
Stefanowicz said the program was about working with fellow fire officers from across the state to learn and share their experiences.
“The focus of the program is on leadership skills, learning from experiences from my classmates, the networking capabilities were impressive,” he said, “These people become like they’re lifelong friends, it was like a fraternity and these are people we’ll rely on as a resource.”
He said that the class could hold up to 40 officers at a time and included people from across the state with varying levels of officer experience.
“There were 38 in the class total and they were either deputy chiefs or chiefs,” he said. “They were newly appointed or had been doing the job for several years, during the class two of the deputies were promoted to chief.”
Stefanowicz said the course was not what he expected it was going to be.
“I thought it was going to be more academic and it really ended up being more like a think tank environment. It was really about prompting us about how we would address problems in our own communities and similar ones,” he said.
In years past the course finished with an exam but he said they did not have any tests in this iteration of the course. “I think it took some of the pressure off of the people and they started to realize what the class was about and it was an amazing learning environment,” he said.
He said the class took place at the Fire Academy in Stow and was hosted in part by the University of Massachusetts’ Collins Institute. “We had people come in to speak to us from the Collins Institute that specialized in human resources, town management, former town administrators, retired fire chiefs and legal counsel.”
Stefanowicz said one of the interesting parts of the course was a self-analysis survey. “There was a survey and then they came in and we talked about what it meant and how accurate it was. It was surprising how accurate it was, it was like they put me under a thimble and figured everything out, it was really amazing.”
One of the overarching parts of the course that encompassed the entire 14 weeks was a research project.
“The research project was specific to a department need and you’re supposed to research it,” he said, “The final project was to present it to a panel made up of fire chiefs that played the role of selectmen, it was kind of like a mock trial.”
Stefanowicz said he thought it was important to hear about other departments’ problems across the state. “It was interesting to hear other departments’ specific problems because it made it seem like your problem was a little smaller than you thought it was because somebody has it a little worse than you,” he said.
With the EFO course behind him, Stefanowicz said he may take the National Fire Academy’s EFO program but hasn’t decided yet. He said, “It’s a two year program and involves a lot of online learning so you can do it remotely but it requires you to be at the National Academy more. I haven’t completely ruled it out but it’s a huge commitment.”