About a year ago, Jackie Jameson was a laid-off food service worker in her “early 40s” who didn’t know what she wanted to do.
“Twenty-five year old general managers out there don’t want to hire a 40-something waitress with 20 years experience,” Jameson said.
She had a few ideas about the kind of career she might like to have – something having to do with the humanities, perhaps – but nothing concrete.
She did know one thing, though; she wanted to help people, and feel like she was making a difference.
That inkling was what led her to find out about the 911 Emergency Dispatch Training program at Shoreline Community College.
“I thought, ‘Here is a real opportunity for me to change my life,’” Jameson said.
Two quarters into the three-quarter program, she has discovered it’s allowed her to do just that – and more. Jameson already has had two responses concerning possible jobs at local 911 dispatch centers. And, she said, “I’m developing other viable skills that will make me more valuable in the job market.”
The Emergency Dispatch Program began in Fall 2003, incorporated into SCC’s already-established criminal justice program. The program is headed by criminal justice professor and program director Lee Libby and adjunct professor Randy Tibbs, who each have more than three decades of experience working for the Seattle Police Department. Tibbs, 56, retired after 13 years as director of the Seattle Police Department’s Emergency 911 Center just days before he began working at SCC. Libby has worked for the college’s criminal justice program since 1994.Tibbs and Libby went through the police academy together in 1970. Combined with their ability to share real-world experience with students, the format of the program is what makes it unique, Tibbs said.
“It’s more academic and less vocational – we wanted to give students the basic skills and knowledge to get a job and become a 911 receiver and dispatcher … not just how to use specific equipment,” Tibbs said.
Required classes for the program include beginning and speed keyboarding, human relations, first aid and safety, stress management and psychology. Career-specific required classes include police report writing, operations systems and technology and emergency call screening. In addition, students get the chance to put their skills to use in the practice labs next door to their classroom, where several computers have been outfitted to simulate real 911 emergency calls while recording the student’s performance.
The skills learned in the SCC program are very valuable to potential employers, Tibbs said, and can help weed out those who can handle the job’s challenges and those who cant.
Ted Jacoby, director of the Seattle Police 911 Center that serves King County, said “It gives them a good, strong orientation to the job, and they get to see in a general sense what really happens out on the floor. And, the expectations of what the job is aren’t distorted.”
The program quenches another need as well; the “crying need” for qualified emergency dispatchers in local counties, Libby said.
According to Jacoby, most large 911 dispatch centers have at least one, if not more, job openings at any given time, including mandatory overtime.
Libby attributes the open 911 dispatcher job market to several things, including an ever-growing population and the popularity of cell phones.
“It used to be you’d get a couple of calls about an accident on the bridge,” Libby said. “Now you’ll get 40.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
