The world is a safer place because of people like Lawrence R. McKeough, Emergency Planning Officer for the City of San Clemente Public Works Department in Southern California. Whenever there’s a disaster in that part of the world, which occurs more often than in most places, McKeough is in charge of organizing and staffing up San Clemente’s emergency operations center.

"In California, you never can tell what can happen next," he says. Just ask the people who live in this region where floods, landslides and earthquakes can strike on any given day. Add a nuclear power plant located about eight miles from the center of town, and you have a lot of emergency planning to organize.

McKeough stays on top of this extremely important work by going to college part-time. He’s pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Disaster and Emergency Management at an accredited higher education institution located across the country from him in New York State at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). However, McKeough has never set foot on the RIT campus because he’s earning his degree in a distance learning format.

RIT is one of the few campuses worldwide offering a complete distance learning degree program in disaster and emergency management. Distance learning at RIT takes advantage of the Internet and computer conferencing along with other multimedia technologies, such as videotaped lectures, to deliver the classroom to the student’s home and computer connection. With more than 5,000 enrollments and 20 years of experience in distance education, RIT offers students the benefit of top quality and tested anytime/anywhere higher education degree programs.

For the 50-year-old McKeough, the distance learning format fits him well. He and his wife recently adopted two children, age five and three. They are also the parents of two adult children, age 28 and 25. "Needless to say, going out of the house in the evenings for college classes didn’t look like something I could do very easily, whereas in the distance learning format I can do it whenever I can fit it in, or take it with me when I have to leave the area for business," he says. "In Southern California, there were only certificate programs available. In order to get a degree in the emergency management field I would have had to move to Berkeley and attend the University of California." He particularly likes the videotaped lectures of his classes because the tapes allow him to easily review concepts and theories he may not understand without the time restraints of a typical classroom.

McKeough took on this educational challenge after a 25-year career in the Unites States Navy. "With three years of emergency management experience behind me at the Naval Station in Long Beach, California, plus many years of ship-board damage control/fire fighting training, and a few civilian emergency management classes, I set off in my new career," he says.

McKeough is about six classes away from earning his degree. "I think it’s a good format," he says. "I was pretty computer-stupid when I started, so I was forced to get smart in a hurry. I’ve learned more about computers and various programs since taking RIT classes than I would have probably ever learned. Some of the courses are tough, but if you set aside the time, work out a schedule that fits the various classes you’re taking for the quarter, and study, you’ll be okay."

McKeough also feels that although he has never met face-to-face with his instructors or fellow students, the exchange of knowledge conducted through teleconferencing, online class discussions and/or email has been beneficial. He said he has forwarded valuable information to his classmates about how emergency systems are developed and implemented in San Clemente. He also has learned how his fellow cyberstudents conduct their business and why and how things work for them. Most of his classmates are adult learners like McKeough, holding down full-time jobs within the emergency planning industry.

Indeed, McKeough’s on-the-job experience in emergency planning includes some unique circumstances. He has had to deal with serious flooding and landslides caused by El Nino, and every two years he participates in a nuclear power preparedness program where he and his colleagues must perform a simulated evacuation in the unlikely event of a nuclear accident.

Such experience is a welcome addition to RIT’s distance learning degree program in disaster and emergency management. And McKeough concludes, "with my background, experience, and a degree in the field, my future growth is unlimited."

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