Captain Troy Jellison works hand in hand with the El Dorado Fire Department and Butler’s Fire Science program. This program offers a residency program where students work a minimum of five shifts with the fire department, all while earning their associate’s degree.
Photo courtesy of Troy Jellison
Tori Lemon
Editor-in-Chief
Students who are interested in firefighting and fire service can take their passion to Butler’s fire science program, whose residency program is the only one like it in the Midwest.
In this program, students are provided with basic training to ensure they are job ready and that they know all of the entry level skills that are needed. The fire science program has been around for over 30 years, and numbers grow with every enrollment.
Those who are in this program will take a variety of classes, a lot doing with math and science. In the classes, students learn how different chemicals can affect how hot a fire can burn and what materials they can put on the fire to extinguish it. They also learn about hazardous materials and how those can cause harm to us and the environment.
“Really, science is a big part about what we do,” Troy Jellison, lead adjunct instructor, said. “We also incorporate some of the mathematics, such as algebra. Our firefighters have to learn how to calculate coefficients and do some of those algebraic equations on the fly. We’re one of those few subjects that we actually do use algebra in the real world.”
Jellison is also the fire captain of the city of El Dorado. He has been the lead instructor of the fire science program for four years and previously, he was an adjunct instructor since 2005. His role in this program is mainly oversight. Jellison is currently the only instructor for their three online courses. From there, his job is all about conveying the curriculum to make sure students are being taught the most up to date tactics.
“I facilitate finding the best instructors that we can get for the program,” Captain Jellison said. “I also do needs assessments to make sure that we have the proper equipment and that our equipment is up to date so that our students are getting trained on the same equipment they get when they leave here and go out to the real world.”
It takes 64 credit hours to earn the associate’s degree in fire science. Students enroll in a spectrum of classes such as Firefighter One, a hazardous materials class, tactics and strategies courses, building construction, fire prevention, as well as a large number of elective courses. These electives are more focused on some of the specialties- emergency rescue, technical rescue skills, vehicle and machinery extrication, surface water rescue and confined space rescue.
There are not any internships offered to students in this field, and because the job market is extremely competitive, Jellison explains that the residency program that is offered is the best route for dedicated students in this field. Only 10 students are selected to be apart of the residency program, and they live in dormitories that are attached to the El Dorado Fire Department.
“This is that internship-like piece that we have,” Captain Jellison said. “What that does is give those 10 students a real life, working experience doing their job. So that when they leave here, they are our most sought after candidates. These are students who didn’t just go through a program because it just sounded cool and think it might be a fun job. These are students who know for a fact this is something they want to do, because they’ve done it. They’ve worked five shifts a month with the fire department, so they know what it means to get up every morning and do the job.”
For first-year residency student Keith Johnson, this program has given him opportunities he would not have as a student anywhere else.
“We’re not just going out with these guys and watching them do all of this,” Johnson said. “We ourselves actually get to do it. I’ve seen different incidents with car accidents and I’ve actually been able to help with the cleanup of those and also with the care of the patients at those scenes.”
Currently, out of the 15 floor personnel of the El Dorado Fire Department, 11 of those are Butler fire science students or graduates.
“It really is a unique atmosphere, and we offer something special here,” Captain Jellison said. “When students graduate this program as a student resident, they are all but floor ready to go to work. They are very well setup to enter into the job market and be successful.”