Whittier College News Release
Whittier College
Office of Public Relations
13406 Philadelphia St.
P.O. Box 634
Whittier, CA 90608-0634
July 22, 2004
Contact: Judy Browning at (562) 907-4216 or Bernard Alex at (562) 907-4211
Reference: 2004-05 #1
Whittier College to Host WMD Awareness Course
Whittier College will
host a one-day course on Weapons of Mass Destruction Awareness (WMDA) training,
Friday, July 23 from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. in the Ettinger Faculty Center on campus.
Bernard C. Alex, Sr., chief of campus safety at Whittier, along with two of his
staff members, will teach the workshop to about 30 college and university campus
safety officers from throughout California.
The training is funded by
a grant awarded to the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement
Administrators (IACLEA) by the federal Department of Homeland Security, Office
for Domestic Preparedness. Over the next two years the $2 million grant will
provide for initial training of nearly 30,000 first-responders from campuses
throughout the United States, Alex said.
The course curriculum was
developed by the National Center for Biomedical Research and Training, Academy
of Counter-Terrorist Education located at Louisiana State University. The
academy has already trained several hundred campus law enforcement and public
safety officers around the country to deliver the WMD training.
This is the first time that campus public safety has been recognized, on this
scale, for direct receipt of federal training dollars, according to Kenneth A.
Willett, public safety director at the University of Montana and IACLEA
president. “Traditionally, we had been left out of the loop for this type of
training for our officers. Fortunately, the enormous vulnerability inherent in a
campus environment is now being recognized by the funding agencies,” Willett
said.
There are more than 4,000
college and universities in the United States, which collectively represent a
community equal to the population of some states. Campus populations vary from
under 1,000 to larger institutions that serve populations exceeding 50,000
people. Often the campus is larger then city it is located in. This training
opportunity gives IACLEA the ability to pull all of these campuses together and
provide a high quality standard of training to a group of first responders that
has previously been left out.
The WMDA training is
available to all college and universities in the country, including two- and
four-year institutions, public and private colleges, and school district police
and security.
IACLEA was founded in
1958 by a group of 11 college and university security directors to address
common issues. Today, IACLEA has members around the globe representing more than
1,600 campus law enforcement, public safety and security departments. To learn
more visit the web site at www.iaclea.org.
Located 18 miles east of
Los Angeles, Whittier College is an independent, four-year college offering
traditional liberal arts majors and strong pre-professional programs taught in
the context of the liberal arts. Whittier Law School, which is accredited by the
American Bar Association and is a member of the Association of American Law
Schools, is located on a separate campus in Costa Mesa.
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