OSU fire safety educator honored for lifetime achievement
Friday, April 11, 2008
OSU Fire Protection Publications assistant director Nancy Trench (left) is pictured
with Chief David Paulison, director of FEMA, and Meri-K Appy, president of the Home
Safety Council, at the Congressional Fire Services Institute's 20th annual National
Fire and Emergency Services Dinner in Washington, D.C. At the banquet, Trench received
the council's 2008 Dr. Anne W. Phillips Award for Leadership in Fire Safety Education.
While in the nation's capital, she also represented OSU-FPP at the Fire and Emergency
Services Showcase on the National Mall and at Vision 20/20, an unprecedented forum
of 170 experts working to develop a national strategy for fire loss prevention.
Both bear the imprint of Nancy Trench, whose career efforts to reduce preventable injury and deaths among the nation’s most at-risk segments, including young children, older adults and firefighters, were recently honored in the nation’s capital.
Trench, assistant director of OSU-FPP, was invited to participate in Vision 20/20, an unprecedented gathering of 170 experts from across the country in Washington, D.C., to develop a national strategy for fire loss prevention. Trench also attended the Congressional Fire Services Institute’s 20th annual National Fire and Emergency Services Dinner, where she received the Dr. Anne W. Phillips Award for Leadership in Fire Safety Education.
The Phillips Award honors its namesake’s achievements as a champion of fire safety education and celebrates her role as a leader whose work in fire safety education has had a lasting impact on the nation’s safety. It is presented annually by the Home Safety Council, the only national nonprofit organization solely dedicated to preventing home related injuries that result in nearly 20,000 deaths and 21 million medical visits on average each year.
With a career spanning three decades, Trench has earned distinction as a leader in the field of fire and life safety education and has been instrumental in the movement to institutionalize injury prevention education as part of the core mission of the fire services, according to Meri-K Appy, Home Safety Council president.
“We are honored to recognize Nancy Trench’s lifetime of achievement with the 2008 Dr. Anne W. Phillips Award,” Appy said. “Her dedication to advancing cutting-edge fire service issues, together with her ability to translate innovative research into community practice, makes her an indisputable choice for the Home Safety Council’s annual award.
“Nancy has made a major contribution to fire safety in America, inspiring and preparing many in the fire and life safety field to do work of lasting significance,” Appy said.
Trench has provided leadership for a National Fallen Firefighters Foundation-funded study by OSU-FPP on leadership and management best practices used by the fire services domestically and abroad. The project, part of an effort to reduce firefighter death and injury rates in the United States, seeks to assess why their occurrence is substantially higher stateside than in the United Kingdom.
Trench also applies her expertise in the design, implementation and evaluation of fire and life safety education programs such as the Fire Safety Solutions for People with Disabilities program. The collaboration between OSU-FPP and Oklahoma ABLETech provides home fire safety education and smoke alarm installations for people who are deaf, hard of hearing, have low vision and those with mobility impairments and people with cognitive disabilities.
With a grant from FEMA, Trench guided the creation of the Fire Safety Curriculums for Young Children program in partnership with OSU College of Human Environmental Sciences early childhood educators and Stillwater Public Schools. Utilizing the local fire department, the curriculum for children three- to five years old is now taught in every pre-kindergarten class in Stillwater, making the school system the national model for its introduction.
For more than 20 years, Trench also has played a critical leadership role in founding and organizing the annual Oklahoma Fire and Life Safety Education Conferences, helping raise the skill level of public educators in Oklahoma, every state in the nation, Canada and beyond.
According to OSU-FPP director Chris Neal, the leadership, creativity and expertise Trench has shown in developing such programs are reasons she was asked to participate in Vision 20/20. Funded by the Department of Homeland Security Fire Prevention and Safety Grants program, the landmark meeting kicked off a year-long project to develop a national strategic agenda to reduce the loss of life and property from fire, which claims an average of almost 4,000 lives and $12.7 billion in property damage each year.
Attendees at the Washington forum included experts from the United States as well as Institution of Fire Engineers representatives from Australia and England, where innovative and cutting-edge programs have reduced fire deaths up to 50 percent.
“We couldn’t be more proud of Nancy both as a colleague and a friend. No one in our service has had such an impact in fire safety education over the years as Nancy, and it is a true joy to see her recognized by her peers,” Neal said. “Nancy is a wonderful ambassador for all that is good about OSU and FPP.”
Fire Protection Publications is an auxiliary enterprise of the College of Engineering, Architecture, and Technology at OSU and serves as the headquarters for the International Fire Service Training Association. Since their inception in 1934, IFSTA has worked with FPP to produce and distribute high quality fire service training materials. Its operations are funded primarily by the sales of the training materials they produce and distribute, as well as by grants from various sources. Located on OSU’s Stillwater campus, IFSTA and FPP produce a full line of fire, emergency medical and hazardous materials training manuals, study guides, curricula, video products and associated training materials.