Recommended High School/College Paths for Fire Alarms

Hello all. (Or, as we Texas Aggie fans say, Howdy!)

I may not have expressed interest in this on the forums before, but I’m becoming more interested in pursuing fire safety/fire detection/fire alarms as a profession. Texas A&M has an electrical engineering course and Oklahoma State University has a Fire Protection and Safety Technologies program that I’m looking at. I’m visiting A&M this weekend and OSU in March.

As for now, course card season is upon me, and I’m being urged to select courses for my senior year wisely. I want to either be a fire protection engineer or a FACP programmer. I’ve heard from numerous people, including my uncle and BCarl, that programmers are very much needed and I think that would be nice for me to do professionally. I would certainly love to assist in installing, programming, and testing fire alarm systems for a living, and the time for me to make a decision in what classes to invest in has come.

For my Science 4 class, I’m thinking of AP Environmental Systems. I’ve already taken Chemestry, Biology, and I am currently taking Physics.
For my Math 4 class, I’m looking at either AP Calculus AB or AP Statistics. I have heard stories about Stats, though. :slight_smile: I have already taken Algebra I and II, Geometry, and I am currently taking Pre-Calculus and AP Computer Science I.
I’m not sure if History matters much, but I am interested in it all the same. I’ve taken World Geography, World History, and I’m currently taking US History. I’m probably going to end up taking Government and Economics.
As for English, I’ve taken I and II, am currently taking III AP-Dual Credit, and plan to take IV AP Dual-Credit. I’m not sure if you know this, but Dual Credit is something that some schools have that award students with college credit as well as high school credit! That means I won’t have to spend as much time on Freshman English in college.

I’ve taken Latin I and II and am currently taking III. My Latin teacher is thinking about starting a Greek course, so that’ll be fun.

I just don’t know what kind of courses to take to focus more on fire protection. Maybe some of you professionals can help me out? Any sort of help is greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time and patience!

Being someone who is also trying to get started with this stuff and in college right now, here’s a few tips I can give:

  1. At the least, look at going for a low voltage electrician’s license. The definition of “low” they talk about is stuff under 300 Volts, I believe.
  2. Electrical Engineering would be nice if you wanted to design new systems since it would cover necessary topics such as voltage drop over distance (wire resistance) and other factors.
  3. Do you have more information on the Fire Protection & Safety Technologies program? SMCC here in Maine has a similar program except it is more oriented at the fire service than fire protection engineers.
  4. Most colleges will require you to take some sort of history course as a gen-ed requirement, so it is good you are thinking about it now.
  5. If you can fit them in, take a computer programming course and maybe a Discrete Math class. Won’t do a whole lot for panel programming but a lot of custom control situations with larger systems require logic control scripts and having practice with those would be a good idea.
  6. As for English, look at a Professional / Business Writing course, you will be doing a lot of technical documents and business paperwork in the future and it would help a lot.
  7. One thing I have heard from areas like Miami and southern CA that knowing a common foreign language could help you communicate with some people. I heard a story where a technician who knew Spanish was sent to an apartment building specifically because most of the residents spoke Spanish better than English.
  8. If your high school offers any of these courses then I would say do them while you can. Don’t forget though that not all colleges will accept high school classes as waivers and you might be forced to either repeat stuff or test out of them.
  9. Lastly, if you are 18+ try to get your foot in the door during the summer – call around LOCAL alarm companies (avoid Simplex, who is not interested) and propose to them a summer internship helping with inspections and installs. A lot of people don’t notice this but the fire protection industry is actually fairly seasonal, where during the summer and early fall is when most of the business happens. For the company I work for, the incident with Sandy Hook and at other schools may have been the cause for a surge in security, camera system, and access control sales from nearly all of the school departments we have contracts with. Last summer was such a busy summer for us that the COO and Chairman were frequently out of the office helping on service calls.

Good luck!

Your AP Computer Science course is more that enough for FACP programming.
A basic electronics course is useful: perhaps a Junior College nearby offers such a course.
Spanish language is exceptionally useful for any job in the trades: there are many situations in the where Spanish is a key to either acceptance or even basic communication. If you aspire to manage a crew, or have employees, the ability to hire or work with Spanish speakers is key.

“Low voltage” experience will help, so will any computer programming courses, especially if you have to create logic equations for programming.

As brycenesbitt said, even Spanish will be useful, because you will probably be asked to work on construction sites. And while your company may or may not have Spanish-speaking people, you will most likely run into other trades which have Spanish speakers.

For me though, getting my job was pure luck that the company I was visiting was also hiring. Sometimes you just need luck to fall on your side as well.