Hazardous Materials Officer of the Year Award and Scholarship

About the Award

The Hazardous Materials Officer of the Year award recognizes a hazmat response officer that shows exemplary leadership or management capabilities such as enhancing their HazMat team's technical capabilities, ensuring the team's readiness, increasing collaboration with other response teams or partner agencies, inspiring and empowering response team members, launching new initiatives, and/or securing additional resources for the HazMat team.

About the Scholarship

To support knowledge sharing, networking with peers, and expanding education opportunities for HazMat officers, CHEMTREC® is sponsoring a scholarship for the “Hazardous Materials Officer of the Year” to attend the 2024 Hazardous Materials Instructors and Commanders (HMIC) Conference hosted by Hazard3 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from November 12-14, 2024.

The scholarship will include:

• Complementary conference registration
• Three nights of hotel accommodations provided
• Airfare to the conference provided
• Per diem for meals (Note: some meals are already provided via the conference)

*Total scholarship assistance not to exceed $2,500

About the Conference

The Hazardous Materials Instructors and Commanders Conference (HMIC) provides HazMat/CBRN management level professional development and networking for command and training staff.    Conference attendees can attend workshops in three tracts:

• Instructor development
• Command and program management
• Emerging hazards and technology 

The Award Winner will be recognized at the Happy Hour sponsored by CHEMTREC® at 6 pm on November 12.

Criteria

To be eligible to apply for the CHEMTREC scholarship, individuals must meet the following criteria:

• Must be a hazmat officer, team leader, program manager, or similar leadership role.   
• Must be a member of a hazmat team within a local or state public safety or emergency management agency located in the United States and be legally organized under state law.
• Demonstrate in the application essay their successes as a hazmat officer, the impacts they have made on other responders as a hazmat officer, and how attending the HMIC Conference will benefit you and your hazmat team.
• Only one application will be accepted per person. Self-nominations are accepted.
• The recipient that receives the award must use the money to attend. The scholarship cannot be redistributed or transferred.
• The recipient agrees that their name, department name, details from their application essay, and all photos taken during the leadership breakfast presentation may be used in media by CHEMTREC and Hazard3 for the purposes of promoting the scholarship program.

Selection Process

The 2024 application period will be open from July 27 to September 13. A panel selected by CHEMTREC & Hazard3 will review the applications and select the “Hazmat Officer of the Year.” Recipients will be announced by September 27, 2024.