AACC in January hired a former firefighter as the campus Public Safety and Police Department’s first emergency manager.

Arlene Crow started her job after teaching biological warfare as an adjunct professor from July to December 2018.

According to AACC Police Chief Sean Kapfhammer, Crow’s responsibilities will include keeping AACC’s emergency operations plans up to date, interacting with the county’s emergency management agency, training the department’s staff to properly set up an emergency operation center—the center of police operations during an emergency—running drills on campus and coordinating police efforts in case of an emergency.

“[My] overview is to make sure this campus is ready to respond to any kind of emergency, be it a tornado, or an active shooter or anything in between,” Crow said.

Crow said she is a good fit for the job because of her prior experience as a firefighter and EMT in central Florida, positions she filled from 1995 until 9/11, when she took a government job that focused on preparing for natural disasters and biological terrorism.

Crow and her six-person team worked in Orlando, protecting people in Walt Disney World, SeaWorld and Universal Orlando Resort.

In case of emergencies, “we had to [be able to] get medication to our entire population within 48 hours,” Crow said. “That entire population for me could have been anything from a million to 2 million people.”

Crow said she retired in 2013 to “let somebody else save the world for a while.”

She said she began taking classes at AACC for fun in 2007, and eventually started teaching part-time before the college hired her for the new position.