Student Resources

Student Resources

Want to take a class or start a career in prescribed fire? View our volunteer contacts and requirement sheet to find organizations to start burning with. We also offer significant student discounts on our training events— just reach out and ask!

Need a prescribed fire crash course or refresher before your next burn? Active WPFC members can view our series of video lectures to get a full introduction to prescribed fire. A 4-year student membership is only $20!

Additionally, the following colleges and universities offer classes or programs focused on prescribed fire:

• UW-Madison
  • Offers one 3-credit introductory prescribed fire course that allows students to obtain NWCG Wildland Firefighter Type II certification and burn with organizations across Wisconsin (Landscape Architecture / Environmental Sciences 581 – Prescribed Fire: Ecology and Implementation). Read this feature for more information.
• UW-Stevens Point
  • Offers 3 courses in Fire Ecology and Management, Fire Behavior, and Fire Policy through the Forestry discipline within the College of Natural Resources. Courses are linked to broader multidisciplinary skills related to ecosystem restoration and forest, rangeland, and wildlife habitat management.
  • Offers a 16-credit Fire Science Management certificate that includes NWCG Wildland Firefighter certification and a broad range of fire management disciplines that include wildfire suppression, prescribed burning, wildland fire use, wildland fire remote sensing applications, advanced fire behavior modeling, and wildland urban interface mitigation and prevention curriculum.
  • Maintains an active student-led fire crew that offers a multitude of unique prescribed fire experiences and hosts NWCG trainings that include S-131, S-211, S-112, S-219, and L-280. Crew members get the opportunity to burn across four main fuel types that include, prairies and savannas, oak woodlands, mixed pine-hardwoods, and wetlands (sedge meadows and cattails). In addition to in-state burns, the Fire Crew leads annual out-of-state burn trips to Florida and Cook County, Illinois.
  • Provides opportunities for undergraduate and graduate fire ecology research across barrens, oak woodlands, and mixed pine-hardwood systems.
  • Maintains a beautifully restored fire-adapted campus at Schmeeckle Reserve and Treehaven. Schmeeckle Reserve serves as an outdoor classroom to the main UWSP campus where students burn in oak savannas, prairies, sedge meadows, cattails, and phragmites. Students have further burn opportunities as part of their summer field experience at the UWSP Treehaven facility where students burn in barrens and mixed pine-hardwood systems.
• UW-Platteville
  • Offers 3 courses (Fire Behavior, Fire Ecology, and a Fire Practicum) through the Department of Environmental Sciences and Society. These courses are integrated with a broader Land Ethic curriculum to provide students with understanding and hands-on skills and experience working with fire in land stewardship.
  • Offers a 14-credit Fire Stewardship Certificate that connects to majors across campus, including Environmental Science and Conservation, Ecological Restoration, Biology, Environmental Horticulture, Soil Science, and more.
  • Provides access to NWCG and Wisconsin Prescribed Fire Council trainings to build credentials and certifications.
  • Maintains an active Restoration Ecology and Conservation (REC) student club that provides an abundance of land stewardship experiences for members, including opportunities to conduct prescribed burns at sites across southwest Wisconsin.
  • Maintains a beautiful campus in the heart of the Driftless Area that provides a living classroom for students to develop skills working across topography and fuel types, all within sight of campus classrooms, dorms, and offices to directly engage the campus community in fire stewardship.
  • View the Fire at UW-Platteville story map for more information.
• Northeast Wisconsin Technical College
  • Offers a Technical Diploma in Fire Science, designed for prospective firefighters but with transferrable skills to prescribed burns.
• Fox Valley Technical College
  • Maintains a Prescribed Fire program that offers courses to students and the general public. Frequently hosts upper-level NWCG fire courses that are difficult to find elsewhere in Wisconsin.
• Carroll University
  • Offers occasional prescribed fire opportunities through Prairie Springs Environmental Education Center.
• Madison Area Technical College
  • Offers occasional wildland fire programs and courses available to students, fire management technicians, and the general public.