{"id":41376,"date":"2025-12-17T15:32:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T21:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kwu.edu\/?p=41376"},"modified":"2025-12-18T12:31:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T18:31:00","slug":"haas-ready-for-new-role-in-cloud-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kwu.edu\/about\/news\/haas-ready-for-new-role-in-cloud-county\/","title":{"rendered":"Haas Ready for New Role in Cloud County"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Makenna Haas \u201926 is living something of a double life. She\u2019s not only a senior finishing up her Emergency Management degree, but she\u2019s also the acting director of Cloud County Emergency Management. Connections, she noted, were key to achieving this position and her ability to perform within it.<\/p>\n

Before coming to Kansas Wesleyan, Haas, a Salina-area native, had worked as a CNA, dabbled in being an EMT and received her associate degree in Fire Science from Salina Area Technical School.<\/p>\n

When those options didn\u2019t quite fit, she decided she could push her education, and natural gift of gab, even further.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love firefighting, and I love EMTs and all the people that I\u2019ve met along the way,\u201d Haas said. \u201cI\u2019m a little bit more political. I like to talk to people more than actually working on them.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was when she decided to come to Kansas Wesleyan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I came to KWU, I was really set on being a government consultant,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Though she envisioned herself working at the federal or state level, her interest in local government blossomed during her time interning with Saline County Emergency Management.<\/p>\n

While with them, she attended meetings, wrote grants and created a tornado safety exercise, which she was able to test on KWU\u2019s campus
\nthis summer.<\/p>\n

That, partnered with her experience as a volunteer with the Salina Fire Department District Five, Kansas Search and Rescue and Saline County Sheriff\u2019s Mounted Patrol Squad, made her unusually qualified for a young professional just entering her field. So, when a job opening for an Emergency Management director opened in Cloud County, her colleagues at SCEM and professors at the university were the first to push her toward it.<\/p>\n

\u201c[While interning with Saline County Emergency Management], I got to know all the emergency managers for the region,\u201d she said. Those she met were able to offer endorsements of her accomplishments and work, which helped significantly when she applied for her role.
\n\u201cBasically, they [Cloud County] were like, \u2018You can finish out school and we’ll pay you to work,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cSign me up.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019ll spend her Spring 2026 semester learning online while also working full-time in Concordia.<\/p>\n

This arrangement was made possible through the flexibility of Kansas Wesleyan\u2019s Registrar Office and Emergency Management department, both of which worked with Haas to ensure she could work and finish her degree.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s an outstanding student,\u201d said professor Bernie Botson. \u201cWe coordinated classes and directed studies through the registrar\u2019s office to get her to graduation. This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. We had to make it work, and we had to do it in a week.\u201d<\/p>\n

Haas was sworn in as Cloud County\u2019s acting director of emergency management on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025.<\/p>\n

As for whether she\u2019s ready for the challenge of running her department, she\u2019s not worried about what\u2019s to come.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like being in charge, and I\u2019m definitely a people person, so it doesn\u2019t bother me at all,\u201d she said. \u201cI am ultimately a department of one. It\u2019s just me, so I have to figure it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

She acknowledges that she won\u2019t have to go it alone all the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m doing, somebody I have in my phone is going to know.”<\/p>\n

Story by Skylar Nelson \u201921. This story will appear in the Fall\/Winter edition of Contact<\/em> magazine.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":41379,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-students"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHaas Ready for New Role in Cloud County - Kansas Wesleyan University<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kwu.edu\/about\/news\/haas-ready-for-new-role-in-cloud-county\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Haas Ready for New Role in Cloud County - 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