Fire District No. 1's Chief Brad Ellis recently graduated from a 14-week management training program aimed at building leadership and communication skills, promoting productivity, and managing both human and technical resources.

The program — offered by Massachusetts Firefighting Academy, tuition-free — focuses on specific aspects of managing a fire department, including human resource management, ethics, executive leadership and legal issues, governmental and organization structures, information management, customer-focused strategic planning, budgets and public finance, community awareness and public relations, and labor relations. The program does not focus on fire suppression techniques.

Participants were required to write a formal applied research paper that identifies a current problem or challenge faced by their organization and proposes a viable solution. The officers had to present their proposal to a panel of municipal officials for their consideration.

Ellis said he wrote about the shortage of manpower in the district, specifically identifying the challenges of recruitment for a volunteer-based department. The only full-time staff in the District No. 1 department is Ellis himself. Firefighters are signaled for emergencies, but aren't scheduled for round-the-clock coverage. He hopes to transition from an all-call firefighter team to 24/7 coverage, like District No. 3 Chief Richard Arruda has done.

Ellis was one of 31 graduates from across the state — including the Andover, Barnstable, Burlington, Cambridge, Concord, Foxborough, Gloucester, Halifax, Harwich, Hingham, Leicester, Lynn, Marshfield, North Andover, Northbridge, Orleans, Oxford, Plainville, Revere, Sandwich, Tewksbury, Waltham, Westborough, Westfield, Weston, and Worcester communities — on February 2.

The Massachusetts Firefighting Academy is a division of the Department of Fire Services. The program was developed in accordance with National Fire Protection Association Standards.