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QUINCY, ILL. -- Have you ever been promoted to a position and not received a lot of guidance in how to do the job? Years ago, that was the case for many of our emergency responders including fire departments across the Tri-States.

That all changed with a Senior Officer Focus Class that takes place several times a year throughout Illinois. This weekend, Quincy's playing the host.

"We don't get a lot of opportunities for the senior chief officers to get a lot of training so this class was really designed for that," said Rick Zaerr, the fire chief for the Tri-Township Fire Protection District.

"We looked at training across the state and we were doing really well with training fire fighters but when it got to the chief level, we found this huge void.All the sudden when you had the most responsibility, you weren't really trained for it. And so you got into this office and were like, 'oh my goodness, I have all this responsibility. Where am I going to get this information at?'" said Patrick Kenny, with the Illinois Fire Chief's Association.

For more than a decade, this class has rolled through dozens of cities throughout Illinois hoping to better educate our fire officials. Some months, the class may take in 20 people, others may draw as many as 80.

Fire chiefs from Springfield to the smaller volunteer fire departments took part in classes this weekend, even some from LaGrange, Missouri who wanted to see what they might be missing.

"We hope to create a network, where they'll pick up the phone or email and say, 'hey have you got this problem, how did you deal with it? And I think it's the reason this class has stayed so successful," said Kenny.

So successful, in fact, this class sees repeats of its students every year or two.

"We always ask, why are you back? They say we've picked up a lot in that first class, we've instituted some of it, and now we want to see what we missed. The fire department is always evolving so what's the hot topic and where can we find the resources?" said Kenny.

These classes are fully funded by the State Fire Marshal every year throughout the state. The next two classes will be at the beginning of the year in McHenry County and Fairview Heights.