Maple Valley Police Chief Michelle Bennett went to Quantico, Va., in October to train at the FBI National Academy and came away with a highly valuable intangible — perspective.

“For me to be able to gain perspective from so many different view points, it helped me come back in a calm and relaxed space,” Bennett said. “It made me really appreciate what we have, which is a fantastic environment and a fantastic support system here in Maple Valley.”

Bennett, who has served as the Maple Valley Police chief since 2004, decided to take on the 11-week challenge of the FBI National Academy and began the arduous application process.

It starts with an online application. Everything is verified by the FBI.

Bennett was then interviewed. Once she completed that portion of the process, the FBI did an extensive background check, a full medical check and required a letter of recommendation from the chief executive which would be Maple Valley City Manager David Johnston.

Johnston, who moved to Maple Valley from Indiana in 2009, was familiar with the program.

“It’s been my experience in the midwest is that minimal requirements for police chiefs is graduation from Northwestern University’s Command College and Traffic Safety Institute and the FBI Academy,” he said. “When the city was asked to sponsor Chief Bennett’s attendance it was one of the quickest approvals of my career because of that (prior experience). The training of police chiefs or potential police chiefs is the best in the world because it is an international program. I have all the confidence in the world that training will benefit the city of Maple Valley.”

Once Bennett was admitted to the program, which is highly selective and offered four times annually, she left for Virginia in October.

“I was really proud to be selected to go,” she said. “I wanted to make sure I did the city proud.”

She described the first week as crazy, as close to military boot camp as she’d ever experienced firsthand, during which she moved into a dorm and filled out mountains of paperwork.

During the program, she earned 17 college credits while taking courses on youth violence, public speaking and behavioral psychology, among other topics. Bennett said that while she doesn’t need the credits — she earned a doctorate at Seattle Pacific University a few years ago — the classroom experiences and knowledge she took away were invaluable.

“The cool part about the people there is that they were all high caliber,” Bennett said. “It was neat to be around that kind of excellence. I was able to learn a lot while I was there both in the coursework and from my colleagues and bring that back to Maple Valley to enhance my job skills to help me be a better supervisor and leader here.”

On top of the work involved in those six courses, which included several papers, Bennett took on all the fitness challenges the program had to offer.

There were weekly runs for the group of 266 participants that started with a 1.8 mile jaunt and finished with a 6.1 mile run and obstacle course. Bennett said the final run and obstacle course — known as “the yellow brick road” — had to be completed on a day “it was pouring down rain.”

“The yellow brick road was very challenging because I love working out but I’m not a runner,” she said. “I had a really bad cold that day. I was coughing up a lung and I had lost my voice.”

Bennett was also one of 30 who took on the swim challenge and one of three women of the 37 in the program that session.

In the mornings, Bennett would go to the pool and swim, sometimes missing breakfast. At the end of the day, she would return to the pool with the others who decided to take on the swim challenge at the end of each, working up to a 37 mile swim at the end of the 11 weeks.

Whatever free time she had, Bennett said, she spent in the pool.

Bennett is used to being busy because she juggles her roles as police chief and mom to 8-year-old son, Tommy. But, the FBI National Academy was a different sort of busy, and it presented a different kind of challenge.

“The hardest thing while I was there was probably learning balance,” she said. “There’s three parts of being there, the academic part, the physical part and the social and networking part. I wouldn’t get to sleep until 11 o’ clock or midnight… then you had to get up super early. I was busy and it was hard to balance those three hats.”

At the end of the program, she was thankful for the perspective she’d gained, but also for the people she had met.

“To step back and have three months of great training and great perspective (was valuable),” Bennett said. “Besides the perspective and the networking, I’ve got 265 good friends now if I ever have an issue or question that I can reach out to.”