Air University Educational Digest - 2010 (pdf ... - The Air University

Unit assigned to Headquarters, USAF, would be
reassigned to AU later in the year. Advance planning
for the realignment focused on the parallel mission
already being performed within AU by the College of
Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education. A
merger of the two organizations would capitalize on
the strengths of both while producing valuable cost
savings, but the complexities of that process were
still being considered when AFDC was formally
transferred to AU on 1 October.
The growing demands of an expeditionary Air Force
affected AU in multiple ways, some with
unanticipated but valuable benefits. In August 2006,
the Officer Training School (OTS) expanded its
curriculum by 20 hours to put further emphasis on
expeditionary deployment skills. To provide
additional realism for OTS‘ mass casualty exercises
and survival, escape and evasion procedures,
helicopters and crews were ‗borrowed‘ for a firstever
joint training effort with Army Aviation units
stationed at Ft. Rucker, Alabama.
Responding to a USAF Chief of Staff directive to
improve cultural literacy and foreign language skills,
AU began to offer on-line tutoring in 28 foreign
languages to active duty company grade officers in
September. As resources became available, this
effort would be expanded to also include reserve and
guard company grade officers; eventually, the ability
to speak a second language was expected to become a
promotion prerequisite throughout the USAF officer
corps.
In January 2007, the Air University Library was
formally redesignated the Muir S. Fairchild Research
Information Center to recognize its greatly expanded
role in providing students with multiple means of
accessing academic and operational research
information.
In March, the AF Institute of Technology began to
offer a master‘s degree in systems engineering as its
first distance learning graduate degree program, and
in that same month Secretary of the Air Force
Michael Wynne gave AU permission to confer
honorary degrees.
After a 48-month reevaluation period, in April the
Squadron Officer School (SOS) reinstated its
Distinguished Graduate (DG) Award program to
recognize students for exhibiting special excellence
in all facets of the curriculum. SOS‘s recognition
had been changed in March 2004 to replace DG with
a Top Third Graduate Award for the best 33 percent
of the graduating class; the restoration of DG status
for the top ten percent ensured recognition of the
‗best of the best‘ in each class.
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At mid-year, the Air Command and Staff College
began to offer eligible officers an on-line graduate
degree program in the military operational arts and
sciences; the program simultaneously fulfilled their
requirements for Joint professional military education
and AF intermediate development education. The
Community College of the Air Force (CCAF) also
announced activation of the Associate-to-
Baccalaureate Program, an arrangement with civilian
colleges and universities by which enlisted personnel
could use distance learning and tuition assistance to
complete their four-year degrees. To further expand
its reach and utility, in October CCAF released a new
web-based tool called the Credentialing and
Education Research Tool, an on-line means of
linking CCAF degree programs with nationally
recognized professional certifications relevant to
specific Air Force career fields. The process served
as a recruiting tool, as it showed prospective enlistees
how USAF opportunities were related to civilian
career opportunities.
AU also saw other milestones gained and surpassed
in 2007. In June, after almost a year of transition, the
AF Judge Advocates School was formally reassigned
‗in place‘ from AETC to the AF Legal Operations
School. Two months later, the Center for Air Force
Doctrine, Research and Education was inactivated,
and its assets were absorbed by the newly
redesignated AF Doctrine Development and
Education Center. The Air and Space Basic Course
graduated its 25,000 student, and CCAF awarded a
record 17,456 associates degrees during the academic
year; one of them was the 300,000 th Airman to
become a CCAF alumnus.
The most significant changes affecting AU in 2008
were structural in nature. In late 2006, facing
draconian constraints imposed by the USAF‘s
undeferrable need to recapitalize the force while
simultaneously engaging with terrorism around the
globe, AU began a serious, ‗nothing is sacred‘ review
of all its operations; those in-depth efforts continued
on through much of 2007. After due consideration
by AETC and USAF Headquarters, the University
received authority to undertake a major
reorganization in the spring of 2008. The process
involved multiple organizational change actions; its
goals were to reduce manpower requirements by
rationalizing the arrangements for officer and enlisted
education needs, and to improve operational
effectiveness by reducing the number of officials
reporting directly to the AU commander.
As a preliminary step, in April some of AU‘s
Headquarters offices were recast in order to bring
them more into line with their equivalents at AETC.