[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 111-175]
TRANSFORMATION IN PROGRESS:
THE SERVICES' ENLISTED PROFESSIONAL MILITARY EDUCATION PROGRAMS
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
JULY 28, 2010
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas, Chairman
JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina ROB WITTMAN, Virginia
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
JIM COOPER, Tennessee MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania TRENT FRANKS, Arizona
GLENN NYE, Virginia CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado
NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
Lorry Fenner, Professional Staff Member
Thomas Hawley, Professional Staff Member
Trey Howard, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
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CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2010
Page
Hearing:
Wednesday, July 28, 2010, Transformation in Progress: The
Services' Enlisted Professional Military Education Programs.... 1
Appendix:
Wednesday, July 28, 2010......................................... 35
----------
WEDNESDAY, JULY 28, 2010
TRANSFORMATION IN PROGRESS: THE SERVICES' ENLISTED PROFESSIONAL
MILITARY EDUCATION PROGRAMS
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Skelton, Hon. Ike, a Representative from Missouri, Chairman,
Committee on Armed Services.................................... 11
Snyder, Hon. Vic, a Representative from Arkansas, Chairman,
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations................... 1
Wittman, Hon. Rob, a Representative from Virginia, Ranking
Member, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations........... 2
WITNESSES
Lutterloh, Scott, Director, Total Force Requirements Division,
U.S. Navy...................................................... 7
Minick, Col. James J., USMC, Director, Enlisted Professional
Military Education, Marine Corps University, U.S. Marine Corps. 4
Sitterly, Daniel R., Director of Force Development, Deputy Chief
of Staff, Manpower and Personnel, U.S. Air Force............... 9
Sparks, John D., Director, Institute for Noncommissioned Officer
Professional Development, Training and Doctrine Command, U.S.
Army........................................................... 5
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Lutterloh, Scott............................................. 81
Minick, Col. James J......................................... 42
Sitterly, Daniel R........................................... 86
Sparks, John D............................................... 63
Wittman, Hon. Rob............................................ 39
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
Dr. Snyder................................................... 95
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
Dr. Snyder................................................... 99
TRANSFORMATION IN PROGRESS: THE SERVICES'
ENLISTED PROFESSIONAL MILITARY EDUCATION PROGRAMS
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations,
Washington, DC, Wednesday, July 28, 2010.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1:36 p.m., in
room 2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Vic Snyder
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. VIC SNYDER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
ARKANSAS, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND
INVESTIGATIONS
Dr. Snyder. Welcome to the Subcommittee on Oversight and
Investigations hearing on the services' progress in
transforming the enlisted professional military education or
EPME [enlisted professional military education].
I would also like to welcome Chairman Ike Skelton, who is
from Missouri, who is a longtime supporter and friend of the
military, but has taken a special interest over several decades
now in military education.
We appreciate you being here today, Mr. Chairman.
This subcommittee spent over a year studying officer
professional military education that culminated in our April
report. Education for our enlisted force is just as important.
Noncommissioned officers, NCOs, are the backbone of the
military.
I can't emphasize enough how much things have changed and
are still changing. Until the last three decades, our military
consisted of a very small core of professionals augmented in
times of crisis by large numbers of volunteers and conscripts.
NCOs have always been the core of the professional part of our
military, but they were primarily expected to maintain
discipline and train their juniors.
Enlisted personnel often came in with barely a high school
education, and the bulk of them only served one enlistment.
They needed a lot of technical training and military training.
Over time our enlisted force is growing to be a much better
educated group of professionals that enter the military much
more technically astute than their superiors, but still
requiring training and military leadership development and now
further education in everything from national security strategy
to resource management to cultural environments.
In the post-Cold War era and with the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, we have seen an even greater transition in the
role of NCOs. Officers are expected to perform generally their
same historic roles in a vastly different environment, but our
NCOs are now called upon to perform significantly different
roles in a vastly different environment.
NCOs are now expected to be full partners with mid-level
and senior officers in planning and executing operations and in
managing and leading the force. They are called upon more than
ever to participate in joint interagency and multinational
operations and staff work, as well as to understand and
contribute to strategies.
Because demands on our enlisted personnel have changed
dramatically, our training and education systems must change
dramatically. The services have to start the preparation of
enlisted personnel during their first enlistment, if they are
to have the tools necessary to perform as NCOs a mere 4 years
later.
The services have in fact all embarked in transitioning
their training and education systems. Some are drastically
transforming their systems. This is what we will explore today.
How far and how fast have the services advanced their systems,
and how much farther do they need to go? And what can this
Congress and the American people do to help?
The Congress does have a role to play in this effort. At
least as much as with the officer corps, we should provide the
oversight and support our enlisted personnel require--and the
support our enlisted personnel require to succeed in their
important profession, providing for our defense and security.
We ask much of them; they should expect much from us. And
this hearing is just the beginning of what will be a longer
conversation, which is a metaphor for ``congressional
oversight.''
We have four witnesses today. Before I introduce them, I
would like Mr. Wittman to make any comments he would like to
make.
STATEMENT OF HON. ROB WITTMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM VIRGINIA,
RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Chairman Snyder. Thank you so much
for your leadership on the whole issue of professional military
education.
And good afternoon to our witnesses. Thank you so much for
joining us today.
As the chairman noted, over the past year this committee
has conducted an extensive review of the officer professional
military education system and recently published a lengthy
report on our findings and our observations. Of necessity, that
effort could not review all aspects of professional military
education and focused on the rapidly evolving joint and
interagency officer education requirements.
Today, though, we turn our attention to one of those gaps--
enlisted professional military education. It will come as no
surprise to a professional noncommissioned officer corps that
the demands on the enlisted force to skillfully interact in
complex interagency and international settings have greatly
increased.
In fact, many, if not most Army and Marine Corps patrols
into Afghan villages are led by sergeants, not officers. Nor
will it surprise our superb NCOs to find that officers seem to
require formal education to get it right--that is, when
compared to NCOs.
As an example, we needed no fewer than six hearings on
officer PME [professional military education] to sift through
the complexities of the officer system, and we find we can
address enlisted PME in a single hearing. That is good news for
the enlisted force. After today's hearing you can confidently
go about your business of training sergeants, chiefs and master
chiefs largely unimpeded by Congress.
Even so, the Congress does have a critical role to play.
Our review in this hearing will establish a baseline from which
future development will be judged, and I know that the Marine
Corps is embarking on a much-needed and ambitious upgrade to
its enlisted professional military education program. And if
realized, the Marine Corps will have an excellent PME system
for our enlisted personnel.
And while I am optimistic, issues of course availability
and resource allocation remain, and we stand ready to assist
you wherever we can. We realize that it takes those resources
to make enlisted PME happen. And I am gratified to see that
each service has developed a series of noncommissioned officer
courses that noncommissioned officers attend as they progress
in rank.
The services all have different approaches on timing
requirements for promotion, course learning and distance
learning components. While these differences are necessary to
support the needs of a particular service, they should be
supported. Where there are outliers from the other services and
work to the disadvantage of noncommissioned officer corps of
that military service, the practice should be reviewed by the
service and changed as needed.
And we on this subcommittee want to support our enlisted as
much as possible, and we look forward to hearing of the many
ways that we can help.
Again, Mr. Chairman, thank you so much for your leadership
on this. And it was great for us to have the opportunity to
learn the efforts that are going on out there with enlisted
PME, where the challenges remain, and where we can be there to
help. And again, Mr. Chairman, I look forward to hearing from
our witnesses.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wittman can be found in the
Appendix on page 39.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Mr. Wittman.
I want to acknowledge the presence of Dr. Lorry Fenner, who
normally doesn't sit in the staff seat with us, but since she
is here, the presence of her mother and sister back here, too,
Mrs. Fenner, who had an encounter with a dog a few days ago, I
think, and tripped and fell, we appreciate you all being here
today.
Chairman Skelton is here with us.
You know, the report we have been talking about we entitled
``Another Crossroads? Professional Military Education Two
Decades After the Goldwater-Nichols Act and the Skelton
Panel.'' So we put your name down here in posterity. Mr.
Chairman, do you have any opening comments? [No.]
Let me introduce our witnesses today. We are joined by
Colonel James Minick, United States Marine Corps, Director of
Enlisted PME at the Marine Corps University; Mr. John Sparks,
Director of Institute for NCO Professional Development,
Training and Doctrine Command, U.S. Army; Mr. Scott Lutterloh,
Director, Total Force Requirements Division, U.S. Navy; Dr. Dan
Sitterly, Director of Force Development, Deputy Chief of Staff,
Manpower and Personnel, U.S. Air Force.
We have your written statements. They will be made part of
the written record. We will turn the clock on that wall--the
red light will go off in about 5 minutes, but if you have other
things you need to tell us, you go ahead and do that.
And we will begin with you, Colonel Minick.
STATEMENT OF COL. JAMES J. MINICK, USMC, DIRECTOR, ENLISTED
PROFESSIONAL MILITARY EDUCATION, MARINE CORPS UNIVERSITY, U.S.
MARINE CORPS
Colonel Minick. Chairman Skelton, Chairman Snyder, and
Ranking Member Wittman, I really do appreciate the opportunity
to tell the Marine Corps story on enlisted PME--not only what
we are developing, but what we have accomplished.
I will say early in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring
Freedom, it became evident that the United States Marine Corps
enlisted education program was not evolving to meet the
challenges of a dynamic and changing battlefield. To ensure our
enlisted Marines could meet the challenges of distributed
operations and hybrid warfare, we knew we had to make some
changes.
We empowered our Marines to be able to adapt and think
critically and move on a changing battlefield, at the same time
being able to act decisively. We believe developing and
executing a professional education program provides a means to
achieve that strategic corporal that our 31st commandant,
General Krulak, envisioned in the late 1990s.
In the history of the Marine Corps, the commitment to
enlisted education has never been stronger. And as an example,
I will tell you about my branch, enlisted PME, within the
Marine Corps University.
Just 4 years ago, enlisted PME was three Marines, three
enlisted Marines, in the basement of Marine Corps University,
with virtually no officer oversight. Today enlisted PME is 43
personnel, both civilian and military education specialists,
led by a Marine colonel.
I will have to tell you that the vision of the president of
Marine Corps University in concert with the commandant, our
current commandant, Vision 2025, established enlisted PME as
the number one priority in 2009 in Marine Corps University.
Every summer between classes, between academic years, we
reassess and we reevaluate the strategic plan. Again, 2 weeks
ago General Neller established enlisted PME to remain the top
priority within the university.
The Marine Corps University is committed to the
intellectual and professional development of our enlisted
force. We believe that the dynamics of the current battlefield
require it, and we are prepared to support it.
The transformation of EPME I believe is a good news story.
However, we believe there is a long ways to go. For exactly the
comments that we have already heard from members of the
subcommittee, we are prepared to make those challenges, and we
feel confident we can move in that direction.
I thank you for the opportunity to speak this afternoon,
and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Colonel Minick can be found in
the Appendix on page 42.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Colonel.
Mr. Sparks.
STATEMENT OF JOHN D. SPARKS, DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR
NONCOMMISSIONED OFFICER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT, TRAINING AND
DOCTRINE COMMAND, U.S. ARMY
Mr. Sparks. Chairman Skelton, Chairman Snyder, Congressman
Wittman, distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you
for the opportunity to appear before you today.
My name is John Sparks. I am the director of the Institute
for Noncommissioned Officer Professional Development at the
U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Monroe,
Virginia. On behalf of General Dempsey, the commanding general,
I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today about
Army's enlisted professional military education.
Today's noncommissioned officer system is much different
than the one I attended during my 30-year career in the Army.
It has evolved into a dynamic system that plays a significant
role in preparing and further developing noncommissioned
officers through the continuum of their career.
The richness and depth of that development is rooted in the
knowledge and the experience not gained in the classroom, but
gained while deployed in the training environment and practical
exercises with Army joint and multinational engagement
partners.
Noncommissioned officers are the driving force behind the
Army. They are the ones that carry out the orders given by
commanders, direct and train our troops, and usually have the
most experience. We are proud of our NCOs. We are so proud that
in 2009 the Army declared that the Year of the NCO.
It is therefore an honor for me to testify before the
subcommittee on the Army's enlisted professional military
education program and share with you a sense of the Army's way
ahead. I will present two themes, the Army noncommissioned
officer system of governance and structure and the
noncommissioned officer leader development curriculum.
The Army views enlisted professional military education as
a subset of a larger system we call the noncommissioned officer
education system, or NCOES. It is important to make that
distinction, because the Army views education as holistic,
sequential, and progressive. The reason for this is simple. The
noncommissioned officer leader development model requires a
balanced commitment to the three pillars of leader
development--training, education, and experience.
TRADOC [U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command] recently
created the Institute for the Noncommissioned Officer
Professional Development, a special activity that reports to
the commanding general of TRADOC, to serve as the NCO cohort
lead responsible for coordinating vertically and horizontally
across the Army, the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard.
The second area I would like to discuss is our
noncommissioned officer leader development curriculum. Our
education has transformed significantly since its creation in
1972. In its early years it was characterized as a singular,
focused schoolhouse delivery training program, which delivered
training to approximately 299 soldiers. Today we deliver
training in a tiered, progressive education manner to nearly
160,000 NCOs annually.
We deliver this training through various mediums to include
resident, Web-based and mobile training teams. The new regimen
is continuous and starts when a soldier completes his initial
entry training. It continues with that iterative construct of
courses which progressively build upon education, experience,
and training throughout a soldier's career.
Course curriculum for Warrior Advanced Senior Leader
Courses includes topics such as leadership, creative thinking,
squad, platoon and company operations, conflict management,
solving complex problems, resiliency, and developing
subordinates.
The Sergeants Major Course is overhauled and upgraded to
include topics that officers study at the Command and General
Staff College. The resident and non-resident Sergeants Major
Course has some similar content to the intermediate-level
education courses attended by captains and majors. The course
is primarily designed to prepare our most senior
noncommissioned officers for duty at the battalion and brigade
level.
Finally, the Army recognized the value and necessity of
joint education throughout the continuum of professional
development. Some joint professional military education is
delivered through self-development modules and complements the
Warrior Advanced Senior Leader Courses.
In addition to the self-development and resident
instruction given at the senior level, soldiers receive
assignment-oriented training prior to assignment to joint
positions at the grade of sergeant through sergeant major.
In summation, the Army's enlisted professional military
education program remains adapted to the needs of the current
and future fighter. And we will continue to solicit feedback
from the field, combatant commanders, and sister services, as
we shape and transform our curriculum.
Our assessment of the Army enlisted personnel education
system is vetted and is healthy and achieving its objectives.
We have developed an organization with a solid assessment and
evaluation resource to ensure growth. Army leadership has
emphasized the value of leader development and has made it
priority number one.
Recognizing the need to adapt, noncommissioned officer
education has transformed from a singular focus, somewhat
disparate program into a holistic, progressive system of
sequential learning. We recognize, however, that the program is
not without challenges. Education is an adaptive process, one
which will require continuous adjustment, alignment, and
assessment to ensure we are getting it right.
Our NCOs deserve nothing less than our absolute full
commitment to ensuring their ability to execute full-spectrum
operations in an area of persistent conflict.
Thank you for the opportunity. I look forward to the
committee's questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Sparks can be found in the
Appendix on page 63.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you.
Mr. Lutterloh.
STATEMENT OF SCOTT LUTTERLOH, DIRECTOR, TOTAL FORCE
REQUIREMENTS DIVISION, U.S. NAVY
Mr. Lutterloh. Good afternoon, Chairman Skelton, Chairman
Snyder, Representative Wittman, Representative Davis, Dr.
Fenner, and distinguished members of the Oversight and
Investigation Subcommittee.
I am honored to have the opportunity to appear before you
to discuss the U.S. Navy's approach to enlisted professional
military education. Our Navy enlisted force numbers over
273,000 active and over 50,000 reserve sailors. These sailors
serve in 72 ratings or career fields, and man ships, squadrons,
and shore stations around the world.
They are the foundation of an expeditionary Navy as they
operate and maintain the systems that allow us to complete a
wide spectrum of missions. Demands on their skills and
dedication are high. We rely on them not only to support
rotation and deployments that enable Navy's global presence,
but to maintain their proficiency through training exercises
and to meet emergent requirements that support combatant
commanders and joint warfighters.
The latter is highlighted by the fact that more than 8,600
enlisted sailors are currently on the ground in an individual
augmentee role supporting Navy, the joint force, and coalition
operations.
Navy has long invested in enlisted professional development
through extensive initial and advanced skills training and a
formal leadership development program.
In 2008 we enhanced enlisted professional development
opportunities through the implementation of a complete
continuum of enlisted professional military education that
spans a career from E-1 through E-9. This continuum contains
progressive Navy professional military education designed to
foster professionalism, Naval warfighting skills through
military studies, and a deeper understanding of national and
global security through a maritime lens, and the joint PME
requirements established by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff.
Our continuum includes four Navy PME courses under the
purview of the Naval War College, the same institution that
oversees our officer development. Introductory, basic, primary-
level NPME [Navy PME] are available to sailors through our Navy
knowledge online portal. This provides learners with 24-hour,
7-day-a-week access to this valuable professional military
education.
Senior-level Navy professional military education is
accomplished through a 6-week long resident course, as well as
a nonresident alternative that blends several months of online
work with 2 weeks in residence.
At the executive level, our E-9s serving in or being
assigned to join our combined headquarters or task forces in
component operational and strategic level leadership positions
may attend the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Keystone Course.
Navy PME complements the Navy's enlisted leadership
development program that provides targeted leadership training
for individual sailors at pivotal career points. Successive and
progressive leadership training is conducted as unit training
using standardized content. Members selected for E-4, E-5, E-6,
and E-7 must complete the appropriate leadership course prior
to advancement to those grades.
For senior enlisted leaders, leadership development and
EPME merge at the Senior Enlisted Academy, which is a
prerequisite for the Command Master Chief and Chief of the Boat
Leadership Course.
Over the last decade, Navy end-strength has decreased,
while our operational demands have grown. And even when the
combat forces draw down in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Navy's
high operating tempo will likely continue for the foreseeable
future. Our enabling forces will remain in CENTCOM [U.S.
Central Command] to provide protection, intelligence,
surveillance, and reconnaissance. Additionally, we will
maintain a forward deployed force of about 100 ships worldwide.
The Navy successfully develops highly-regarded enlisted
leaders, who serve in key assignments throughout DOD
[Department of Defense]. While the Navy rapidly implemented our
EPME continuum, it is largely in its infancy and is changing on
3-year periodic.
We expect the application of incremental EPME across a
career will ultimately result in senior enlisted leaders who
are not only technical experts in their career fields, but
effective deck plate leaders, who also have the much greater
perspective on the Navy and the joint force.
The use of NKO [Navy knowledge online] to deliver Navy
professional military education courses has been advantageous.
It has allowed us to provide unlimited access to the education
that enlisted sailors have not had before. Electronic delivery
is cost-effective, convenient for today's Internet savvy
sailors, and has enabled quick course revision to address
topical concern and areas of interest.
Our sailors are performing brilliantly, providing
incredible service in the maritime, land, air, space, and
cyberspace domains around the world today. EPME is producing
better educated and more informed senior enlisted leaders and
junior sailors.
We appreciate the flexibility provided by the chairman to
allow us to manage the content, quality, and conduct of our
program. We are confident we have provided a balanced approach
to sailor development that allows our skilled and innovative
sailors to turn ships, aircraft, and technology into
capabilities that can prevent conflict and win wars while
enabling an appropriate work-life balance in the face of many
demands.
On behalf of the CNO [Chief of Naval Operations], Admiral
Roughead, thank you for your continuing support for our
professional development of our force.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lutterloh can be found in
the Appendix on page 81.]
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Mr. Lutterloh.
Mr. Sitterly.
STATEMENT OF DANIEL R. SITTERLY, DIRECTOR OF FORCE DEVELOPMENT,
DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF, MANPOWER AND
PERSONNEL, U.S. AIR FORCE
Mr. Sitterly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Chairman Skelton,
Ranking Member Wittman, members of the Oversight and
Investigations Subcommittee, for the opportunity for Chief
Master Sergeant of the Air Force Roy and me to highlight our
Air Force enlisted professional military education programs and
policies.
I'm very happy to have Chief Master Sergeant of the Air
Force Roy here with me today.
Chief Roy spends, I would guess, upward of 300 days out of
the year on the road visiting our airmen, combatant commanders,
and families in the field. We have a very close relationship
where he gets direct feedback from the airmen and from the
supervisors, and our airmen are not shy these days to let us
know where the gaps in training and education are. We bring
that back into our corporate process and sort of transform our
systems as we work.
General Steve Lorenz, the commander of Air Education and
Training Command, and Lieutenant General Dick Newton, the
Deputy Chief of Staff for Manpower and Personnel (A-1), also
thank the subcommittee, and specifically Dr. Lorry Fenner and
Mr. Tom Hawley and your professional staff, for the work that
you did reviewing officer PME.
As you well know, Secretary Donnelly and Chief of Staff
Schwartz make developing talented and diverse airmen, all
airmen, officers, enlisted and civilians, at the tactical, at
the operational, at the strategic levels a top priority for the
Air Force. We are working with Air University, with AETC [Air
Education and Training Command] and the A-1 staff to implement
the recommendations of this committee in your officer
``Crossroads'' review. And we thank you for that.
Our airmen are indeed our most important critical weapon
system and our most important link to building partnerships
across the globe. And this professional military education
provides that relevant and responsive military education at the
appropriate time in an airman's career to prepare our airman to
lead and fight in airspace and cyberspace.
Specifically, enlisted PME integrates the principles of
sound leadership, communication skills, and military studies
across the learning continuum to expand an airman's leadership
ability and to strengthen their commitment to the profession of
arms.
To the integration of the Air Force institutional
competencies, which I hope to talk a little bit more in detail
when we get to questions and answers, and also directed by the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force enlisted PME
ensures a solid link between the capabilities and the mission
needs across our entire enlisted career continuum.
Ultimately, we deliver the right education at the right
time throughout the careers of our airmen to ensure deliberate
development of these vital tactical, operational, and strategic
warfighters and thinkers. The enlisted PME continuum is tied to
the level and scope of leader and manager responsibilities
commensurate with promotions.
And specifically for us in the Air Force, the timing of
Airman Leadership School, Senior NCO Academy, and the Chief
Master Sergeant Leadership Course attendance is tied to
promotion to staff sergeant, senior master sergeant, and chief
master sergeant, respectively.
Selection of the faculty and senior staff is also key to
the successful implementation of enlisted PME. The school
commandants ensure that our faculty meet the qualifications and
achieve the right balance of academic rigor and diversity.
Although our operations tempo makes faculty manning an ongoing
challenge at all levels of enlisted PME, we meet mission
requirements.
The Air Force maintains currency and relevance of EPME
through a number of guiding apparati. Curricula incorporate
current doctrine to ensure students are exposed to the very
latest Air Force and joint lessons learned. In addition, the
curriculum is influenced by the faculty, the students, and, as
I mentioned, external feedback from the airmen, from
supervisors, and from combatant commanders, as well as other
inputs.
Operational experiences also provide the necessary insight
needed to inform the curricula. The Air Force Learning
Committee, which I chair, is comprised of air staff
functionals, major commands, and Air University. And that is
the gatekeeping body that we use to maintain the balance and to
validate the requests for curriculum change along with senior
leadership priorities, functional requirements, and policy.
Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Roy and I also co-
chair an enlisted force development panel, which looks to the
future of the enlisted force development and anticipates
changing requirements.
To ensure enlisted PME is aligned with our priorities and
force development strategies, we also conduct an enlisted PME
triennial review, which we have just recently completed with
our senior enlisted leadership and our subject matter experts.
This exercise then ensures that the curriculum meets the
applicable joint and force development policy and guidance, and
it also considers things such as educational technologies, as
well as the resources needed to make the future mission
challenges.
In the most recent review, we validated that our EPME
programs are delivering the required education with the right
breadth and depth to our enlisted airmen at the appropriate
career points, but we also identified some improvement areas
such as the earlier development, as we mentioned here--as, Mr.
Chairman, you mentioned--as the changing role of our NCO
requires us to move our timing of that deliberate development
of education forward.
And we also found some improvements in areas of our
curriculum that we can modify in order to better meet our
learning outcomes. And yes, the role of our enlisted airmen,
and specifically the role of our NCOs, is constantly changing.
In response, PME is continuously evolving to meet the
demand for critical thinkers as well as for problem solvers
with a broadened total force, joint, coalition, and global
perspective so that we can more effectively operate in the
dynamic and often uncertain environments in which we engage.
The continued efforts of this committee and your
initiatives to grow and develop highly qualified airmen is most
appreciated. And it also ensures our ability to continue to
fly, and fight in air, space, and cyberspace. Thank you, and I
look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Sitterly can be found in the
Appendix on page 86.]
Dr. Snyder. I'm pleased to recognize Chairman Skelton.
STATEMENT OF HON. IKE SKELTON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM MISSOURI,
CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED
SERVICES
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, thank you. And I compliment you on calling
this hearing. It is very, very important.
Three weeks ago I attended a promotion ceremony for a young
soldier who had been promoted to colonel. In the obligatory
thank you message that always accompanies a promotion, the
young colonel first off thanked all of the sergeants he had
worked with.
And I thought that was a telling thing, because without the
advice and mentorship in his case, as well as in other cases,
the young lieutenants and captains might very well just leave
the military without the encouragement of someone who has more
experience.
I think it is important that the education of your NCOs,
particularly those who reach the rank of senior NCOs, be very
high. I have been an advocate that all military leaders be
historians. There are some that have had a whole career that
have never been in a position to walk on the battlefield, and
yet there are those that have. But in the military you don't
get to practice your profession every day or every week. You
have to do a lot of training.
A good trial lawyer, a good surgeon will have the
opportunity on many, many occasions during a year to practice
his or her profession. Not so with those in uniform. And of
course, that is good. But when called upon to enter the
battlefield or the sea space, you move to a victorious
encounter. And you do that by outstanding leadership.
And that is why it is important that noncommissioned
officers, and particularly senior ranks, be steeped in military
history, so that when situations arise that they have not
experienced themselves, they will be in a position to
consciously or subconsciously apply the lessons that they
learned in the study of their profession.
So I compliment you on this. I believe it is important. I
mean, as Mr. Sitterly said--so very, very necessary. And as
long as you have high-caliber--high-caliber--senior enlisted
that play the role of advisors, leaders, and in many cases
mentors, I think we will have a great set of young upcoming
leaders in our country.
I compliment you on your work. Keep it up. You can never
have enough history courses, though. Thank you. And let me
thank you again for this opportunity to join you.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Wittman for 5 minutes.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I thank the members of the panel for joining us today. I
wanted to look across the board about what each of your
enlisted PME programs brings to the table. I know that you are
probably, through this hearing, aware not only of what your
service branch does, but also what the other service branches
do as far as enlisted PME.
Let me ask you this. I want to kind of put those strengths
and weaknesses into perspective so we can all use this as an
experience where we learn from the other service branches. Tell
me then from your perspective what you see from another service
branch. And what is a strength in that program that you might
like to reflect in your program?
And, Colonel, let us begin with you. And we will just go
down the table and get your perspective there.
Colonel Minick. Yes, sir. I will say that if you look at
our program and success that we have had in the last 4 years, I
would look at it almost in four phases. First, we started with
the content and refreshed that. The second is the delivery. The
third would be the evaluation side of it, and then the last is
the expansion.
The Marine Corps was primarily focused on the sergeant, the
Career Course, which is for our E-6, and the Advanced Course.
But now we have expanded on both ends of the continuum so that
we have exposed more Marines to education earlier.
In regards to what we see at the other services, I have
already been down to Fort Bliss. I have a chance to go down in
September to Maxwell, and as well as up to Newport.
What we found that we particularly liked, and I was just
talking with Mr. Sparks about this, but went out and met a
gentleman by the name of Dr. Boyle, former Marine, but was
working at the Sergeants Major Academy out in El Paso.
The delivery part that we are changing in the Marine Corps,
I think that the Army already has it. And that is the Socratic
teaching, the small breakouts, peer-to-peer learning, and the
opportunity for that faculty advisor to be that critical link
to the education experience.
So I guess that--I hope that answers the question.
Mr. Wittman. Mr. Sparks.
Mr. Sparks. Sir, thank you. In the United States Army, we
have really been getting at NCO education for quite some time.
In the near history, we did a study in 2006 on exactly where we
were going with it, the noncommissioned officer education
system. What were the things that we felt like we could do
better?
We looked at delivery mechanisms and that sort of thing. As
a matter fact, the Institute that I work with has actually
emerged from that study. As a part of that study, we looked at
all the services. We actually visited with the services to see
what they actually do for NCO education.
And I think the thing that I would take away as valuable
from all, at least in my experience, is they are all in a
degree of providing a higher level of education for
noncommissioned officers. So there is something interesting, or
it is an interesting perspective at least, to entertain the
idea of how they present their instruction.
We, certainly inside of my organization, have determined
what we think is best for the Army. But with what is sort of
the interest going on in the other services, it gives us the
ability to kind of bounce our ideas against their ideas and
what they do and how they see things.
As a matter of fact, we have a program called College of
the American Soldier that we established for the benefit of the
advancement of enlisted soldiers in college degrees. One of the
things we did at the beginning of that process is met with the
Air Force and looked at their Community College of the Air
Force effort.
So I could go on, and there are many efforts. I think it is
good to have some mutual collaboration and understand what the
other services are doing. It is certainly helpful for us and
the United States Army.
Mr. Wittman. Mr. Lutterloh.
Mr. Lutterloh. Representative Wittman, thank you for the
opportunity to address this issue. I think the biggest single
benefit we have with respect to the other services is the
inclusion of other service staff members as our instructional
force. So we include other service members. In fact, we are now
in the business of shipping our own instructors down to Fort
Bliss to participate in that. So we get tremendous feedback
from that interaction.
Our continuum is relatively new. We started that process of
visiting the other schools. We have taken away some nuggets,
some of them associated with technology. The use of
``Blackboard'' we are implementing now, but primarily the use
of other service instructors to focus on that connectivity
across DOD and the inclusion of the other service students in
our classes.
At Navy we also have some international students, as you
are probably aware. So that helps to round out that discussion
within our courses.
Mr. Wittman. Dr. Sitterly.
Mr. Sitterly. Thank you for the question. Let me start by
saying I am a graduate of the first three levels of our Air
Force enlisted PME as an NCO, and then I became an actual PME
instructor in it. And I have to say I was always jealous of the
other services. I don't think that at that point in my career
that I thought we spent enough time over a 20- or 30-year
career in the classroom learning education. Some of the other
services had a little bit more time in the classroom.
That said, now that I am in the position that I am in now
and have a better understanding of the Air Force institutional
competency model and our continuum of learning, and that is we
look at a building block approach from the eight Air Force
institutional competencies and sub-competencies throughout all
of our PME--officer PME, enlisted PME, education, training, the
Air Force Academy--the same core institutional competencies,
and we build upon them as an officer, airman, enlisted,
civilian for that matter, go forward.
And so through this continuum of learning, I think that we
are doing it at the right time in the right places, and the
experiential part is important as well. And we also have about
27 percent of our enlisted force that obtain a college degree
while they are in through the Community College of the Air
Force.
And so now looking at the amount of time we spend in the
classroom, I think we have it about right through the
continuum, the training piece, our five-level, seven-level,
nine-level skill level training, the education piece, and the
Leadership School, NCO Academy, Senior NCO Academy, and our
recently added Chief's Leadership Course. I think we have it
about right.
Now, one of the gaps that we found recently as we looked at
our institutional competencies, and because of the changing
role of the NCO and how they are actually fighting wars today,
if you will, in small groups, in decision-making, in problem
solving, in critical thinking, we have determined that we
probably need to move the time to the left.
And so Chief Master Sergeant Roy has just implemented at
the Barnes Center, where we do our enlisted PME, all folks who
will now go before their senior master sergeant to the Senior
NCO Academy, and we are now sort of fighting the resource
battle to do the same thing for our NCO Academy so that they
get it closer to the 10-year point than at the 12- or 13-year
point. So thank you for the question.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Mr. Wittman.
I will start with you, Mr. Sitterly, so we will go the
other way this time. And I think you all are getting at this
question, but as you look ahead over the next 6 months to 1-
year timeframe--and I won't be here, so whatever you say I
won't be able to follow up on, but Mrs. Davis and Mr. Skelton
and Mr. Wittman will be here, so they can.
But what things are you working on that you hope will be
different 6 months or a year from now? And what things are you
working on that you have a fear it won't be as far along as you
would like it to be 6 months or a year from now?
Mr. Sitterly.
Mr. Sitterly. Thank you for the question, Mr. Chairman.
When we did our triennial review recently, we looked at top
to bottom of everything that we are presenting in our education
in our classrooms, and so as we moved into the cyber missions,
as we have more of a need to address things like cross-cultural
competencies, things like the social media, resource
management, so on and so forth, those are curricula that we
need to add to our enlisted PME across the force. And we will
do that in the next 6 months. Most of that is being done right
now.
We will also fight the resource battle to move our NCO
Academy to the left. That will require some additional faculty,
probably require some additional resources. I don't think we
will have that done in the next 6 months, but I will fight that
battle.
Long-term--distance learning and technology and the
application of how we actually teach people. Information
technology, infrastructure is very, very expensive. And to make
sure that we have integrated it through all of our various
learning platforms and to get it right so that we can build
upon that, we need to work very serious in that direction. And
we are.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Lutterloh.
Mr. Lutterloh. Yes, sir. Thank you for the question. I
think the things that I am pretty confident about--we have a 3-
year cycle of updating our curricula, so we stood up the
Primary Course focused on our chief petty officers in 2006. We
upgraded that in 2009. I think it reflects totally relevant
content for the time.
We implemented our Primary, our Introductory Course and our
Basic Course a little later than that. They are due for
revision now. As a matter fact, we are undergoing revision now.
That will come online in 2011. That content refresh is on track
and working. So I think maintaining the relevance of our
content is right on track.
I mentioned before the joint instructors, the joint student
load. I think that is continuing to increase.
The things I worry about are balancing the educational and
training workload of our enlisted force across their career
from the career transition from civilian to sailor in boot
camp, leader-follower discussions that we go through, how that
relates to the development of technically savvy professional
mariners, how we develop them into leaders, how we focus them
on then naval leadership and being able to represent the Navy.
Furthermore, into the joint environment there are a lot of
knowledge, skills, and abilities to translate over a career, a
lot of competing requirements. And right now, I am thinking
about the policy associated with enlisted professional military
education.
Currently, it is not mandated for any specific pay grade.
It is recommended. We have provided commands the flexibility to
identify individually when that is most appropriate for an
individual sailor. But we have got to clearly think about the
policy ramifications of that in the future. So that is the
thing I am most concerned about.
I think the one other aspect would be bandwidth. Much of
our enlisted professional military education is done over a
distance. I worry about that bandwidth in an expeditionary
force. So I think it is going to take us a couple of years, if
not more, to completely resolve any bandwidth issues to
completely make that training available, that education
available to our force.
Mr. Wittman. Mr. Sparks.
Mr. Sparks. Thank you, sir. I spent 30 years as a
noncommissioned officer, you know, I mean, up through almost
senior courses, and as any NCO or former NCO would tell you,
the strength of our education system is our ability to change,
our ability to react to the needs of the force.
I would submit that our reevaluation cycles of our
curricula and programs of instruction are constant. There
probably won't be a time when you can singularly say that every
single program is correct. But what we can say is that it meets
the needs of the force at that particular time, but we have to
revise it or upgrade it to meet whatever we think the potential
needs may be.
So in respect to your question of what things do we think
we will have done and what things are we concerned about, in
the noncommissioned officer education system in the Army, we
have just several programs now that we are moving forward in
this next year. I will give you just a couple of examples.
One of them is a structured self-development program, where
the United States Army determines what areas are not covered in
our professional military education system that should be
covered across some sort of a lifelong learning continuum. We
will implement that structured self-development system this
year.
Mr. Wittman. Give me some examples.
Mr. Sparks. As Chairman Skelton mentioned, we believe there
should be more of a relationship with military history and
history of the noncommissioned officer corps early on in a
soldier's career. Today in our noncommissioned officer
education system, they experience those subjects, but we think
they should experience them much earlier. So in a structured
self-development program, we would incorporate those tasks that
we think are important but didn't make it into our PME
structure.
To support that idea, we have created a lifelong learning
continuum, where a soldier enters the Army, and he is always in
a construct of learning. He never leaves the training model. He
attends his advanced individual training, begins a structured
self-development program that carries him into his first level
of professional military education.
We will start that program this year, and it is a fantastic
program. It is very interesting. It is well received by the
soldiers. We have had it through all of its testing phases, and
we are ready to implement.
We have a number of programs under the College of the
American Soldier arena that we look to implement this year in
the next 12 months. We have a program now that is called the
Noncommissioned Officer Degree Program that has been up and
running for a number of years. We are working on an enlisted
degree program and a graduate program as well.
I just met last week with our senior NCOs, some at the
Sergeants Major Academy, to solicit their feedback. They are
greatly excited about the program. As a matter of fact, in just
our last Sergeants Major Course, we had about 34 soldiers
graduate with a graduate degree. So we will look forward to
implementing that program in the next year.
Additionally, we have a whole series of ideas and thoughts
we are experimenting now with mobile learning. Over the past
several years, we found that most soldiers are very savvy when
it comes to Internet tech connectivity and Internet education,
so we have taken some of our courseware and looked at how we
can deliver that on a mobile learning platform. Soldiers can
literally learn from any direction.
And sir, I realize I am over my time. The things that we
worry about, quite frankly, are our ability to keep pace with
the needs of the Army. We constantly evaluate our programs. We
do a critical task selection for every single skill level and
every single job in the Army. And what we want to do is
constantly meet the needs of the force.
We do that currently with rapid assessments and critique of
our schools. We have accreditation teams that go out and visit
with units coming back from combat, units that are going. We
have two combat units that just finished our education
processes that soldiers have just attended.
So I am comfortable that we are doing everything possible
we can to collect that data, but in my view that is the most
paramount mission in our force is to keep up, keep pace with
the needs of the United States Army.
Mr. Wittman. Colonel.
Colonel Minick. Sir, the near-term success that we are
going to have is our faculty advisors course, which we just
developed. We will pilot this fall.
Dr. Snyder. Did you say faculty advisors?
Colonel Minick. Yes, sir. Faculty advisors course where,
like all services here, our schoolhouses are scattered around
the globe. What I found in my first year on the job is that the
critical piece is that faculty advisor, the one that is
kneecap-to-kneecap with the student that is making a
difference.
We don't believe that in the past we have done enough to
develop them, so we are piloting a new program that we believe
will be proof of concept. We will do it this fall. But every
faculty advisor now, when you get assigned to an academy, you
will come to Quantico, and we will put you through a 2-week
course.
Now, what we say is, ``it is not a 2-week course, it is a
3-year program.'' The start is the most important part. We get
them early within the first 2 months in the billet, and then we
develop that, and we continue to develop them all the way
through a master instructor program while they are with us. So
that is the near-term.
The long-term--this year we got Training and Education
Command (TECOM) to make an agreement that the same folks who do
distance education for the officer corps are now going to do it
for the enlisted Marines. There are two advantages to that.
One, they have tremendous experience in how they have
developed the officer program over the last 20 years. We can
tap into that. And the second thing is you are now melding
officer and enlisted education, which I think is a critical
part of our success in the way forward to make sure that, just
like you said, that lieutenant and that sergeant are all
talking the same language.
That by design--I shouldn't say by design--that is just
going to take a long time. Developing distance education and
using all the technologies, which will be Blackboard and
everything else mentioned, we have a Program Objective
Memorandum (POM) that is going to take us all the way out.
When we are completely finished, it will be a seminar
program so that, for example, in the Career Course they will do
some online, but we will pull them together with adjunct
faculty, and they will actually have peer-to-peer instructor to
student seminars wherever we have an academy. So that is going
to be a long-term project.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you.
Mrs. Davis.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
Thank you all for being here. I think you have touched a
little bit on assessment, but I wanted to go back and perhaps
have you speak to student assessment and how you monitor that
and whether or not you are able to follow up with, you know,
bosses in the field, essentially, to see whether or not the
lessons were received.
How do you do that? And what role does it play in the
adaptive learning atmosphere that you have been reaching for?
And I know in most cases, you know, we are not necessarily
there yet finally, but how do you do that?
Colonel Minick. What we have done in the past is that we
find out from the student how we are doing, and we realize now
that that is not the best metric. So just like you said, we
truly believe our final customer is that commander and that
senior enlisted leader that Marine is going back to.
So we have developed, or we are in the process of
developing, a survey assessment so that when that Marine
returns, 6 months after he has left our schoolhouse, we are
getting feedback. Was that time he spent with us beneficial
towards his development?
Mr. Sparks. Thank you, ma'am, for the question. In the Army
we have a very aggressive assessment feedback system. The first
assessment, of course, occurs with the student in a particular
course, and we are able to assess how he progresses through the
course.
But relative to, I think, your comment about how do we
evaluate our courses, each student when he graduates from the
course, he goes through a series of feedback mechanisms. One,
he does interviews and assessments with folks like me, where I
sit down with actual students in the class and talk to them
about what they thought.
Then we look at a written feedback form that they provide
us on what the strengths and weaknesses of the course were from
individual classes to instructors, for instance. We get at
things like how should this course be presented. Would this
class be hosted better in a mobile learning environment? Is it
best in a residence environment, and that sort of thing.
We have a very arduous certification program inside of
TRADOC where we have an accreditation team that visits each one
of our academies, and takes feedback from the students and
feedback from the field in a mechanism to look at the academy
to ensure they are doing the right thing.
Sergeant Major Camacho sitting behind me is my
representative on that accreditation team. He physically visits
our academies, each one of them, looks at their program of
instruction, and talks to the instructors and their students.
To go on just a little further on the things that we do, we
have a survey process that when a student graduates from any
one of our courses, he has to indicate who his supervisor was
or currently is. We send a product to that supervisor via the
Internet, and the supervisor has a requirement to fill out the
survey, return it to us, and tell him what his customer
satisfaction--tell us what his customer satisfaction was with
his soldier when he received him.
And we do that about the 6-month mark after the course has
been completed so we can ascertain how the soldiers perform
back in their unit.
Lastly, ma'am, all of our leaders, whether the sergeants
major in the Army, the command sergeants major across the
force, the general officers, as they visit soldiers and they
visit units, they provide information back to us on what
commanders say in the field about the things that they would
want their soldiers to receive or the things that their
soldiers are receiving that are working very well.
We do that in a number of visit kind of methodologies, and
we also have a group of teams that visits with each unit when
they come out of theater to assess what their strengths or
weaknesses were, and all of that information comes back to the
Army Center for Lessons Learned, that gets distributed to the
schools and centers to provide an accurate assessment of what
we need to do better in each one of our schools.
Mrs. Davis. Is there anything consistently that you find
that you are falling short on?
Mr. Sparks. Not consistently, ma'am. There are ideas, you
know. Recently, we implemented resiliency training at the
charge of the Chief of Staff. When we go out and query the
field, they say, ``Yes, you know, that is the right thing to
do. We should bring a higher level of resiliency training.''
So we tend to get his concurrence. In some cases there will
be some adjustment to the battle space that will require us to
make a degree of adjustment inside of the course.
But we firmly believe in our Institute and across the Army
that we should be willing to change immediately. So if we can
find a specific change for a particular branch of a soldier at
a particular grade, we will make the adjustment in that course.
Sometimes those particular suggestions make their way totally
across the force. But you can be sure we look at each and every
one of them to make sure that they are provided to the right
soldier at the right time.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you. Anything particularly different that
you would like to add in your assessment? Is it quite different
in the Navy or the Air Force?
Mr. Lutterloh. Yes, ma'am. I would say that we are a lot
similar to the other services, as you have heard. I would say
that internal to our courses, especially the Senior Enlisted
Academy, there are assessments done by our instructors.
And coupled with the War College--the great thing about
being up there with the War College is we utilize the
professors at the War College to help our instructional faculty
at the Senior Enlisted Academy understand the differences
between training, which they have had a lot of experience in,
and education, which has been somewhat limited in their
careers.
So that seminar style of educational approach and the
assessments in papers and in projects and in roles in the class
are something that we focus on.
Beyond that, what I would say is a core thing that hasn't
been discussed. Our enlisted board of advisors led by the
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy (MCPON) and all of the
fleet and force master chiefs are the Chiefs Messes that get
together and regularly address what gets put forth in our
enlisted professional military education continuum as well as
our Senior Enlisted Academy.
And I don't believe there is any stronger communication
mechanisms than that Chiefs Mess. It is tremendously valuable
in the feedback that it provides to our institutions.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
Mr. Lutterloh. Thank you.
Mr. Sitterly. Thank you, Mrs. Davis. One area that I think
that we have done well in recently is on the input side of what
goes into curriculum through what we call our Air Force
Learning Council. And because we have captured students in all
of our PME, there is a tendency for our functional areas to
want to sort of give input to the curricula, whether it is a
safety message of the day and so on and so forth.
So through this learning committee, we now vet every new
functional input, no matter what it is, to first assess where
it is that we are teaching it as important--that is, at what
level are we teaching. Are we teaching it at the cognitive
domain of knowledge, understanding? Or are we more at the
affective domain where we are more interested in attitude and
so on and so forth?
So that has really helped us to keep the curriculum from
sort of getting everybody's inputs and making sure that we are
going back, looking at all of the institutional competencies.
And then the other thing that I think that we have done
recently that is very helpful is our just-in-time joint lessons
learned. And we always have the discussion--Dr. Fenner had the
discussion when she visited our Barnes Center--is what is the
difference between education and training, like Mr. Lutterloh
said.
And sometimes you need to do some just-in-time training
that you didn't capture because somebody has come back from an
AOR [area of responsibility]. And so we have an E-9 shop that
looks at both Air Force lessons learned and joint lessons
learned. We have a joint PME, enlisted joint PME committee. And
we will go and look at them and find out when is the
appropriate time to put them in, and should we do it in our
just-in-time training at our Expeditionary Center, or should we
put it into a PME program.
Thank you.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Wittman.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I appreciate everybody's perspective on where you see your
service branches now with enlisted PME, where the challenges
are. Let me ask in this context. It seems like to me there are
a lot of great efforts that are going on out there. I want to
get you to kind of talk about what additional changes you might
see in the future.
And I just put it in perspective in the realm of do you
think courses maybe need to be shortened or lengthened? I know
you have probably a valuation process, as some mentioned, with
your students, but also obviously with the commands that they
go back to make sure that you are serving their needs.
Another component there was offering it to more NCOs, maybe
at an earlier stage, and I think that is a component that is
interesting, looking how we make sure the scope of education is
there for NCOs. Looking at a direct link to promotion, is there
a component there where there should be a direct link to
promotion? I want to get your thoughts on that.
Should there also be, as we look at on the officer side,
should there be a Capstone element there, too, to folks that
are there at very advanced stages of their careers as an NCO?
So I just wanted to get it in--just put that in the
perspective of within that list of things, and you don't have
to address each one of those, but just looking in the context
of are there things out there left to be done that we can do
better?
And I know each of you have talked a little bit about the
strengths of your programs, where you see things going, but I
would like for us to maybe take the next step within those
contexts and say are there still things that we can do better
to make sure that we are meeting the needs of our NCOs and
making sure that they have the best educational opportunity out
there?
And the one thing--I would just wax philosophical here for
a second--one thing that really impressed me was the percentage
of NCOs in each of the service branches that have either
bachelors' degrees or advanced degrees. And that to me is very,
very telling that you have an NCO corps with a strong desire to
get that advanced element of education.
So I just want to know are there additional things that we
can do better, that we can change to make sure that we are
doing all we can to make sure that our NCO corps is getting
what they need?
Colonel Minick. Yes, sir. I guess what I would say from a
pragmatic view with the op [operations] tempo and what we
perceive to be the continued ops tempo, we believe we have it
about right for the duration.
We understand that adding our senior enlisted course, which
is on the far end of the continuum, is going to cause another
education hurdle, but we think it is well worth their time and
the organization's time. And we are very comfortable with that.
As you mentioned earlier, we have one course, and that is
the Advanced Course. It is for our E-7s. It is for our gunnery
sergeants. That is the only resident course that is a resident
attendance requirement for promotion. We are currently running
about 62 percent of the force through that.
Now, what I will tell you is it is a bit of a math problem.
You look at time and grade, you look at the amount that we
promote every year to E-8, and then you look at the
opportunities to go to school. Every E-7, the target population
for that Advanced Course, has about 15 opportunities to get to
school.
And we have looked at the numbers hard, and we are
confident that that is a reasonable expectation, and we have
never had an individual that said, ``I couldn't get there,''
and there wasn't a justification to say, ``Well, you could have
gone at this time.''
So I do think we have the time right. I do think that for
us now we are at the Advanced Course we are putting a
significant marker down. If you want to continue up and be a
senior enlisted, you are going to go to that resident course.
But the last thing that I would add is one of the ways we
are looking to mitigate the quality time when we do get them in
the resident course is by the prerequisites that we do with the
new online, which again, we are doing with CDET, College of
Distance Education and Training, for the Marine Corps.
So we believe that, you know, through prerequisite work, we
can get much more effective time when we have them--probably
work on the lower and cognitive skills, and then when they get
them together, we are working on the higher end professional
education skills.
Mr. Wittman. Mr. Sparks.
Mr. Sparks. Thank you, sir. That is a great question. The
first point relative to your comment on college degrees, just
for a point of reference, 38 percent of the sergeants major
class that graduated this year graduated with a degree.
Civilian education is extremely important to the
noncommissioned officers population of the Army.
To get it at--I think your first question was attendance.
We believe in the United States Army that all noncommissioned
officers will attend every level of the required
noncommissioned officer education. The way that we go about
ensuring that attendance is possible is we have looked at
every--and we have done it for a number of years now--we have
looked at every possible way to deliver the course and how the
course could be delivered.
For instance, since 2008, when we had occasions where
soldiers had quick turnaround times and were able to come to
our resident course, in most cases we picked up the resident
course and actually moved it to the installation. We refer to
those courses as mobile training teams.
So our perspective inside of our organization and inside of
the greater United States Army is that the soldiers--we have to
determine what the soldiers' needs actually are, and we will
deliver the education anywhere possible to reach that need.
Relative to promotion, noncommissioned officer education is
a requirement for promotion. We continually look at ways and
how we should deliver that requirement. Should we move it
earlier in the soldier's learning continuum or in his career
lifespan? But it is a requirement, and all soldiers must attend
NCOES.
The lengths of the courses are something that we look at
constantly. One of the divisions inside of my organization
looks at lengths and delivery mechanisms. Every one of our
military occupational specialties at each particular skill
level one through five is required to complete a task list of
the required tasks across the spectrum of the Army for that
particular soldier in the area of what his requirements of
learning are.
We take those tests, and we look at all the ways that we
can deliver them in an effort to set the course length in the
right way. In some cases a course may be too short. As we re-
look each one of those MOSs [Military Occupational
Specialties], we may determine that a course needs to be
longer. We have just recently done that. It is important to do
that very frequently, because we don't want to miss the
opportunity to train a soldier when he has got a short ``boots
on the ground'' time.
Technology is an area that we need to constantly improve
on. The idea that most soldiers today carry a personal device
that is accessible to the Internet should tell us that there
are ways that we can get at education that we haven't
traditionally thought of.
We have delivered and we do deliver a number of courses
online, but only if we think that course delivery online is
representative of the required learning continuum.
Lastly, sir, we have engaged a process now this year--where
I really want to be in 2015--at the direction of our commanding
general, General Dempsey, we are looking hard at what
technologies we think will be available in 2015, what the young
learner will expect in 2015, and how we will get it.
So not only are we engaged every day in what we think our
courses should look like, we are engaged in the future as well.
And we want to make sure we got it right.
Mr. Wittman. Mr. Lutterloh.
Mr. Lutterloh. Thank you, sir. I agree with my colleagues
relative to the length of the courses. I think they are about
right. Our senior enlisted leadership feels they are about
right. In a pressurized fiscal environment, I think it is what
we can afford right now, given the value that we see coming out
of it.
I appreciate the flexibility that leadership has given us
relative to policy decisions on mandating enlisted professional
military education accomplishment prior to advancement. I will
continue to take a very deliberate approach for that and make
sure that we balance those requirements across a career and
that we don't jeopardize anybody's chances for advancement,
because they may not have the bandwidth available to gain
access to our courses as an expeditionary force.
We do believe in the Keystone project, the capstone event
for the enlisted force. As a matter of fact, Force Snyder, our
Naval Education and Training Command's Force Master Chief, is
not here today because he is involved in Keystone. So we are
very proud of the fact that he is there.
We do believe that it is a fairly limited event. It should
be tied to requirements, key positions on joint staffs, and it
should be provided to highly potential candidates that would
fill those positions, and Force Snyder is an excellent
candidate for that. So I think we have got to do that.
Where I think we have got to focus some attention, though,
relative to your question, is perhaps on tailoring. We are
taking advantage of quite a bit of the technology already in
our courses. What I don't think we are doing quite effectively
yet is perhaps tailoring some of our instruction.
For example, specific regional and cultural areas--how
should we be addressing that and folding it in--not only
understanding Navy and joint capabilities, warfighting
capabilities and orders of battle, but also understanding those
of our international partners a little bit better and perhaps
threats within regions to which they may be assigned. So some
continued focus on perhaps some of those aspects would be
appropriate.
Thank you.
Mr. Wittman. Mr. Sitterly.
Mr. Sitterly. Thank you for the question. I agree. I think
we have the content and timing about right, or we have the
processes for review in place where we can adjust those. And
we, too, require 100 percent attendance at all four levels of
our PME for promotion. Now, there are some waiver processes in
place for medical reasons or deployment reasons, but we track
those to completion as well.
And we also have some executive level courses for folks who
are going out to be command chiefs or career field managers and
so on to sort of go beyond what everybody else gets.
But I think what keeps me awake at night is our competency
to employ military capability and from the 2010 Quadrennial
Defense Review in the building partnership capacity piece. And
we have some very robust officer programs in our regional
affairs specialists, our political affairs specialists, FAO
[foreign affairs officer] programs and so on and so forth. But
I don't think that is going to get to that mission requirement.
I think that our enlisted force is going to do more and
more--they are doing more and more of that. And we have
recently formed partnerships with eight coalition countries at
this point, where we have exchange programs with both our
faculty and instructors, as well as our joint partners.
But I think we need to do more of that both in the
interagency and the multinational arena, and I think the
opportunity is here. I think some of the best relationship
building is done, you know, with the young airmen, mil-to-mil
sort of thing in a classroom. So we are going to continue to
reach out and build that capacity to build partnership within
our PME programs. And the cultural, cross-cultural capacity
that that gives us is tremendous.
So thank you for the question.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yield back.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Sitterly, a couple of times this afternoon
you mentioned resources as an issue. I think in one context it
was pushing--in your words--to the left, I think, in the 10-
year range rather than the 12-, 13-year range. You thought it
would take additional faculty, which required additional
resources.
In the grand scheme of the Air Force budget, that must be a
fairly small amount of money for a concept that we think is the
essence of the military, which is the people. Why are you
having problems with resources, if you think that is an
important part of getting the personnel up to where everyone
thinks they ought to be?
Mr. Sitterly. I think us putting together a solid business
case for the requirement and then picking the right sort of--
does it require additional infrastructure, can we expand upon
the facilities that we have now? So that burden is on me to put
together----
Dr. Snyder. But you haven't actually been turned down on
anything you asked for?
Mr. Sitterly. No, sir. In fact, at 1330 today over in the
building on the other side of the river, we are making our
pitch to our Force Management and Development Council, so I
suspect we will be successful, and then it has to get it into
the budget process. So the burden is on my shoulders, Mr.
Chairman.
Dr. Snyder. And the issue you mentioned, the technology,
because you still send out, mail out a ``box of books'' to
folks, don't you, and you are trying to get away from that?
That is also a resource issue so it can all be done----
Mr. Sitterly. Yes, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Snyder. IT [information technology].
Mr. Sitterly. It certainly is. And we have recently stood
up the Barnes Center, named after the fourth chief master
sergeant of the Air Force, in order to synergize all of the
resources, Community College of the Air Force, all of our
enlisted PME, our Enlisted Heritage Research Institute, so that
we can synergize all of our IT systems, our officer systems,
build upon the same platform.
So at the same time because our requirements are moving
quickly and what we are putting into our curriculum is moving
quickly, the need to be able to build a distance learning
program and to keep our resident programs current at the same
time becomes challenging for us.
Additionally, as we look at some of the issues--irregular
warfare, you know, cyber--we don't necessarily have the
expertise on the staff, so we need to look at bringing in
subject matter experts in order to build both our distance
learning program and our resident courses.
So we have acknowledged that. We are updating the ``box of
books,'' if you will, to make sure that we are meeting our
educational learning outcomes, which we certainly will, and at
the same time we are pursuing the distance learning as well.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you.
Colonel Minick, I want to follow up with you on this issue
of the advanced course requirement for promotion of E-7 to E-8.
And I believe you said that you thought people by the time they
reached E-7 had had 15 opportunities on average in their career
to take that. And yet isn't it correct that of those E-7s that
are eligible for promotion to E-8, almost 30 percent of them
have not completed the advanced course?
I mean, regardless of what they might say in some survey,
you would just think that if I was an E-7--it shows a certain
commitment to the Marine Corps--I would like to be an E-8, why
would you have almost 30 percent of the people who would say,
``No, I know that is required for promotion to E-8, but I am
not going to take the course.''
It seems to be inconsistent with human behavior that they
would pass on an opportunity that would mean more money for
them, more money for their family, you know, moving up in their
career. It seems like there--and it may well be ops tempo, sort
of. It just doesn't seem--I mean, I would be questioning if
people said, ``No, I am going to pass on this,'' once again,
because they really don't want to be an E-8. That doesn't make
sense to me.
Colonel Minick. Yes, sir. It doesn't make sense to me
either, but----
Dr. Snyder. Well, then we are in agreement. I bet there is
a mistake with the information you have been getting.
Colonel Minick. No. No, no, the information is accurate.
What I provided in the pre-brief, we are running about 63
percent of our E-7s are attending the resident course.
Now, what you have to consider, and I will look at it from
an officer's side--I know a number of lieutenant colonels that
are going to get out at 20 and don't have a desire to be a
colonel in the Marine Corps. It could be for personal reasons,
professional reasons.
I am not saying that we have 30 percent that do that, but
the data that we provided in the pre-brief is accurate. Now, we
have only been running the requirement for one year, so we
believe that, you know, that number will go up, the amount of
E-7s attending the Advanced Course, because we do believe it is
important.
Dr. Snyder. Well, so then, it is not probably fair to those
folks to say, ``You have had 15 opportunities,'' if they have
only known for a year that they would--that that requirement
would count for promotion, because those opportunities would
have come at times--the overwhelming majority of their career
when they did not know.
In fact, it may have meant for them that they would be
taken from their unit at a time it was deploying or something,
and they got----
Colonel Minick. Yes, sir. And what we did is we
grandfathered that, so----
Dr. Snyder. Right.
Colonel Minick [continuing]. If it started. When the clock
started on the prerequisite part, one, we did 2 years of
advance notice, and then when we started the clock, it was all
those people that had 15 opportunities from when the policy
changed. So we are very comfortable and confident that those
who want to pursue advancement in the enlisted force and in
higher education will get the opportunity to do so.
Dr. Snyder. Generally, how long is somebody in the Marine
Corps at the time they become an E-7?
Colonel Minick. It depends on MOSs, sir, because every MOS
promotes differently. But it is typically right around the 15-
year mark that we are seeing promotion to E-7, E-7 to E-8, so--
--
Dr. Snyder. From E-7 to E-8.
Colonel Minick. And then we have--yes, sir--and then we
have the enlisted force controls, which will--an E-7 can stay
22 years in the Marine Corps before he is required to get out.
And I can't answer for you, you know, what percent of our
enlisted population does not desire to go for E-8. That could
very well be a metric in there.
Dr. Snyder. Do any of you have any comment about the Title
10? I think several services would like to have expanded Title
10 authority. And I will start with you, Colonel Minick, and
you all give your opinion. That is actually something that we
have control over----
Colonel Minick. Yes, sir.
Dr. Snyder [continuing]. Because we would have to do it.
But go ahead.
Colonel Minick. Thank you for asking, sir. You know, if you
were to ask me what could I do to help enlisted PME in the
Marine Corps, I would say Title 10 authority. As you well know,
it stipulates that Title 10 can be in support of 10-month
curriculum.
And we understand the unintended consequences of policy.
That was to make sure nobody would shorten courses. The problem
with it for enlisted education in the Marine Corps is our
curriculum doesn't go 10 months.
What Title 10 affords the president of Marine Corps
University, who has Title 10 hiring authority, is that we can
get that subject matter expert, and we don't have the same--I
don't want to say constraints, but the same policies that you
have on the GS [General Services] hiring system, where there is
merit preference, and you may not be able to get exactly to the
individual or the cohort that you want to try and hire.
So, yes, we would welcome any support in getting a change
to that law, sir.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Sparks.
Mr. Sparks. Yes, sir. Thank you. As I am sure you know, the
United States Army War College and the Commanding General of
Staff College both have Title 10 authority. Noncommissioned
officer education systems that hire civilian employees are, of
course, Title 5 employees.
The United States Army Sergeants Major Academy is a 10-
month course, so we have actually begun discussion with
Department of the Army, and hopefully, as it moves through the
Department, they will approve it for your review. So we do have
a course that is represented above a Title 10 length.
Dr. Snyder. Mr. Lutterloh.
Mr. Lutterloh. Chairman, thanks for the opportunity to
comment. I would like to do a little bit further analysis on
that. I am not sure that we have run into any problems, any
issues relative to our enlisted professional military education
pipeline so far with Title 10, so I would like to take that one
for the record.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 95.]
Dr. Snyder. In fact, I will use that as an opportunity to
say that if over the next couple of weeks, any of you have
things that you would like to add or amplify or correct, if you
will just get it to the staff, and we will make it not only
part of our education, but also part of the formal written
record of the hearing.
So, Mr. Sitterly.
Mr. Sitterly. Dr. Snyder, thank you for the question. I
don't have anything specifically. I do know that there is an
initiative, legislative initiative, out there regarding the
Community College of the Air Force and expanding that to other
services.
I would just ask as we go forward with that, of course, we
are very proud the Community College of the Air Force has been
issuing, I think, 350,000 degrees over their lifetime since
1977, when we started degrees. And so I would just ask that we
sort of use it as a template and look at the lessons learned as
we go forward.
I think if it were to become a Defense-wide program, it
would probably go from about 300-and-some-thousand people
enrolled to 1.9 million people enrolled, so we need to look at
the ramifications of that. I would just ask that we
deliberately go about that. Thank you, sir.
Dr. Snyder. I wanted to ask--you all have had association
with the military for some years now, and it always is an easy
thing when there is some new topic or some new scandal or
something to say, ``Oh, we need to include that in the course,
just include that,'' and as if, ``Oh, let us make it instead of
a 24-hour day, we now have a 25-hour day, because you just have
to add something.''
But we also know that there are things that come along that
take on more emphasis as society changes and as we learn. One
of the ones over the last probably couple of decades now has
been primarily the treatment of women, but really respect for
each other when it comes to sexual assault and sexual mores.
Where do those kinds of interpersonal relationships and
ethical kinds of issues, whether its treatment of each other or
treatment of your government credit card, what change have you
seen in the time you have been associated with these programs?
And are you--is that an ongoing issue with you--or you think
you are where you ought to be?
Start with you, Mr. Sitterly.
Mr. Sitterly. Thank you, Dr. Snyder. In fact, we just came
back, Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Roy and I, from
the triennial review, basic military training review, and those
sorts of questions were discussion items that we had.
I think we are where we always have been, and that is in
terms of treating people with dignity and respect. Now, how we
go about the lesson and how, you know, maybe it is treating
people with dignity and respect today in terms of sexual
assault versus racial, you know, issues as it was when I went
through in the 1970s, as it might be suicide awareness and so
on and so forth.
But we tend to put those issues, those social issues in
context throughout all of our PME, insert scenarios but
building upon respect for people. So I don't think it has
changed a lot. The subjects just change a little bit as we go
forward. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Lutterloh. That is an excellent question, Chairman
Snyder, and it is something that we have struggled a little bit
with in the Navy. We have got a corollary program----
Dr. Snyder. I hear you have some changes coming on.
Mr. Lutterloh. Yes, sir, we are continually changing that,
not only the curricula, but what we focus on. And today's focus
is exactly on some of the topics you mentioned, sexual assault
and violence, especially with respect to women, suicide and
suicide prevention, and operational stress control. And there
is another one that escapes me right at the moment. I will
think of it in a second.
We have refocused on our general military training. Instead
of requiring 12 subjects once a month, we have limited that to
about 6 very important topics, including the ones I mentioned,
including alcohol abuse and understanding that drive these
pertinent issues.
We focus them, and the beauty about Senior Enlisted
Academy, the beauty about our enlisted professional military
continuum, the beauty about our leadership development
continuum and our officer training continuum is that we are
able to adjust on the fly and treat these topics as they need
to be treated.
So these are some of the ones--sexual assault and violence
and suicide prevention particularly--that we are dealing with
today and overall in DOD, but primarily in the Navy. And so we
will address these topics in the Senior Enlisted Academy. They
will change over time, I predict, and we have got to be
flexible enough.
We have delegated the remainder of the 54 topics or so down
to the commands. They understand what statutory requirements
are, what policy requirements are to get those done in required
timeframes, but we are focused on the ones that are driving key
issues within the Navy today that can be addressed by
leadership. Thank you.
Mr. Sparks. Thank you, sir. I took that as two parts to the
question. In the first part you mentioned what do we do to
react to changes and things that come up? And sometimes it
could be the idea or the opportunity for that sort of to get
pushed into the institution.
First, that when it comes to the noncommissioned officer
corps inside of the United States Army, that is singularly
within my focus. For an example, if there is an issue that is
going on today that is deemed critical by the senior leadership
of the Army, that issue may come up, and we would begin to look
at it from a number of different perspectives.
Number one is why did it occur? What education can we
provide? At what part of that lifelong learning continuum that
we envelope in the United States Army is that particular
education given?
If it is given at a certain point, we may need to take a
look to evaluate if it needs to be given earlier. Or do we need
to enrich that education somewhat? Or do we need to reinforce
that education later on?
The worst thing that we could do is just take something and
stick it in and not understand how it is going to unfold later
on. So we really need to take a very deliberate approach. We do
that every day. We have done that with topics like resiliency
training, like prevention of sexual harassment, consideration
of others, and I could give you more and more.
But typically, for all those topics or all those topic
areas, we don't look at those in the United States Army as
something that we just stick into a course, necessarily.
We look at what is relative? What is a relative knowledge
level for a skill level one soldier? And what does he need to
have? And what can we deliver into his courseware? And then
when a soldier becomes a skill level two soldier, what kind of
courseware do we need to deliver to him? So we built up on that
first appreciation of knowledge.
And then finally, by the time he reaches our Senior
Enlisted Academy, which for us is the Sergeants Major Course,
he has been trained at the executive level, senior enlisted
leader advising senior officers on ways to encourage or
discourage performance.
So at our five skill levels in the United States Army,
there may be a totally different representation of that
knowledge or understanding required at that particular course.
For instance, for us in security, we deliver security
education in the initial entry training experience. It is a
unit requirement to be delivered annually. And we reinforce
that security education in the common core training that occurs
at the sergeant or staff sergeant level.
Colonel Minick. Mr. Chairman, we have a program we have
had--I can't tell you the exact date it started, but it is
about 8 years old now. But it is Mentors and Violence
Protection. It is a formalized program we run throughout our
academies to where we actually contract folks to come out and
certify our instructors to be able to teach this material.
And we tie that into, you know, the importance of the
bystander--not so much the abuser, although that is obviously
the problem, but to make sure that there is active involvement
with every Marine in that dynamic.
One of the things that we have been tracking, like I am
sure all the services, looking at stress on the force, one of
the things we haven't seen is any significant increase in that
area. One incident is too many, but the trend lines have been
holding.
The one that has not been holding for the Marine Corps is
suicide. And this last winter our three-star generals got
together, and one of the topics was that issue.
And we don't normally do this. It is unusual, because we
have a regular formal process on how we adjust curriculum, but
we decided that we needed to put more suicide prevention,
particularly into our Sergeants Course. We believe they were
the closest to the problem, and we have that throughout every
academy now.
One of the things we have to balance that we look at as we
started to change curriculum is focusing not on those annual
training skills, but trying to continue to focus on the
professionalism side. This is probably the suicide prevention--
it is one that is a little bit blurred, but probably closer to
an annual training. We thought it was important enough that we
put it into the Academy, and it stays there.
Dr. Snyder. Obviously, you all four are part of very, very
large organizations, and as you are training in leadership
skills and how to train one person to lead others in what at
times are going to be very difficult environments, they also
are training people and leading people, but they don't have any
control. They don't do the hiring. I mean, recruiters do the
hiring.
You know, we know that clearly some people end up in the
military that we wish hadn't been there, that have--they are
sociopaths or, you know, just, I mean, really clearly there are
some bad actors that shouldn't have come in, and then don't do
well in a combat situation.
Has your curriculum evolved over the last years in terms of
training people to look for men and women who have mental
health problems, and they have come in with mental health
problems that we may just need to accept the reality they need
to not be in the military and certainly don't need to put in
the situation of life and death decision-making in a combat
zone?
Colonel Minick.
Colonel Minick. Yes, sir. Thank you for the question.
Combat Operational Stress Controls is a module that we put
together a year ago, and it is going to be progressive across
the continuum. I would tell you that it focuses mainly on that
individual that is struggling with PTSD [Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder] or is having the dynamics of the stress of either ops
tempo or a combat situation.
But, you know, we have put that into our curriculum. We
will continue to grow it. Does it specifically focus on someone
that may be suffering from some type of mental instability? I
would say no. It focuses more on that individual that might be
hurting from operational tempo, sir.
Mr. Sparks. Sir, thank you for the question. I think that
that is a system in the Army that really begins at the initial
entry phase when soldiers are paired up with a buddy or wingman
that would sort of progress through with him.
The reason I bring that up is because it is important to
understand the Army operates as teams. And even if it is a two-
man team, where one man is always assessing another man to get
an idea of how he is doing. Our men and women in uniform within
the United States Army should feel like they have always got
someone to turn to.
The way we go about that in professional military education
is we begin with our very earliest course, the Warrior Leader
Course that is designed to move a soldier from the grade of
specialist or E-4 to sergeant.
Inside of that course, we devote a lot of time to
individual counseling, where soldiers sit down one-on-one, do
mock sessions, learn all of the sort of junior leader
attributes to help counsel their soldiers. And one would hope
that initially they would find anything that they thought to be
a problem inside of those sessions so they could report them to
more senior levels of leadership.
In addition to that, the chief of staff of the army has
directed resiliency training. There are many blocks of
resiliency training that get to how soldiers are feeling, how
soldiers are reacting to incidents, how soldiers would react to
an incident.
So I think within the spectrum of professional military
education for the Army, we have been at it for quite some time
through leadership and counseling skills. We are redoubling
those efforts with our resiliency training, and we are going to
continue to employ characteristics like our lifelong learning
continuum to look at ways to supplement that training later on.
We believe in our Structured Self-Development Program that we
may find ourselves requiring some additional education as we
move through that continuum.
And lastly, sir, we spent great effort to look at how
higher level civilian institutions like colleges and
universities are going about that education. And we have done
some work with the University of Pennsylvania to define how to
employ and how to assess resiliency skills.
Mr. Lutterloh. Thank you for the question. I would agree
with my colleagues and add a couple of things. Number one,
recruiting and retention are at record levels, no doubt
affected by the economy. But our force is as highly qualified
as ever before in history. Our delayed entry program quarters
are completely filled. We may have a few issues in a couple of
niche areas--medical corps as an example--tough to find the
right kinds of doctors all the time.
But our training continuums, whether it be the leadership
continuum across the enlisted ranks, whether it be the command
leadership school for all officers or our chiefs of the boat
and command master chiefs, whether it be the Senior Enlisted
Academy, whether it be specific initiatives relative to
resiliency training and operational stress control, we focus on
these aspects--these very aspects.
A lot of it has to do with counseling. Our covenant
counseling that is provided by our Chiefs Mess to all of our
enlisted sailors focuses very closely on some of these
attributes that you describe. Thank you.
Mr. Sitterly. Thank you, Dr. Snyder. We spend a lot of
attention training our military training instructors and some
of our seasoned instructors, the people that will see primarily
the new recruits, on what to look for behaviorally. In terms of
the curriculum, the focus is on referral resources and being
able to refer the airman to those medical facilities or to a
community action situation.
We also have a formal ``wingman concept'' in the Air Force.
For instance, with our suicide prevention program, the Chief
just directed a half-day stand down to focus on suicide
awareness throughout the Air Force, so every agency, every wing
did that. We brought in our expertise from our medical
services, from our community services to make sure that
supervisors understood what resources were available to
identify people that needed that assistance as well. Thank you.
Dr. Snyder. I wanted to ask--the issue has come up before
the subcommittee and before the Congress, the whole broad topic
of foreign language skills and training folks to navigate in
cultures other than their own. That is really not what you all
have been talking about today. Where do you see that whole
topic fitting in to what you all do?
Colonel Minick. What we have done throughout, sir, is we
have threaded it throughout the curriculum when we talk about
culture and we talk about understanding of the environment, so
do we put together foreign language skills? No. But it is more
along the lines of a cultural understanding throughout.
On the officer side there is survival language skills at
the Command and Staff College in EWS [Expeditionary Warfare
School], but because of the short duration of the enlisted
courses, we do not have any type of language beyond cultural
understanding and the importance of it in an asymmetric hybrid
fight.
Mr. Sparks. Thank you, sir. Obviously, with the number of
soldiers deployed from the United States Army, we require a
degree of cultural awareness sorts of training. In professional
military education, it is embedded throughout our courses.
Additionally, the commanding general of Training and
Doctrine Command, General Dempsey, has instituted a culture and
language study that is completed with recommendations. In my
Institute, for instance, I will gain a culture and language
expert that will continue to look at those programs to ensure
that we have got them right.
We have a number of schools and centers inside of the
United States Army that are led by commanding generals that are
experts in each one of their branch and proficiency areas. In
most cases, cultural awareness training is determined by what
are the requirements for that particular branch and soldier and
particular theater of operation. So the long answer to the
culture question is yes, we have it embedded in our training.
We are continuing to look at language training as well. We
are not certain that there is a place at this point in
professional military education for language training for
sergeants. We simply do not know, but we are continuing to
evaluate that possibility, with the understanding of, if it
becomes a necessity, how we would apply it inside of our PME
system.
Dr. Snyder. I can understand how you might have concluded
it is not a necessity. Whether it would be a helpful attribute,
though, that would be a different story. There certainly have
been an abundance of examples of some extraordinary positive
things that have occurred because of somebody's ability to
speak Arabic or Japanese or something like that.
Now, is it worth the investment of time to get, you know, a
significant portion of E-4s or E-5s or NCOs speaking languages?
That is a different topic. But it seems like it would be a very
positive attribute.
I think we were talking about our friend, Jim Lively, who
was able to--was my Marine fellow a couple of cycles ago, I
think, who was able to go out with Iraqi units without an
interpreter because of his Arabic skills that he picked up
outside of the military.
Mr. Sparks. Yes, sir, if I may, the necessity for the
language training I know from myself from personal deployments
in Iraq that it is very helpful. I would not in any way believe
that it is not a value.
Relative to the professional military education system, I
am just simply not certain if it should be placed inside of
that system. I am sure you are well aware that the United
States Army has many language programs, and all of our soldiers
in pre-deployment training go through language exercises for
terms and things like that that they may need inside of their
area of operation.
I also would submit that we have a very robust program out
at Monterey that when the United States Army relative to
deployments feels that we need a higher level of specificity in
a language, that we are able to get that sort of training if we
need to. But I think we will continue to look at it from an
all-soldier, all-hands professional military education
perspective.
Dr. Snyder. Yes. Well, I have been asking for probably a
decade now with very poor results, but I have resisted the
temptation to try to impose something, that I have always
thought foreign language skills should begin in boot camp,
where again, it is supposing a 25-hour instead of a 24-hour
day, but you would end up with a group of people who had some
minimal exposure to it, and you would stumble onto those people
who really have some aptitude for it.
I just think there are too many examples of extraordinary
things that have happened in combat with people who had
language skills that weren't really required to do so. Probably
the most----
What was the fellow's name, Lorry? Gabaldon?
Gabaldon. You may be familiar with him from World War II,
who grew up with a bunch of Japanese kids in California and was
in--I think he was a Marine, wasn't he, Colonel?
Colonel Minick. Yes, sir.
Dr. Snyder. And----
Colonel Minick. Pied Piper of Saipan.
Dr. Snyder. Yes, and he would sneak out away from his unit
on his own, because he just didn't like to see all these
Japanese soldiers getting killed, and in Japanese he would--I
think he basically said, ``If you don't surrender, we are going
to blow up your cave'' or something, but he was probably a
little more moderate in tone than that, but he was able to do
it in Japanese, and even stumbled into a regiment one day and
had--I don't know--600 or 700 surrender at one time after he
negotiated in Japanese with the unit.
And remember, this is at a time when the mystique amongst
the military was a Japanese soldier would never surrender.
But you think about how many Marines' lives were saved
because an additional 800 or 900 Japanese troops did not have
to be killed or captured, and yet that was a kid who learned
those skills by picking fruit, I think, in California when he
was in high school.
I don't think I have any further questions. I appreciate
you all's attentiveness today. I have found these materials
hard for me to get a handle on. I mean, I take your statements
at what they say.
We have had the staff go out. I don't know if I have a
sense yet of if all the schools should be getting A-pluses or
B-minuses or C-pluses, but I certainly give you all A-plus for
effort and commitment to the program.
I noticed the topic that Mr. Skelton is interested in and
has been for years, and we have had some discussions, and I
feel a bit like we neglected you all. And perhaps your resource
issue wouldn't be such a big one, if we had been paying a
little bit more attention to enlisted PME through the years.
And I think you will see this committee do that under Mr.
Skelton's leadership.
So we appreciate you being here today. I certainly
appreciate your service. And we are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:19 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
July 28, 2010
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July 28, 2010
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WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING
THE HEARING
July 28, 2010
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RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY DR. SNYDER
Mr. Lutterloh. The Senior Enlisted Academy is under the purview of
and co-located with the Naval War College. The Senior Enlisted Academy
currently has active duty military faculty. The Naval War College
provides additional faculty support as required. Accordingly, the need
for Title 10 hiring flexibility for classes less than ten months in
length, such as those at the Senior Enlisted Academy, is not currently
an issue for Navy. However, we do support such flexibility to employ
civilian faculty members as future needs arise. [See page 27.]
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING
July 28, 2010
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY DR. SNYDER
Dr. Snyder. When we studied Officer PME, we discovered a pretty big
disconnect between the personnel systems and the PME systems.
Specifically, we addressed who gets selected to attend and when, what
course they go to, and where they go afterward as far as putting the
education to good use. Does the enlisted PME system have similar
challenges?
Colonel Minick. The construct of EPME is different than that for
OPME in that the EPME courses are temporary additional duty (TAD)
whereas the OPME courses are permanent change of station (PCS) courses.
This is possible due to the shorter duration of the EPME courses. This
permits more flexibility in scheduling Marines to attend courses. The
more frequent shorter duration also mean a higher percentage of
enlisted Marines are afforded resident EPME seats. Also, quotas for the
EPME courses are distributed to the operating forces where unit
commanders make the selections rather than the board selection process
administered by Manpower and Reserve Affairs for OPME. Therefore, we do
not face the challenges faced on the OPME side concerning selection,
attendance, and post-PME utilization.
Dr. Snyder. Virtually all the officer PME education venues offer a
master's degree along with PME. Other than the Community College of the
Air Force and the College of the American Soldier programs, does your
Service's enlisted PME system provide for degrees or accredited college
hours to apply to a degree? How important (or is it required) for
enlisted members to have an Associate's Degree, Bachelor's Degree, or
Master's Degree at some point in their career for promotion?
Colonel Minick. It is not required for an enlisted Marine to have a
degree for promotion. It should also be pointed out, that while some
resident OPME schools are accredited and do grant degrees, those
degrees are not required for promotion and Marine OPME distance
education programs are not accredited to grant degrees. Although our
EPME schools are not accredited to grant degrees, our courses have been
validated by the American Council on Education (ACE) and graduates can
receive transcripts through the Sailor/Marine American Council on
Education Registry (SMART). Students may use these credit hours to
apply for degrees at accredited colleges. It is not feasible to grant
enlisted Marines a degree based solely on PME curricula due to the
relative short duration of EPME courses. However, there are educational
programs outside of the purview of EPME, such as the SNCO Degree
Completion Program that allow enlisted Marines to earn bachelor's
degrees in specific fields. Much like similar officer advanced degree
programs, these programs are not considered PME. The Marine Corps is
also currently studying the benefits of a program similar to the
officer Advanced Degree Program (ADP) where senior enlisted Marines who
already have a bachelor's degree could obtain master's degrees in
certain fields.
Dr. Snyder. How is the Reserve Component (RC) included in your
enlisted PME program? Do reservists and Guardsmen have the opportunity
to attend or take the PME they require for promotion? How has the
transition from a strategic to an operational reserve (with increased
deployments and length of deployments) affected RC opportunities to
complete EPME?
Colonel Minick. The Reserve Component has separate two-week long
resident Sergeants, Career (Staff Sgt) and Advanced (Gunnery Sergeant)
Courses conducted at the Staff NCO Academy in Quantico. Each summer,
one Advanced, one Career, and two Sergeants Courses are conducted. The
opportunity does exist for Reservists to attend these courses. Since
2005, the number of Reserve students has increased by 61 percent.
Marine Forces Reserves reports that the transition from Strategic to
Operational has created a significant gap with their senior enlisted
leaders. Because of this, they believe they now have a backlog of
enlisted leaders who need to complete PME and be eligible for selection
to the next higher grade. Enlisted PME will be meeting with the Marine
Forces Reserve G-3 to discuss increasing courses of action to increase
both the number of courses and locations for resident Reserve Courses.
Dr. Snyder. There is quite a disparity between the length of time
an officer spends in a career on education and the time an enlisted
person spends on education. Can you explain this disparity? Do the
Services need to invest more time and money in NCO education? Why or
why not? Where would you focus any increases?
Colonel Minick. While there is a disparity between the amount of
time that an enlisted Marine spends at PME schools compared to what
officers, OPME courses are episodic whereas EPME courses are continual
during a career. We believe the duration is appropriate due to the
increased frequency of our courses and the additionally time our
enlisted Marines spend in MOS specific curriculum. The amount of MOS
curriculum varies by occupational field.
The Marine Corps is continually investing more time and money in
NCO education. The President of Marine Corps University has made EPME
his number one priority; all resident and non-resident EPME courses are
undergoing major changes to construct and curricula. In the past five
years, the staff of the Enlisted PME has increased from just three
Marines to nearly 40 Marines and civilians, and we have improved the
content while simultaneously adding to expanding the EPME continuum on
both directions--in the form of a command-sponsored Corporals Course
and a Senior Enlisted PME Course for master sergeants, first sergeants,
sergeants major and master gunnery sergeants. The non-resident courses
are becoming more robust as well with the College of Distance Education
and Training taking on the task of distance learning. The biggest
change will be the creation of a seminar Career Course--similar to the
officer non-resident PME courses. The EPME budget has increased from
just $10,500 in 2005 to more than $2.67 million in FY 2011.
Dr. Snyder. In exploring the most effective organizational
structures we observed that two of you (Navy and Army) have NCO leaders
of their NCO schools and two of you have colonels as leaders (Marine
Corps and Air Force). Can each of you address why your school systems
are organized the way they are and if they/you get enough support from
your higher headquarters. For instance, the Navy (Naval War College),
Air Force (Air University), and Marine Corps (Marine Corps University)
schools are subordinated to your officer universities or colleges?
[Note: Army enlisted education is directed by the Institute at Training
and Doctrine Command rather than Army War College or Command and
General Staff School.]
a. How should PME commanders, commandants, and presidents be
chosen? What are the plusses and minuses of having enlisted leadership
at the enlisted schools? Officer leadership?
Colonel Minick. Although the director of the overall EPME program
is a colonel, the Academies are indeed run by senior SNCOs, usually a
sergeant major. Rather than being subordinate to the officer colleges,
the EPME directorate has equal standing to the directors of the officer
PME schools (Expeditionary Warfare School, Command and Staff College,
the Marine Corps War College, and the School of Advanced Warfighting)
within the Marine Corps University. We view the Marine Corps model as
the best of both worlds with enlisted leadership at the Academies and
an officer at EPME. Rather than segregating officer and enlisted PME,
we are working on integrating and melding the two to ensure the two
groups have commonalities and feedback from the two groups. Doing so
prevents ``groupthink'' and allows for new ideas and collaboration.
Dr. Snyder. Would you be in favor of a Goldwater-Nichols Reform for
Enlisted personnel management and PME? Given that calls for jointness
and ``whole of government approaches'' from Congress and the Executive
Branch have been increasing, how extensively should the EPME system be
more consciously shifting its sights to the joint, interagency, and
multinational realms?
a. Is joint, interagency, and multinational integration curriculum
being extended down to the enlisted ranks, in a conscious and
programmed way, given that they find themselves increasingly in that
environment whether that is in engagement, combat, or reconstruction
and stabilization operations?
Colonel Minick. EPME curriculum currently has the right mix of
joint, interagency, and multinational instruction (JIM). As with OPME,
the amount of PME (and jointness in particular) should increase as
Marines increase in rank. The EPME processes are coming more in line
with the OPME processes and there are appropriate Joint Learning Areas
(JLAs) in the Enlisted Professional Military Educations Policy (EPMEP).
The EPMEP rightfully recognizes that lower levels of PME should focus
on service specific education. Each service has unique PME requirements
for junior service members. The EPMEP and the associated councils
ensure that EPME curricula maintains appropriate levels of jointness.
Dr. Snyder. Does diversity matter in the assignment of faculty and
staff within EPME? How can EPME institutions increase the diversity of
their leadership and faculty?
Colonel Minick. Diversity does matter in the assignment of faculty
and staff within EPME. The faculty and staff should mirror the enlisted
population as a whole, and not just by race and gender. When we recruit
for positions within the academies, we also want diversity in military
occupational specialties to ensure that we are not too ground or too
aviation heavy. Further, the criteria we have identified as the most
desirable traits for our faculty include operational experience,
education, previous teaching or curriculum development experience, and
superior performance. While we do not formally track race and gender;
however, we work with Manpower Enlisted Assignments to recruit
potential faculty advisors, as needed, to attain an equitable mix of
races, gender, B Billet, operational and MOS diversity at all
academies.
Dr. Snyder. How much of your EPME curriculum is focused on critical
thinking, communication, and resource management? Should emphasis in
any or all of these areas be increased? At what levels?
Colonel Minick. Critical thinking and communication and resource
management are woven throughout the EPME curriculum. We assess each
learning outcome to ensure that they included in both the content and
the evaluation. The ability of Marines to think critically, to be agile
and adaptive in rapidly changing environs is critical in current
contingency operations in which the enemy is also evolving. We are
currently studying ways to further increase these skills for both our
faculty advisors and our students; an OSD-funded study is exploring
ways to enhance adaptability in our curriculum. Communication skills
continue to be a top priority for us. We will be pursuing a POM
initiative to place communications experts in each of our academies so
that we can improve oral and written communication.
Dr. Snyder. Should senior NCOs attend officer PME courses?
Colonel Minick. Yes, senior NCOs should be able to attend officer
PME courses space permitting. Senior NCOs are eligible to enroll in
appropriate Marine Corps officer distance education programs if they
have completed the PME requirements for their ranks. For resident
schools, there are not enough seats to accommodate all officers, so it
would not be feasible to offer seats to enlisted Marines.
Dr. Snyder. I understand all the other Services offer each other
exchange instructors which really advances jointness except that the
Marine Corps has not decided to send an exchange instructor to the Navy
senior enlisted course. Given that the Marine Corps and Navy interact
so much on ships and on shore, can you explain that decision and if
it's likely to change?
Colonel Minick. We currently send a small number of Marine students
to attend the Navy Senior Enlisted Academy (Navy SEA) and Army Sergeant
Major Academy (USASMA). In addition, we are developing plans to send
Marines to attend the Air Force Senior SNCO Academy (AFSSNCOA).
Questions/requests have surfaced in the past, through unofficial
channels, from the Navy SEA and USASMA regarding the possibility of
Marines being assigned as instructors at their respective school
houses. As a result of our plans to have Marines attend the AFSSNCOA in
the near future, questions have also surfaced about future
opportunities for Marines to be assigned as instructors at that school
house. While we would most welcome an instructor exchange with any of
these school houses, formal manpower requests of this nature are filled
by our Manpower and Reserve Affairs branch.
Dr. Snyder. Do you have enough seats to get everyone who requires a
course for promotion through and if not, with the pace of deployments
and opstempo do you have a waiver system?
a. Does the waiver system work, not to exempt personnel from
school, but to get it for them as soon as they're able to go, and not
to disadvantage them for promotion?
Colonel Minick. The only resident course required for promotion in
the enlisted ranks is the Advanced Course which is required for
promotion from gunnery sergeant to first sergeant or master sergeant.
We do have enough seats for every gunnery sergeant to attend the
Resident Advanced Course. There are a total of 1,915 seats available in
19 courses that begin roughly every eight weeks. In FY 2010, 1,855
Marines were selected for promotion to the rank of gunnery sergeants,
so there are clearly enough seats. There is not a waiver system in
place for attendance at the Advanced Course due to deployments/
operational tempo. We are currently reviewing whether a waiver or a
board precept should be adopted. It will need to be vetted with the
Marine Corps Promotion Branch.
Dr. Snyder. When we studied Officer PME, we discovered a pretty big
disconnect between the personnel systems and the PME systems.
Specifically, we addressed who gets selected to attend and when, what
course they go to, and where they go afterward as far as putting the
education to good use. Does the enlisted PME system have similar
challenges?
Mr. Sparks. A significant asymmetrical advantage we have over our
enemies has been the quality of our leaders. This advantage is a result
of our institutional commitment to leader development. The Army's
enlisted PME is the Noncommissioned Officer Education System (NCOES).
It is designed to prepare NCOs to lead and train Soldiers who work and
fight under their direct leadership, and to assist their assigned
leaders to execute unit missions. Ideally, NCOES and NCO promotions
should be sequential and progressive. Although currently challenged,
NCOES remains sequentially linked to NCO promotions and we continue
with our commitment to ensure our systems and programs develop leaders
for the 21st Century. Generally, selection of Soldiers to attend NCOES
is based on both their availability and a unique developmental career
map that varies depending on each Soldier's Military Occupational
Specialty (MOS). The training process for the NCO starts with the
basic, branch-immaterial, leadership training stage and continues in
schools through the basic, branch-specific level; advanced, branch-
specific level; and senior, branch-immaterial level. Each course is
designed to be delivered prior to the Soldier being promoted and
assuming the duties required of the next rank.
The initial course a Soldier attends occurs on average within 36 to
48 months of service or when they become Specialist (SPC/E4) promotable
although highly motivated Privates First Class identified by their
leadership as future leaders and is the Warrior Leader Course (WLC).
Due to the high operational rotation of previous years, Sergeants
(SGTs/E5) and Staff Sergeants (SSG/E6) who are promoted while deployed
also attend the course. This course is a branch-immaterial, field-
oriented leadership course built on warrior leader tasks. The WLC
trains Soldiers at NCO Academies throughout the Army and focuses on
values, attributes, leader skills, and actions needed to lead team/
squad size units and serves as the critical institutional course for
making a transformation from Soldier to NCO.
The next level of PME an NCO will attend occurs on average at the
five to seven year time in service mark and is the Advanced Leader
Course (ALC). This course focuses on leadership and technical skills
required to prepare Soldiers to effectively lead squad/platoon size
units. The ALC is delivered in two phases and consists of a 90-day,
highly facilitated, web-based common core program that teaches the
theories and principles of battle-focused common core training,
leadership, and war fighting skills required to lead a squad-sized
element in combat. The course also includes ``hands-on'' performance-
oriented technical resident training specific to the Soldier's MOS.
Although the course is a prerequisite for selection to Sergeant First
Class (SFC/E7), due to the operational environment, select Soldiers
(who are or have recently deployed) may end up attending the course
after having already been promoted or selected for promotion to SFC.
Between the ten to fifteen year time in service mark, an NCO will
be scheduled for and attend, the Senior Leader Course (SLC). This
course, like the preceding ALC course is a branch-specific course that
provides an opportunity for Soldiers selected for promotion to SFC to
acquire the leader, technical, and tactical skills, knowledge, and
experience needed to lead platoon/company size units. Although the
course is a prerequisite for selection to Master Sergeant (MSG/E8), due
to the operational environment, select Soldiers (who are or have
recently deployed) may end up attending the course after having already
been promoted or selected for promotion to MSG.
The final level of enlisted PME is the Sergeants Major Course
(SMC); the capstone of enlisted training for NCOs. It prepares NCOs for
both troop and staff assignments. This course is task based and
performance oriented and focuses on leadership, combat operations,
sustainment operations, team building, communication skills, training
management, and professional development electives. It prepares the NCO
for responsibility at the Battalion and Brigade level. The Army selects
eligible MSG to attend the SMC for the purpose of promotion to Sergeant
Major (SGM/E9).
Available inventory, Army requirements, and priorities established
by HQDA to meet Army readiness drives assignments of the enlisted
force. The Proponent for each Career Management Field provides a
professional developmental timeline designed to maximize a Soldier's
skills in both operational and generating force assignments while
concurrently establishing an occupational/leader development career map
for Soldiers, leaders, and personnel managers to use to shape the NCO's
professional development. The Enlisted Personnel Management System has
a requirement to resource both operational and institutional
assignments with the best-qualified, available Soldiers and NCOs.
Operational assignments are based on a Soldier's MOS and specialized
skills and, even with the high operational tempo in recent years, the
Army continues to leverage operational experience in special duty
assignments such as Drill Sergeant/AIT Platoon Sergeant, Recruiter,
Active/Reserve Component support, and Observer/Controller.
Dr. Snyder. Virtually all the officer PME education venues offer a
master's degree along with PME. Other than the Community College of the
Air Force and the College of the American Soldier programs, does your
Service's enlisted PME system provide for degrees or accredited college
hours to apply to a degree? How important (or is it required) for
enlisted members to have an Associate's Degree, Bachelor's Degree, or
Master's Degree at some point in their career for promotion?
Mr. Sparks. In today's operational Army, it is extremely critical
for enlisted Soldiers to achieve their educational goals. Our
Educational programs enhance mission readiness, contribute to
recruiting, assist in retention and support the career transitions of
enlisted Soldiers. Traditional NCO roles are becoming more complex with
integrating information, resources, and understanding strategic
implications of tactical decisions. The Army requires well-trained,
educated and professional noncommissioned officers prepared to meet
current and future leadership, managerial and technological challenges
of an increasingly sophisticated, complex and expeditionary Army. We
believe personal and professional growth through collegiate programs is
essential and beneficial to the Army mission, enlisted force
development and the nation.
The Army maximizes the utilization of the American Council on
Education College Credit Recommendation Service whereas, a team of
faculty evaluators from relevant academic disciplines review Army
courses, and if appropriate, make recommendations for the amount of
college credit they may be equivalent to for transfer into degree
programs. The Army Career Degrees (ACD) are occupation-based associate-
and bachelor-level college degrees that uniquely relate to MOS skills,
contain specific college courses that match MOS/CMF competencies, and
maximize credit for military experience and training in order to
minimize additional college study.
CAS approach to tying NCOES Courses accreditation with specific
degree requirements allows a Soldier to quickly see what NCOES courses
will transfer as equivalent credit at any point in his or her career
from basic training through the Sergeant Major Course. This streamlines
degree completion by listing precisely what the college will grant for
each credit source, and provides a list of other guaranteed ways to
meet degree requirements. By linking civilian education to military
training, the Army will provide an optimum balance of training and
education that accelerates the development of adaptive and innovative
leaders. Education, whether PME or Civilian Education provides the
tools leaders require has they move forward in their career. We will
continue to assess new programs and to determine methods to infuse
civilian education into our PME. We should approach education for our
soldiers from the perspective of what is best for our NCO leaders.
Possibly, a Civilian College course may be more advantageous than a
course presented in our NCOES construct.
Civilian education and a military profession are mutually
supporting. Many self-development activities recommended in
professional development career maps come from programs and services
offered through the Army Continuing Education System (ACES) which
operates education and learning centers throughout the Army. College
level courses are available through installation education centers who
work with participating colleges to provide on-post programs that lead
to award of a degree. Many academic institutions take part in the
Service Members Opportunity Army Degree (SOCAD) program, which
guarantees Soldiers' transfer of credits and acceptance of
nontraditional credits such as military experience towards degree
completion. NCO developmental career maps recommend undergraduate
degree completion but the Army does not required degree completion as a
promotion eligibility requirement. Because the quality of our Army's
NCO Corps is extremely high, selection for promotion is highly
competitive. In the promotion selection process, the pursuit of
civilian education above the high school level concurrent with military
duty is indicative of dedication to self-improvement, effective time
management, and potential for academic success.
Dr. Snyder. How is the Reserve Component (RC) included in your
enlisted PME program? Do reservists and Guardsmen have the opportunity
to attend or take the PME they require for promotion? How has the
transition from a strategic to an operational reserve (with increased
deployments and length of deployments) affected RC opportunities to
complete EPME?
Mr. Sparks. PME for the Army Reserve Component (RC) has matured and
transformed along with the PME provided the Active Component (AC). Both
RC and AC use the same Warrior Leader Course (formerly the Primary
Leader Development Course) program of instruction, with the AC
executing over a longer period and the RC executing in their
traditional 15 day format. Because of the operations tempo everyone has
been using the 15 day format. A new Warrior Leader Course was developed
to provide better educational outcomes across the force and will begin
1 October 10. Initially, the new course will be executed in 17 days in
the AC and 15 days for the RC, but the RC stands ready to adjust to the
17 format when resources become available.
For NCOES requirements after WLC, it is broken up into two phases,
a common core and a technical phase developed by a Soldiers proponent.
Soon, all Soldiers regardless of component, will take the web based,
highly facilitated, Advanced Leader Course Common Core, with the
resident RC format being eliminated. The technical tracks for the
Advanced and Senior Leader Courses have been more problematic because
of their length. On 1 October 10 most of these courses were transformed
and reduced to no more than eight weeks, but the conversion of the
courses to a format that fits the RC training environment has been
daunting. Most will be available to the RC inside the 15 month window
we require, but, as in those courses that provide extensive technical
skills, require extremely expensive equipment, or have a low RC
personnel density will not be converted. For those courses, RC Soldiers
are scheduled to attend the longer AC course whenever possible
dependant on RC funding and Soldiers availability. To mitigate that,
the RC promotion system allows NCOES waivers to be requested by
individual Soldiers who have not been afforded the opportunity to
attend the required level of NCOES due to operational obligations or
conflicts with their civilian career. A review of historical data
reveals that no significant increases in NCOES waiver requests have
been received.
The capstone Sergeants Major Course is provided in two formats. The
10 month resident course provides an optimum classroom experience for
many AC Soldiers, some RC Soldiers, and a few sister service and
foreign nation personnel. Most RC Soldiers and many AC Soldiers attend
the course in an RC friendly format of an extensive distance learning
module followed by a two week resident phase. When fully deployed, the
new online Structured Self Development will be taken by all Soldiers,
AC and RC, throughout their careers. As indicated above, we take the
training of the RC seriously. The Army is one expeditionary force and
we cannot afford to educate some, and not others.
Dr. Snyder. There is quite a disparity between the length of time
an officer spends in a career on education and the time an enlisted
person spends on education. Can you explain this disparity? Do the
Services need to invest more time and money in NCO education? Why or
why not? Where would you focus any increases?
Mr. Sparks. The Noncommissioned Officers Education System (NCOES)
is designed to commence when a Soldier makes that transformation of
becoming a leader at about the three year time in service milestone
with the Warrior Leader Course (WLC). After that initial course, an NCO
would then attend the Advanced Leaders Course (ALC) and Senior Leader
Course (SLC) on average every three to four years tied with his or her
rank culminating in the pinnacle NCOES course, the United States Army
Sergeant Majors Academy (USASMA). Both the initial course of WLC and
the final course at USASMA are non-military occupational specialty
which means that regardless the job a Soldier does in the Army; all
attend these levels of NCOES together in one class. The Soldiers job
skill proponent teaches ALC and SLC and Soldiers from within the same
job field attend the class together learning both leadership techniques
and technical competencies.
Since 2003, NCOES has transformed into providing a Soldier the
right training at the right time by approaching their needs from a
strategy of lifelong learning. While, certain institutional gates such
as WLC, ALC and SLC must be passed through, lessons from the past 6
years combined with technological advances have demonstrated that
learning can occur anywhere at any time. Today's NCO is a self-
directed/motivated learner who creates an environment of continuous
learning and demands both NCOs and subordinates exceed their comfort
zones. The NCO is skilled at adapting their mentoring approach to
encourage and guide subordinates in setting and achieving goals. As a
mentor, the NCO has open and honest discussions with their Soldiers,
and provides a proper mix of opportunities at the right time for them
to grow.
The Army has made a considerable investment in NCO PME. We believe
the time allotted supports our current deployment situation. To
continue to succeed down a path of transformation through lifelong
learning, resources should be applied towards continued development and
eventual application of the 2015 NCO learning environment. The time an
NCO spends engaged in PME will likely change, some Soldiers may require
a longer course. The NCO learning environment in 2015 recognizes that
individual needs are important, that learning occurs across the career,
and that there are multiple supporting actors and capabilities required
to create an immersive and engaging lifelong learning solution focused
on the Soldier. The environment will provide job experiences, training
and education, and self-development opportunities that are tailored to
the NCO throughout their profession. Formal classroom training and
education currently provide individuals with roughly 20 to 30 percent
of what they learn, with most competencies acquired within the work
environment through a blend of informal social networks, formal
learning communities, coaching and mentorships, and independent study.
The 2015 environment will equip NCOs to learn more deeply in all of
these contexts.
Dr. Snyder. In exploring the most effective organizational
structures we observed that two of you (Navy and Army) have NCO leaders
of their NCO schools and two of you have colonels as leaders (Marine
Corps and Air Force). Can each of you address why your school systems
are organized the way they are and if they/you get enough support from
your higher headquarters. For instance, the Navy (Naval War College),
Air Force (Air University), and Marine Corps (Marine Corps University)
schools are subordinated to your officer universities or colleges?
[Note: Army enlisted education is directed by the Institute at Training
and Doctrine Command rather than Army War College or Command and
General Staff School.]
a. How should PME commanders, commandants, and presidents be
chosen? What are the plusses and minuses of having enlisted leadership
at the enlisted schools? Officer leadership?
Mr. Sparks. The Noncommissioned Officer Education System has
several course delivered in multiple sites around the world. These
sites are referred to as NCO Academies. NCO Academies are typically
small organizations that are led by a Command Sergeant Major that has
usually served at the Brigade level. NCO Academies are usually aligned
under the Headquarters and report through the Command Sergeant Major to
the General Officer in charge.
There are several reasons that his system works best for the U.S.
Army. First, from an educational perspective all members of the NCO
Academy have completed the requisite education required. The leader of
the organization, typically referred to as the Commandant must have
successfully completed all levels of Professional Military Education
and served successfully as a Battalion, Squadron or Brigade Command
Sergeant Major. Typically our Commandants have multiple deployment
experiences in various units. This situation makes the Commandant
relevant immediately. In the NCO Corps, we live by the saying Be, Know,
Do. It would be difficult to achieve this standard if you had not ever
participated in NCOES. With this consideration in mind the Commanding
General of TRADOC established the Institute for Noncommissioned Officer
Professional Development (INCOPD). INCOPD's mission is primarily to
manage this education across a career.
The selection of the Commandant should be focused on the
aforementioned qualifications. The United States Army has recently
developed a board system to select the right leader for this important
position. The potential minuses in this situation are that currently
there are some actions that require a Commissioned Officer, UCMJ for
instance. Generally, this sort of activity is covered with a memorandum
of agreement with whomever the Commanding General on the specific
installation directs to support the NCO Academy. The instance of UCMJ
is relatively low, primarily due to the length of the courses and the
quality of the students.
Dr. Snyder. Would you be in favor of a Goldwater-Nichols Reform for
Enlisted personnel management and PME? Given that calls for jointness
and ``whole of government approaches'' from Congress and the Executive
Branch have been increasing, how extensively should the EPME system be
more consciously shifting its sights to the joint, interagency, and
multinational realms?
a. Is joint, interagency, and multinational integration curriculum
being extended down to the enlisted ranks, in a conscious and
programmed way, given that they find themselves increasingly in that
environment whether that is in engagement, combat, or reconstruction
and stabilization operations?
Mr. Sparks. Enlisted Professional Military Education (EPME)
revisions were made to prepare Soldiers to work in operating
environments where they collaborate with Joint, Interagency,
Intergovernmental, and Multinational (JIIM) teammates. Soldiers are
exposed to joint education throughout the continuum of professional
development starting with an introductory block of instruction at the
beginning of their service. They continue to grow their knowledge and
skills related to operating with JIIM partners through self-development
and institutional learning. Learning content appropriate to a Soldier's
level of experience and responsibility has been incorporated into each
level of structured self-development. Recent revisions to the Sergeants
Major Course have included more emphasis on planning and executing
operations with JIIM partners. Additionally, proponents for the
Advanced Leader Courses and Senior Leaders Courses are able to include
JIIM content in the curriculum that is necessary to prepare Soldiers
for JIIM operations related to an individual military occupational
specialty. This approach allows each school to prepare Soldiers for
JIIM requirements that are unique to the role those Soldiers play in
the JIIM environment. In addition to the self-development and resident
instruction at the senior and Executive levels, Soldiers receive
assignment oriented training prior to reporting to joint positions at
the sergeant through sergeant major levels.
While I would not rule out future changes similar to the Goldwater-
Nichols Reform, I believe the current approach allows us to integrate
JIIM content in the current curriculum in meaningful ways without
significant changes to course lengths or resource requirements. Any
mandated change to the current approach will affect other areas such as
school attendance backlogs, promotions, Army Force Generation
(ARFORGEN), and comprehensive fitness; therefore, I recommend
continuing the current integration of JIIM into the existing curriculum
until we have data that shows that method is not meeting the needs of
the force.
Dr. Snyder. Does diversity matter in the assignment of faculty and
staff within EPME? How can EPME institutions increase the diversity of
their leadership and faculty?
Mr. Sparks. Our Army is a diverse organization and our EMPE staff
and faculty is representative of a diverse Army. The importance of
having a diverse educational setting also includes the student
population as well as a diversity of ideas. We understand the value of
tapping into the unique abilities and talents of people from different
backgrounds and the need for faculty and staff to promote free
thinking, selflessness, and resourcefulness.
The selection of staff and faculty for our EPME, it is about ``who
is best qualified'' to teach and support the development of our future
NCO leaders. The diversity of both faculty and students contributes
directly to the quality of instruction and educational outcomes. The
learning environment within EPME must be a representation of the Army
and its culture. The more diverse faculty and staff are, the more
likely it is that all Soldiers will be exposed to a wider range of
perspectives and to ideas drawn from a variety of life experiences. In
a diverse learning environment, the enlisted Soldier will find comfort
and motivation from faculty, staff members, and peers who he or she
perceives have shared similar experiences. A diversified faculty and
staff create a climate supportive of Equal Opportunity, where students
can aspire to grow and foster the Army values while in the institution.
Above all, Diversity produces Soldiers who are more complex thinkers,
more confident in traversing cultural differences and provide the Army
with NCO leaders capable of full spectrum operations.
Today's EPME staff and faculty do represent a diverse Army and
serve as role models for our future NCO Corps. While we are confident
that our EMPE provides a diverse learning environment, there is always
room for improvement and we continue to evaluate the structure and
quality of our EMPE staff and faculty.
Dr. Snyder. How much of your EPME curriculum is focused on critical
thinking, communication, and resource management? Should emphasis in
any or all of these areas be increased? At what levels?
Mr. Sparks. We have identified communication, critical thinking,
and resource management to be key attributes required of our
Noncommissioned Officers (NCO). Each is addressed extensively in the
NCO Annex to the Army's Leader Development Strategy and is sequentially
and progressively integrated into our PME.
Oral and written communication skills are fundamental to succeed as
a leader. Beginning with Writing in the Army Style and Prepare a
Presentation in the Structured Self Development (SSD1) that begins
shortly after a Soldier graduates from Initial Entry Training, through
Army Correspondence, Developmental Counseling, and oral presentation of
History of the NCO in the Warrior Leader Course (WLC), communication
skills are sequentially and progressively addressed through the
Advanced Leader, Senior Leader, and Sergeants Major Courses. Basic
communications subjects exist at each level of PME, but the bulk of the
communication skills are developed through their use in almost every
subject covered.
In SSD1 Soldiers are introduced to the Military Decision Making
Process and Lean Six Sigma fundamentals, but beginning in WLC Soldiers
begin the actual development of critical thinking skills. In subjects
as diverse as Composite Risk Management and Tactical Operations in
Warrior Leader Course, and throughout PME, NCOs are trained and
educated in the process to conceptualize, synthesize, and apply
information from a broad spectrum of sources to develop optimum and
effective decisions. Although the emphasis is on the ability of NCOs to
use their critical thinking skills in military operations we also
provide opportunities for them to exercise their abilities in making
personal, individual decisions.
As with communication and critical thinking skills, training and
education on resource management begins in SSD1 with an introduction to
Supply Activities in a Unit. In WLC NCOs are introduced to Supply
Procedures and the care of our number one resource, Soldiers, through
Resiliency Training and the Prevention of Suicide. This training
progresses through each level of PME and culminates in subjects such as
Military Contracting in Support of Army Operations and Managing
Organizational Stress in the Sergeants Major Course.
Given that each of the subjects discussed above is identified as a
core skill required of our NCOs and that each is covered extensively
throughout PME no added emphasis on any of them is necessary at this
time. The Institute for NCO Professional Development continues to
monitor requirements and will adjust courses as necessary.
Dr. Snyder. Should senior NCOs attend officer PME courses?
Mr. Sparks. A recent revision and upgrade of the Sergeants Major
Course was done to include topics that field-grade officers study at
the Command and General Staff College. The resident and nonresident
Sergeants Major Courses will have content that is similar to the
Intermediate Level Education courses attended by captains and majors;
however, the material is tailored to prepare our most senior NCOs to
serve primarily at the Battalion and Brigade levels. The goal of this
effort is not to make senior noncommissioned officers more like
officers; however, the changes do prepare senior NCOs to become more
involved the process of planning and executing operations. To that end,
the revised course of instruction includes several modules that are
similar to material taught at CGSC. Moreover, the Academy no longer
administers objective tests with multiple-choice answers; rather, it
requires use of the progressive and sequential training, education and
experience Soldiers have gained, to develop comprehensive solutions
that are doctrinally accurate to complex problems from the operational
environment.
The role of NCOs in planning and executing complex operations has
expanded at all levels; however, changes to EPME have occurred, and
will continue to be made in order to prepare NCOs to succeed at all
levels. Although recent operations have expanded the responsibilities
of NCOs into areas that were previously only the domain of the officer
corps, I believe the special relationship between officers and NCOs is
enhanced by the current structure of EPME and PME with one exception.
Select senior NCOs that serve in senior strategic leadership positions
may benefit from attending a senior service school but should only
attend if a direct benefit relative to the requirements of their
position or development of the NCO can be identified. Currently, War
College enrollment is restricted to officers and civilians. A policy
change would permit attendance in the event the education is considered
important for either the position or development of the NCO. A Senior
service school may enhance those NCOs ability to advise leaders of
strategic national defense missions.
Future revisions to EPME will continue to examine content from
joint and officer PME that may be integrated into EPME in ways that are
meaningful to how NCOs support current and future operations.
Dr. Snyder. Some of the Services requested expanded Title 10
authority during the officer PME study. This came up again during the
staff's EPME research. With the changes in your EPME courses, it
appears that expanded authority might be necessary. Can you briefly
explain if you need it and what you'd do with it?
a. How will EPME institutions attract top-tier civilian faculty if
they receive Title 10 authority?
Mr. Sparks. EPME has undergone a complete change in course content
that now delivers a more challenging educational curriculum that
requires instructional skills that higher level educators provide.
Title 10 provides the means to hire civilian instructors and professors
who conform to a performance based education model and to balance
military and civilian perspectives in the EPME educational mission.
There is no provision for this under Title 5. Unlike Title 5, Title 10
provides the flexibility to attract qualified faculty and to ensure
continuous professional development within the faculty. Title 10
Authority provides the flexibility to employ based on a 1-5 year,
renewable term basis supporting the requirement for continuous
improvement and the ability to reduce staff based on requirements.
Using Title 10 is definitely not part time employment.
We will attract top tier civilian faculty members through Title 10
by a robust and innovative faculty development program and student
curriculum. This dynamic approach through Title 10 provides more
flexibility in not only attracting but also retaining those individuals
who are ``the best of the best'' across industry, academia and the
services. Title 5 does not lend itself to this concept of rapid change
in requirements or educational concepts when compared to the
flexibility of Title 10.
Dr. Snyder. When we studied Officer PME, we discovered a pretty big
disconnect between the personnel systems and the PME systems.
Specifically, we addressed who gets selected to attend and when, what
course they go to, and where they go afterward as far as putting the
education to good use. Does the enlisted PME system have similar
challenges?
Mr. Lutterloh. Navy's personnel and Enlisted PME systems are well
aligned. The Enlisted PME system is structured to prepare senior
enlisted leaders for a breadth of increasing responsibilities. The
educational baseline for senior enlisted across the spectrum of PME
ensures that they are versed in essentials of naval power, effective
maritime spokespersons, and versed in service capabilities and the
fundamentals of joint warfare. Our most sought after senior enlisted
leadership positions are Chiefs of the Boat and Command Master Chiefs
(COB/CMC). The Navy requires that all COB/CMCs be graduates of the
Senior Enlisted Academy (SEA), with completion of Primary PME as a
prerequisite to attend SEA. Accordingly, our best performers with the
greatest potential are seeking and planning both to attend SEA and
assume the most challenging assignments.
Dr. Snyder. Virtually all the officer PME education venues offer a
master's degree along with PME. Other than the Community College of the
Air Force and the College of the American Soldier programs, does your
Service's enlisted PME system provide for degrees or accredited college
hours to apply to a degree? How important (or is it required) for
enlisted members to have an Associate's Degree, Bachelor's Degree, or
Master's Degree at some point in their career for promotion?
Mr. Lutterloh. Graduates of the Senior Enlisted Academy (SEA)
Resident Course are recommended for 18 credit hours (3 lower
divisional, 15 upper divisional) by the American Council on Education
(ACE) and graduates of the SEA Non-Resident course are ACE-recommended
for 6 credit hours (all lower divisional). Demographic data reflect the
following highest levels of education for SEA graduates: 6% have a
Masters or Doctorate Degree, 24% have a Bachelor's Degree, 26% have an
Associate's Degree, and 44% have a high school diploma. Over two-thirds
of SEA graduates reported on their exit survey that they intend to
pursue higher education in the next two to three years.
The Navy clearly recognizes the benefit of advanced education and
highly encourages all Sailors and civilians in the workforce to strive
to reach their full potential. While an advanced degree is not required
for an enlisted Sailor's promotion, promotion boards may give special
consideration for an advanced degree. The Navy provides tuition
assistance to military members to support attainment of degrees.
Dr. Snyder. How is the Reserve Component (RC) included in your
enlisted PME program? Do reservists and Guardsmen have the opportunity
to attend or take the PME they require for promotion? How has the
transition from a strategic to an operational reserve (with increased
deployments and length of deployments) affected RC opportunities to
complete EPME?
Mr. Lutterloh. Active (AC) and reserve component (RC) personnel
maintain the same opportunities to attend PME. For the enlisted force
(active and reserves), all PME requirements through the grade of chief
petty officer can be accomplished via NKO. One of the key reasons that
the Navy decided to field the significant elements of the PME Continuum
online through Navy Knowledge Online (NKO) was to ensure its
availability to the total force--active duty, reservists, and motivated
DON Civilians.
Both AC and RC components share requirements for Primary PME to
attend the Senior Enlisted Academy (SEA). The SEA resident course is
available to the Navy's reserve component which has produced 17
graduates over the last three years. The SEA Non-Resident course was
designed specifically for reservists, allowing them to use their two-
week Annual Training to fulfill the 12-day resident portion of the
course.
The Navy has been mobilizing RC members since 2001. There has been
no decrement for RC EPME opportunities as a result of transition from a
strategic to an operational status.
Dr. Snyder. There is quite a disparity between the length of time
an officer spends in a career on education and the time an enlisted
person spends on education. Can you explain this disparity? Do the
Services need to invest more time and money in NCO education? Why or
why not? Where would you focus any increases?
Mr. Lutterloh. Our priorities for all Sailors are clear--mastery of
their technical ratings, warfare qualification, and progressive
development of leadership skills. Each enlisted rating has its unique
professional requirements and operational rhythm in terms of time spent
in assignments at sea or ashore. The Navy has taken a broad approach to
this issue, providing increased opportunity for education in a number
of venues as well as setting a required baseline of knowledge.
Requirements for officer education have been developed over an extended
period of time. They include considerable strategic, operational,
scientific and analytical subjects generally considered part of the
education domain. Navy's goal is to facilitate all Sailors, officer and
enlisted, to reach their full potential.
The Navy believes this broad approach to be the best one and would
not at this point endorse a focus on increasing education for Non-
Commissioned Officers (NCOs). Navy fielded a full continuum of
Professional Military Education for officer and enlisted members in
January 2008. Learning objectives are consistent with changing roles
and responsibilities across a career.
Dr. Snyder. In exploring the most effective organizational
structures we observed that two of you (Navy and Army) have NCO leaders
of their NCO schools and two of you have colonels as leaders (Marine
Corps and Air Force). Can each of you address why your school systems
are organized the way they are and if they/you get enough support from
your higher headquarters. For instance, the Navy (Naval War College),
Air Force (Air University), and Marine Corps (Marine Corps University)
schools are subordinated to your officer universities or colleges?
[Note: Army enlisted education is directed by the Institute at Training
and Doctrine Command rather than Army War College or Command and
General Staff School.]
a. How should PME commanders, commandants, and presidents be
chosen? What are the plusses and minuses of having enlisted leadership
at the enlisted schools? Officer leadership?
Mr. Lutterloh. In October 2008, overall command of Senior Enlisted
Academy (SEA) shifted from the Naval Education and Training Command to
the Naval War College (NWC). This shift was conducted to emphasize the
educational aspects of the SEA experience. The SEA is now optimally
aligned with NWC with a Senior Enlisted member as its Director. The
relationship and co-location with NWC allows the SEA to leverage the
educational expertise of the NWC professors and infrastructure to
enhance the Enlisted PME experience. The SEA Enlisted Director receives
outstanding support from the dedicated military and civilians at the
NWC in its educational mission and the mission supporting functions.
This Expertise has brought measurable progress to SEA and permitted the
SEA faculty to focus on their teaching requirements. Additionally, PME
content is the responsibility of NWC and provides additional value to
the SEA.
The selection of post-major command tour Command Master Chiefs
(CMCs) has been very successful in maintaining the highest caliber of
Enlisted Directors at the SEA. The strongest point of maintaining a
senior enlisted leader as the Director is in maintaining a deck plate
leader emphasis on curriculum content and focus. Senior Enlisted
Directors facilitate peer-to-peer conversations among SEA graduates
serving throughout the Fleet. The Navy culture promotes a strong Chief
Petty Officer Mess with the CMC as its leader. The SEA is a reflection
of that culture and epitomizes the idea that the SEA is for ``senior
enlisted leaders'' and ``run by senior enlisted leaders'' which
increases the validity of the education that the SEA provides to the
force.
Dr. Snyder. Would you be in favor of a Goldwater-Nichols Reform for
Enlisted personnel management and PME? Given that calls for jointness
and ``whole of government approaches'' from Congress and the Executive
Branch have been increasing, how extensively should the EPME system be
more consciously shifting its sights to the joint, interagency, and
multinational realms?
a. Is joint, interagency, and multinational integration curriculum
being extended down to the enlisted ranks, in a conscious and
programmed way, given that they find themselves increasingly in that
environment whether that is in engagement, combat, or reconstruction
and stabilization operations?
Mr. Lutterloh. Navy believes the current overarching guidance and
curricula framework to be satisfactory. The Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff has established policy to ensure education of joint
matters permeates the Navy's PME Continuum. Navy EPME curriculum
content is current and relevant, and addresses multi-Service and
multinational topics in its programs. The primary focus of EPME remains
to ensure that enlisted Sailors learn about their own Service's
responsibilities, capabilities, and Navy's role as a key element of a
multiservice force within an interagency and multinational environment.
The requirements within the Navy's PME Continuum were developed within
the context of the contemporary operating environment and extend
elements of joint matters throughout the Continuum.
The Senior Enlisted Academy (SEA) curriculum covers Joint and
Multinational topics through briefs, lectures, and research projects.
Students from other services and international navies are enrolled in
every SEA Resident class. Students from international navies give
regional briefs as part of their communications curriculum.
Additionally, the SEA currently has an Army sergeant major, an Air
Force master sergeant, a Coast Guard master chief, and a German Navy
master chief equivalent on staff as classroom facilitators. An increase
of an international partner facilitator from the Pacific Fleet region
is being reviewed.
The SEA is currently reviewing proposed lecture topics to enhance
its interagency subject matter coverage. Beyond the SEA, Navy Senior
Enlisted Leaders (SEL) selected for Joint Command SEL billets attend
the National Defense University's KEYSTONE course which covers Joint,
Interagency, and Multinational Integration curriculum.
Dr. Snyder. Does diversity matter in the assignment of faculty and
staff within EPME? How can EPME institutions increase the diversity of
their leadership and faculty?
Mr. Lutterloh. Yes, diversity does matter in the assignment of
faculty, staff, and students at the Senior Enlisted Academy (SEA).
Ensuring the resident SEA class has representatives from the other US
military services and, whenever possible, representatives from partner
nations are key elements in achieving diversity. The SEA uses the ``9
Dimensions of Diversity'' when assigning facilitators and students to
classroom groups. The SEA ensures that race, gender, ethnicity, service
(Army/Navy/Marines/Air Force/Coast Guard), component (Active/Reserve),
nationality (International students), rating, warfare community/
specialty, and geographic area of operations/homeport are taken into
account when organizing the group makeup to ensure the group has as
many diverse opinions as possible to enhance the classroom discussion
and dynamics. Similarly, the educational theme of diversity and
effectively dealing with it to achieve a unit's true potential
permeates the course of instruction for these proven enlisted leaders.
Dr. Snyder. How much of your EPME curriculum is focused on critical
thinking, communication, and resource management? Should emphasis in
any or all of these areas be increased? At what levels?
Mr. Lutterloh. Critical thinking and communication topics are a
focus of the Senior Enlisted Academy (SEA) curriculum and highlighted
in the Diplomacy, Information/intelligence, Military, and Economics
(DIME) capstone event termed ``War-games.'' War-games is an interactive
role-play session based on DIME concepts that each group participates
in as different countries with different objectives. Communication, an
essential element of successful leadership especially critical at the
higher levels, is embedded throughout the educational outcomes and the
SEA curricula. Communication topics include effective writing,
extemporaneous speaking, impromptu speaking, organizational
communications, five oral presentations, and four written essays. SEA
curriculum provides adequate emphasis on all three areas with
communications receiving the highest emphasis. Resource management is
covered in the Defense Resource Allocation topic. ``Capable of Critical
Thought with an Operational-level Perspective'' is one of the four
educational outcomes required for graduation from the SEA.
Dr. Snyder. Should senior NCOs attend officer PME courses?
Mr. Lutterloh. The Navy has a program in which senior enlisted
leaders with exceptional potential, who have earned a Bachelor's
Degree, may attend the College of Naval Warfare at the Naval War
College. This educational opportunity is for leaders with the potential
to become advisors to the Navy and the nation's senior military
leadership. The program is highly selective with a limit of not more
than four enlisted leaders attending in an academic year. To date,
graduates have gone on to billets such as Master Chief Petty Officer of
the Navy (MCPON), the senior enlisted leader for Naval Forces Europe,
the Director of Chief of the Boat/Command Master Chief (COB/CMC) School
and Senior Enlisted Advisors (SEA) to several joint task force
commanders. Additionally, senior chiefs and master chiefs on a selected
basis are permitted to participate in the Intermediate-level, non-
resident PME programs at the Naval War College.
Dr. Snyder. During our Officer PME study, the Army, Air Force, and
Marine Corps asked for expanded Title 10 hiring authority so they could
hire professional educators rather than trainers. The Navy supported
that position for others although they didn't think they required for
themselves because they're organized differently.
a. With the changes in your EPME courses, it appears that expanded
authority might be necessary except that you can capitalize on the
collocation of Naval War College Faculty. Can you briefly explain if
you need it and what you'd do with it?
b. How will EPME institutions attract top-tier civilian faculty if
they receive Title 10 authority?
Mr. Lutterloh. Traditionally, the Senior Enlisted Academy (SEA)
faculty has been composed of enlisted leaders on active duty or
reservists on extended tours of active service. The importance of using
Active Duty Senior Enlisted Facilitator Staff cannot be understated.
The deck plate experiences that the Senior Enlisted Facilitators bring
to the classroom are vital to the education process at the SEA. The
Navy intends to continue to follow that model and, at this point, does
not plan to add civilians to its faculty. One of the important elements
in the realignment of command which brought SEA under the purview of
Naval War College was to make more effective use of the NWC faculty's
expertise in support of SEA faculty and curriculum. While NWC had for
years provided support in the form of subject matter experts and
visiting lecturers in support of SEA, the closer bond facilitates
faculty development and curriculum development at SEA. Since the Naval
War College's academic programs remain the College of Naval Warfare and
the College of Naval Command and Staff, both of which are ten month
programs, the College fully meets the statutory criteria for hiring
faculty under Title 10 authority. For decades, NWC has hired a number
of research faculty members under this Title 10 authority. Therefore,
if the requirement arose to add Title 10 faculty positions at SEA, the
law currently provides that authority.
Dr. Snyder. When we studied Officer PME, we discovered a pretty big
disconnect between the personnel systems and the PME systems.
Specifically, we addressed who gets selected to attend and when, what
course they go to, and where they go afterward as far as putting the
education to good use. Does the enlisted PME system have similar
challenges?
Mr. Sitterly. The Air Force (AF) enlisted assignment system is
designed to distribute Airmen equitably among major commands (MAJCOM)
based on manning levels to meet mission requirements. Although certain
special duty assignments have specific training/education requirements,
there are none specifically for EPME. The AF EPME system is managed
separately using a deliberate process that identifies Airmen to attend
EPME based on priority of need (i.e., projected promotion to the next
higher grade, current grade, time in current grade) to meet required
grade appropriate competency development in Joint and Air Force
guidance. Thus, the Air Force does not link the two systems and both
systems are working as designed to meet AF mission and development
requirements.
Although we currently do not have an official AF-wide system or
process in place, the Air Force Enlisted Force Development Panel is
exploring various options to deliberately develop our SNCOs via sister
service and international EPME with a goal of linking AF graduates of
sister service or international EPME to specific locations where the
experience will be beneficial to the member and the mission.
Dr. Snyder. Virtually all the officer PME education venues offer a
master's degree along with PME. Other than the Community College of the
Air Force and the College of the American Soldier programs, does your
Service's enlisted PME system provide for degrees or accredited college
hours to apply to a degree? How important (or is it required) for
enlisted members to have an Associate's Degree, Bachelor's Degree, or
Master's Degree at some point in their career for promotion?
Mr. Sitterly. The Community College of the Air Force (CCAF) awards
lower-division college credit to graduates of EPME courses. These
credits can be applied to the member's CCAF Associate of Applied
Science Degree program, or the transcript credit can be applied to
another college program at their discretion.
In addition, Air University offers the Associate to Baccalaureate
Cooperative (ABC) which links CCAF graduates with colleges that offer
4-year degree programs related to the member's CCAF 2-yr degree.
Participating schools have agreed to allow students to transfer CCAF
degree credits and only complete an additional 60 semester hours to
earn a bachelor's degree.
The Air Force requires an associate's level degree for the more
than 6,000 technical training and EPME faculty at CCAF-affiliated
schools AF-wide.
Although not a requirement for promotion, current Air Force
guidance requires active duty E7--E-8 to complete a CCAF degree in
order to be eligible for Senior Rater Endorsement on their annual
performance report. This is important for favorable promotion
consideration as the member's likelihood of getting promoted without it
is significantly hampered.
Additionally, in regard to degree requirements, the Air Force has a
program that permits selected enlisted personnel to attend the Air
Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) to receive a graduate (Master's)
degree. The program's purpose is to enhance combat capability to
provide the Air Force highly proficient NCOs technically experienced in
their career field and highly educated through AFIT graduate.
Dr. Snyder. How is the Reserve Component (RC) included in your
enlisted PME program? Do reservists and Guardsmen have the opportunity
to attend or take the PME they require for promotion? How has the
transition from a strategic to an operational reserve (with increased
deployments and length of deployments) affected RC opportunities to
complete EPME?
Mr. Sitterly. About 97.5% Air National Guard (ANG) and Air Force
Reserve (AFR) participate in EPME distance learning (DL) courses.
According to current policy, reservists and Guardsmen must complete
resident or DL required EPME to be promoted. The ARC Airmen are
permitted and do attend resident courses for each level of EPME on a
limited basis due to capacity limitations.
This transition has not affected the ARC since most enlisted Airmen
complete their EPME requirements through DL. Though it is a challenge
for AFRC Airmen to attend lengthy resident EPME courses since they have
full-time civilian jobs (not so for ANG), both the ANG and AFRC would
like to fill additional seats at resident PME schools if more
allocations were provided.
Dr. Snyder. There is quite a disparity between the length of time
an officer spends in a career on education and the time an enlisted
person spends on education. Can you explain this disparity? Do the
Services need to invest more time and money in NCO education? Why or
why not? Where would you focus any increases?
Mr. Sitterly. Some caution is needed in trying to do a direct
comparison between time spent in education for officer and enlisted
personnel. The two populations are different in significant ways and
OPME and EPME are developed to meet the unique developmental needs of
their respective populations. For example, enlisted personnel primarily
function at the tactical to operational levels across the Air Force
while officers range from the tactical to strategic. Moreover,
educational needs are based on Air Force requirements. We recently
completed a comprehensive review of enlisted development across the
continuum of learning to ensure that Air Force requirements are being
satisfactorily addressed. From this enlisted continuum review, we
confirmed that the number of educational requirements have more than
doubled over the last 10 years. In addition, the complexity of these
requirements has also significantly increased while the time allocated
for EPME courses has remained the same. Hence, more time could be
proportionately allocated to all EPME levels to varying degrees based
on increased requirements.
The Air Force wants to invest more time and money in NCO education
to keep pace with Joint and Air Force requirements; however, it is
difficult given competing priorities in a financially constrained
environment. Additional personnel, funds, and expertise are needed to
develop and sustain both resident and distance learning (DL) courses to
keep pace with emerging education requirements.
Dr. Snyder. In exploring the most effective organizational
structures we observed that two of you (Navy and Army) have NCO leaders
of their NCO schools and two of you have colonels as leaders (Marine
Corps and Air Force). Can each of you address why your school systems
are organized the way they are and if they/you get enough support from
your higher headquarters. For instance, the Navy (Naval War College),
Air Force (Air University), and Marine Corps (Marine Corps University)
schools are subordinated to your officer universities or colleges?
[Note: Army enlisted education is directed by the Institute at Training
and Doctrine Command rather than Army War College or Command and
General Staff School.]
a. How should PME commanders, commandants, and presidents be
chosen? What are the plusses and minuses of having enlisted leadership
at the enlisted schools? Officer leadership?
Mr. Sitterly. Unlike the other services, the Air Force has
established Air University (AU) as a centralized location for the
oversight of all education programs. Within the AU organizational
structure, the Barnes Center for EPME holds the same level of status as
the other AU centers that report to the AU Commander. These include the
Spaatz Center (officer PME), the LeMay Center (doctrine development and
doctrine education), the Eaker Center (professional continuing
education), the Holm Center (pre-commissioning and citizenship
programs), and the Barnes Center (enlisted PME and other education
programs).
The Commander of the Barnes Center for Enlisted Education is an O-
6. Senior enlisted personnel serve in significant leadership positions
across the Barnes Center and each EPME school. Chief Master Sergeants
serve as commandants (the top leader) for each of the 11 Air Force NCO
Academies (worldwide), the Senior NCO Academy, and First Sergeant
Academy. Additionally, within the Barnes Center, a CMSgt serves as the
senior enlisted leader for all enlisted education programs. To select
these senior enlisted leaders, there is a rigorous and highly
competitive ``nominative'' process. For other school commandant
positions, the Commander's Involvement Program (CIP) is used whereby
chief master sergeants are carefully screened and selected.
Furthermore, at the 69 Airman Leadership Schools located Air Force
wide, top performing Master Sergeants are screened and selected as
Commandants to lead and manage the faculty of their school. Each of
these ALSs fall under the Force Development Flight within the Force
Support Squadron at each Wing and Major Command.
The current process for selecting AF EPME commandants is working
well. As with other special duty assignments that require superior
performers, EPME personnel are screened and evaluated based on merit by
other senior enlisted personnel and ultimately hired by their
commander.
Having enlisted commandants leading EPME schools is working
superbly and provides the first hand enlisted subject matter expertise,
experience, and guidance to other enlisted personnel. The officer
oversight provides the additional leadership and support to elevate and
address issues as needed to appropriate leadership levels and AF
corporate structure.
Dr. Snyder. Would you be in favor of a Goldwater-Nichols Reform for
Enlisted personnel management and PME? Given that calls for jointness
and ``whole of government approaches'' from Congress and the Executive
Branch have been increasing, how extensively should the EPME system be
more consciously shifting its sights to the joint, interagency, and
multinational realms?
a. Is joint, interagency, and multinational integration curriculum
being extended down to the enlisted ranks, in a conscious and
programmed way, given that they find themselves increasingly in that
environment whether that is in engagement, combat, or reconstruction
and stabilization operations?
Mr. Sitterly. No, we do not believe that a Goldwater-Nichols Reform
for enlisted personnel management and PME is needed at this time. The
Air Force does recognize that there needs to be a balance between Air
Force centric and Joint curricula requirements. Air Force EPME courses
have been and should continue to increase jointness, interagency, and
multinational coverage but not to the extent that core curriculum areas
for Air Force Leadership, Profession of Arms, and Communication are
reduced while meeting the Joint, interagency, and multinational
education requirements prescribed in AFPD 36-26, Total Force
Development, Institutional Competencies and CJCS 1805.1, Enlisted
Professional Military Education Policy. In fact, all resident EPME
academic programs were updated or they are being updated to meet the
requirements prescribed in the Joint and Air Force guidance.
The Air Force is continually working on additional ``Joint''
deliberate development initiatives. One such initiative is to require
AF SNCOs to attend a Joint Service EPME school prior to be assigned to
a joint billet. This will help build ``Joint'' partnerships/
relationships and will help utilize/align education opportunities with
valid mission requirements.
Dr. Snyder. Does diversity matter in the assignment of faculty and
staff within EPME? How can EPME institutions increase the diversity of
their leadership and faculty?
Mr. Sitterly. Yes, diversity matters in the assignment of EPME
faculty and staff. The Air Force has a strong track record in
leveraging diversity throughout the force and Enlisted PME is no
different. Hiring authorities balance the need to maintain a diverse
faculty with respect to gender and race, as well as key demographic
variables such as Air Force Specialty Code or AFSC. It's vital that our
students in the classroom are able to see a faculty that represents the
richness of our diverse force, especially in academic discussions and
case studies involving complex people issues. The Air Force will
continue to ensure integrity in the hiring process and procedures and
monitor faculty diversity.
Dr. Snyder. How much of your EPME curriculum is focused on critical
thinking, communication, and resource management? Should emphasis in
any or all of these areas be increased? At what levels?
Mr. Sitterly. The following breakouts estimate the number of hours
dedicated to each topic area as each relates to resident courses:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total
Course Course Critical Communication Resource
Hours Thinking Management
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Airman Leadership School (ALS) 192 125 54 1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NCO Academy (NCOA) 134 134 56 1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AF SNCO Academy (AFSNCOA) 240 157 45 1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CMSgt Leadership Course (CLC) 64 0 0 3
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes, the Air Force is increasing emphasis in these areas. The ALS
recently incorporated more emphasis on communication through reflecting
thinking, writing, and journaling aimed at developing a personal
leadership philosophy with peer review. Additionally, we are revising
AFSNCOA and NCOA programs to increase emphasis on resource management,
cross cultural communication, and negotiation. Through reflective
thinking essays on leadership topics and reflective journaling
exercises, students will link their own strengths and improvement
opportunities in order to author a professional development plan.
Critical Thinking: Each course is designed using instructional
teaching methodologies of guided discussion (Socratic Debate) and case
analysis where students are confronted with leadership issues and
required to apply principles learned to determine courses of action
necessary to resolve the issue.
Communication: Students write papers, give briefings, counsel
subordinates, provide performance feedback plans and execute meetings,
and perform group projects under practice and testing conditions.
Resource Management: The AFSNCOA (Oct 10) and the NCOA (Jan 11)
will adjust curricula to address the prescribed resource management
competencies. Students will develop Financial Execution Plans, prepare
unfunded requests, develop Authorization Change Requests, and use Unit
Management Documents (UMD) to solve manpower problems associated with
daily operations.
Dr. Snyder. Should senior NCOs attend officer PME courses?
Mr. Sitterly. Although the Air Force recognizes that there is value
in enlisted Airmen partnering with officers during PME, we are not
convinced that enlisted Airmen need to attend officer PME. Since 2006,
we have paired junior officers at the Air and Space Basic Course (ASBC)
with senior NCOs attending the AF SNCO Academy for 3 days.
Additionally, for the first time, we sent two AF SNCOs to officer Joint
PME; one to the 13 week Joint Combined Warfighting School and one to
the 40 week Advanced Joint Professional Military Education course at
the Joint Forces Staff College. We plan to continue this practice since
both officer and enlisted Airmen benefit tremendously from a better
understanding of each other's role, responsibilities and challenges
from this partnership.
Dr. Snyder. The Air Force's distance learning program is
predominately if not exclusively done by ``boxes of books''. Obviously,
you can't update those courses very easily and the cost for updating,
printing, storing, and shipping is significant. When does the Air Force
plan to transition to a web-based or internet based computer distance
learning model, or a ``blackboard'' system through which students can
more readily interact with other students and faculty? What resources
would you need to transition the courses?
Mr. Sitterly. The Air Force has made great strides in leveraging
technology to facilitate PME learning. As an example, the Air Command
and Staff College On-line Master's Degree Program (OLMP) launched in
2007 has been extremely successful in accomplishing desired learning
outcomes via a distance learning (DL) model. We are currently exploring
ways to extend the lessons learned from the OLMP to other PME programs.
In fact, the Air Force conducted preliminary research to move all of
enlisted DL on-line. To this end, we are developing a business case
that examines various DL models as well as their learning and cost
implications to determine the best course of action to deliver robust
PME DL for Total Force Airmen. The analysis will ascertain the
resources required to implement, and the long term efficiencies that
can be gained for such transition. At this juncture, the analysis is
not complete and it would be premature to attempt to articulate the
exact investment, and long term efficiencies to be gained.
Dr. Snyder. Air University requested expanded Title 10 authority
during the officer PME study. This came up again at the Barnes Center.
With the changes in your EPME courses, it appears that expanded
authority might be necessary. Can you briefly explain if you need it
and what you'd do with it?
a. How will EPME institutions attract top-tier civilian faculty
if they receive Title 10 authority?
Mr. Sitterly. Prior to the last 10 years, enlisted education
focused primarily on traditional enlisted core competencies such as
leadership, communication skills, profession of arms, and management.
Since these are enlisted competencies, they can be developed in EPME
curriculum with enlisted expertise. However, with recent AF mandates
such as nuclear surety, cyber operations, irregular warfare, etc.,
enlisted personnel do not have the core expertise needed to address
these more complex topics. Using Title 10 hiring authority is vital to
addressing these complex, ever-changing demands for rapid curriculum
innovation to meet AF needs.
Enlisted education doesn't result in the award of a graduate
degree, thus there is not a compelling case for Administratively
Directed (AD) teaching faculty. However, there is a significant need
for AD personnel in administrative faculty and curriculum development
and we have identified notional positions within enlisted education
where the placement of AD faculty might be appropriate. We identified
seven positions that include the senior Education Advisor at the Barnes
Center Headquarters, three deans of academics from across the Center,
and three within EPME curriculum development requiring specific
academic subject matter expertise to meet the complex educational
challenges. The very nature of Title 10 positions would facilitate the
hiring of qualified civilian faculty. Given that enlisted education
programs are offered under the Air University umbrella, a regionally
accredited institution, we're confident we'll be able to secure the
faculty with the right credentials.
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