The College of Education held their annual Leadership Development and Coaching Symposium in early August, welcoming several United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) officers to join campus faculty and speakers for leadership training opportunities.
“The Air Force sends us twenty-two majors, that will become lieutenant colonels, every year, and they get a master’s in Counseling and Leadership and then assume squadron command of a cadet squadron at the Air Force Academy,” explained Markus Moeder-Chandler, Ed.D, Assistant Teaching Professor and Acting AOC/AMT Program Coordinator. “They’re active-duty officers from all career fields – piloting, healthcare, Office of Special Investigations, logistics – you name it, and we train them simultaneously. Basically, everybody from first-year cadets to O6 colonels are getting trained to speak the same language around coaching, leadership and counseling, with the intent of working through some of the Air Force Academy and the Air Force and Department of Defense’s strategic goals, like developing cadet leadership and advancing leadership for those officers.”
The symposium, which was extended from one to two days for the first time, consisted of one-on-one coaching sessions, breakout groups and collaboration opportunities, and featured speakers from both UCCS and the USAFA.
“We had speakers from our Department of Counseling Services and the Department of Leadership, Research, and Foundations, and also from the USAFA Behavioral Sciences and Leadership program and Center for Character and Leadership Development (CCLD),” said Moeder-Chandler. “I co-spoke with my colleague from CCLD, Jackie Hooper, who runs that coaching program out of CCLD, and on developmental counseling skills with Dr. Notestine, and provided one-on-one coaching sessions to the participants.”
The chance to collaborate was especially valuable for the USAFA Group Commanders, who get few chances to do so in their everyday duties despite working together at the USAFA.
“We learned something really fascinating, which was that the Colonels don’t get a lot of time to do that at the USAFA,” Moeder-Chandler said. “The four groups are under the same umbrella, but because they’re so busy within their groups they don’t get a lot of time aside from their task meetings to think about expanding and improving.”
This long-standing partnership with the USAFA has been going on for over twenty years and aims to help all levels of Air Force officers hone their leadership development skills while giving UCCS and the College of Education an opportunity to share their research on leadership and coaching and apply their theories to practice.
“The college is a proud supporter of our military men and women!” said Joe Wehrman, Professor and Interim Dean of the College of Education. “Our longstanding partnership with the United States Air Force Academy embodies the best of university collaborations in the pursuit of excellence in their noble mission. Having the opportunity to work with and discuss key issues of leadership and character development with such high caliber leaders at USAFA is an honor and a privilege. The symposium reflects USAFA’s ongoing commitment to excellence in cadet development.”
With the constant updating and reframing of ideal training practices and rotation of Air Force personnel, the symposium faces the challenge of evolving every year but also the benefit of being at the forefront of pioneering concepts and ideas.
“The military is constantly evolving, and we’re evolving academically in training and skill and it creates that consistent alignment,” Moeder-Chandler said. “It’s always good to know what small or big changes are happening for USAFA and how we can continue to support that. Every two years, each program goes through a curriculum review cycle, and things are changed – new courses added, courses removed, what USAFA is seeing that they want us to maybe touch on a differently, or what they want us to cover in more depth. We’re adapting to their needs in real time, and it’s an opportunity for us to constantly stay on the cutting edge of all these disciplines within their programming.”
With the success of the two-day symposium, the College of Education and USAFA are looking to extend the conference even longer in the future.
“To go from one day to two days, to hopefully three days next year, with these folks that are high level executive leaders in the Air Force, is awesome,” said Moeder-Chandler. “And it’s nice to know that they find continued value in this, not only for the students we have, but for the group commanders who came.”