Additional Level V requirement -- research paper

[RiverAux]

In recent years CAP has taken steps to improve its professional development program for senior members.  However, from what I see, the various staff colleges and other courses are still primarily focused on developing individual skills.

While I am in favor of keeping the week-long seminar-style National Staff College, what do you think about requiring students to produce a research paper on some aspect of CAP operations involving any of our programs at any level?  This is a fairly typical requirement of other "graduate level" programs as we advertise the NSC. 

Such papers would need to be brought to the NSC and could form the basis for a lot of the discussion.  After the NSC, the papers would be modified based on those comments and you would not get credit for the NSC until they were finalized.  The papers could then be posted on the national web page. 

I think this has the potential for assisting CAP in a lot of areas by making our most accomplished members seriously examine the program, look for areas of improvement, and figure out how to implement such changes or better yet, bring a great local idea that is working well to the attention of the organization as a whole.  Thus, we would actually get a "product" out of each NSC student that could possibly help all of CAP. 

[DG]

The National Legal Officers College already includes preparing a position paper or a "White Paper" as part of the curriculum.

The topics usually are assigned by the General Counsel, and are legal issues of interest to CAP.

The papers are prepared during the College and then made as a presentation to all those attending the College.

[Ricochet13]

Interesting suggestion.  Wouldn't necessarily mind writing a paper as part of NSC, but not sure of the benefit to the individual member or CAP from such an academic exercise.  I'd need to hear a lot more from Corporate Leadership as to intended uses.   

One thought related to this might be establishment of a CAP Journal, following along the lines of Armor Journal.  www.knox.army.mil/armormag/

To quote from the Armor Journal Mission Statement "ARMOR is the professional journal of the U.S. Army's Armor Branch, published by the Chief of Armor at Fort Knox, Ky., training center for the Army's tank and cavalry forces. It is also one of the oldest publications in the U.S., founded in 1888 by cavalry officers on the American frontier as a forum for discussing doctrine, tactics, and equipment among soldiers geographically separated by the great distances of the American West.

ARMOR continues this mission today, although the horses have yielded to tanks and armored fighting vehicles, and the distances between soldiers and units now span duty stations across the globe.

ARMOR's reason for being is not to reinforce official positions, or to act as a command information conduit, but to surface controversy and debate among professionals in the force. Significantly, the articles in ARMOR are not picked by a publications review board, but by the journal's editor-in-chief and staff. Indeed, ARMOR authors frequently deal with problems they have encountered while attempting to implement official doctrine, concerns about the wisdom of  particular tactics, useful discoveries they have made within their own units, and techniques that need to be shared with others. These articles have, in turn, stirred readers to reply, and the resulting debate has enlivened many of the journal's letters to the editor."

There are any number of advantages and disadvantages to this proposed requirement.  I'm open for further discussion.

[RiverAux]

The benefit to the individual member is that it would make them sit down and analyze some aspect of CAP or its programs and come up with a suggested course of action.  Isn't that the sort of capability that we'd like from these high-level leaders? 

The benefit to CAP as a whole would be the result of such analsis that could potentially be put to use by the organization. It is also a way of making the knowledge and experiences of those who have progressed that far in the organization available to others. 

Just for example, say over the course of the next few years, 5 or 6 NSC attendees decide to write papers on doctine for use of CAP ground teams.  I think that would have a lot of potential to help the organization decide what we want out of that part of our program. 

By the way, I'm thinking of papers in the realm of 20-30 pages rather than a 100 or 200 page dissertation. 

A professional journal to distribute these papers, or condensed versions of them would be perfect.  However, without the incentive of having to do it to complete Level V, I'm not sure you would get enough contributions to sustain one.  At least that seems to have been what happened the last time a CAP professional journal was attempted. 

[Ricochet13]

Still listening.  Let's hear from some others on this subject.  If it's worth doing, I'd support further development of this requirement.  Just don't want busy work and another part of a ticket to have to be punched.

So tell me more!   

[davedove]

I can understand your intent, but my question is why are you making something more difficult for Level V when only about 5% of the members ever reach that level anyway.

It would seem to me that if you want to improve CAP as a whole, it would be better to first direct efforts at the lower levels of the PD program.

[RiverAux]

Why direct it at Level V?  Well, because the folks achieving that level are more or less the elite of the organization and I think we would want to take advantage of the great store of knowledge and experience they have attained while getting to that point.  Also, we advertise it as a "graduate level" program and every one I've heard of requires that some sort of paper be written as part of the requirements. 

There are other threads discussing lower level aspects of the PD program.  I am interested in getting as much bang for the buck as we can out of the people who are taking advantage of the best training we have to offer.   Also, this type of paper fits in with the goals of NSC better than it does with the lower levels. 

By the way, I'm glad to hear that the National Legal College is already doing this. 

I also see these papers as a way to develop a culture within CAP that pays more attention to "lessons learned" and having a written document will help to ensure that we don't have to learn them again the hard way.

[RiverAux]

Actually, this idea could be sort of a modification to an existing Level IV requirement to either give a public presentation to a non-CAP group or prepare an aerospace manuscript for publication. 

[DNall]

In recent years CAP has taken steps to improve its professional development program for senior members.  However, from what I see, the various staff colleges and other courses are still primarily focused on developing individual skills.

While I am in favor of keeping the week-long seminar-style National Staff College, what do you think about requiring students to produce a research paper on some aspect of CAP operations involving any of our programs at any level?  This is a fairly typical requirement of other "graduate level" programs as we advertise the NSC. 

Such papers would need to be brought to the NSC and could form the basis for a lot of the discussion.  After the NSC, the papers would be modified based on those comments and you would not get credit for the NSC until they were finalized.  The papers could then be posted on the national web page. 

I think this has the potential for assisting CAP in a lot of areas by making our most accomplished members seriously examine the program, look for areas of improvement, and figure out how to implement such changes or better yet, bring a great local idea that is working well to the attention of the organization as a whole.  Thus, we would actually get a "product" out of each NSC student that could possibly help all of CAP. 

Actually, I'd put it at the RSC level. Well... Actually I think it'd be a good requirement in addition to RSC. In that way, you'd have to do it regardless if you choose RSC or ACSC. Anyway, I'd do some online module stuff to help them understand the writing, research, standards, etc for the paper. Do the thing & submit. If approved then you are eligible for RSC/ACSC. And yes certainly presentation & discussion at length of that material would be great at the course.

[Cecil DP]

At one point, NSC assigned a project topic to each seminar for presentation at the end of the course. Many of these actually worked themselves into National Policy. It's been over 10 years since I went to my last  NSC so I don't know if it is still done.

[Maj Daniel Sauerwein]

While the idea has some merit, I would urge caution. As a doctoral student in History, I have written several papers and presented a few to conferences. I do these because they are required as part of both my graduate program, but also are important to starting my career.

The comparisons between this idea and similar requirements of professional schools in the military forgets that the people attending the professional programs in the military are doing this for their job. As volunteers, we do not have as much time to devote to the courses beyond the week (or two) that we would attend the program. I can tell you that writing a paper worthy of a journal takes much longer and would deter members from pursuing the highest levels of PD. I do like the idea of a CAP journal, but again urge caution.

If NSC or some other program intends to implement a writing requirement, then the course(s) will need a revision. The curriculum would need to be split between a correspondence aspect, which would include a research paper assignment. This part of the course would need to be structured like AFIADL courses, allowing several months or a year to complete. The other part would be the in-resident portion that would allow for presentations of the papers and a graduation ceremony.

I don't know about most other members, but I would have a hard time trying to fit a quality CAP research paper into my other responsibilities.

One thing that came to mind just now is, instead of having a journal for CAP, why not first try to have members contribute to AF professional journals?

[RiverAux]

Yes, it would require some revision of the NSC to incorporate a research paper requirement. 

I would see the paper being required of all students and then perhaps publishing abstracts of most of them while those who are motivated would condense their paper to an article.  However, I'm also just fine with just doing the papers -- the journal would be a nice extra. 

Except for perhaps an occassional article on ES, most of what CAP does has no direct relevance to the AF and I doubt would be considered for an AF journal.  For example, an article on improving the CAP logistical system is not going to be prime material for an AF journal.  But, if someone thought they had something to say that would be of value for the whole AF, I wouldn't discourage it.   

Keep in mind that we're talking about a requirement that would affect maybe 50 CAP members a year that go to NSC so this would not be a burden to the 95% of CAP seniors who never attend. 

[DNall]

While the idea has some merit, I would urge caution. As a doctoral student in History, I have written several papers and presented a few to conferences. I do these because they are required as part of both my graduate program, but also are important to starting my career.

The comparisons between this idea and similar requirements of professional schools in the military forgets that the people attending the professional programs in the military are doing this for their job. As volunteers, we do not have as much time to devote to the courses beyond the week (or two) that we would attend the program. I can tell you that writing a paper worthy of a journal takes much longer and would deter members from pursuing the highest levels of PD. I do like the idea of a CAP journal, but again urge caution.

There's that volunteer as a crutch thing again. I freakin hate that! AWC requires exactly such a  paper, which is done by correspondence while working full-time, possibly even deployed. For Guard/Reserve, they do that around their full-time civilian jobs, lives, and family concerns. The other services do the same. In fact, the Army does this to a much greater extent. I realize you are a volunteer & they get paid a little bit for their work, but do you realize they have the same or greater demands on their time/lives/jobs/etc as you do, quite a bit more in the reserve components. It's a matter of commitment to the organization & a desire to improve one's self & advance within that organization that make the difference. Never is it a case of pay or time available.

[O-Rex]

I think we need to look at the whole RSC/NSC curriculum as a whole.  I attended neither, opting for SOS and ACSC instead, but I did get feedback from collegues that it was a good networking opp, but as for what they came away from it with, one member put it succinctly "I could've had a V-8."

The idea of a paper has it's merits, but I think there needs to be a move to make the course overall a bit more academically rigorous.

Granted, a week is not a long time, but perhaps a pre-course reading list and workbook may help (we do this for check pilot school, and it allows participants to hit the ground running...)

[Eclipse]

No thank you.

[BillB]

Keep in mind the original requirement for Level V included Air War College, and the associated thesis length paper. Then the National Board lowered the requirements for Level V.

[davedove]

My initial reaction is to question why you would want to add another requirement into the PD program?  We want to encourage everyone in CAP to advance.  Adding another requirement would tend to discourage people from completing the level.

Now, assuming we wanted to do this, I think a question needs to be answered:  How would this further the goals and direction of CAP?  I would think that the Level V people, the senior leaders of CAP, should be focusing on the future of CAP.

Of course, before we can answer that question, we first need to ask the question:  What are the goals and direction of CAP?  It seems to me that the National Leadership has been more concerned with uniform changes and the like.  The top people have to establish where we're going as an organization, then training requirements can be developed to support that vision.  Until then, we're really only reinventing the current system.

[Chappie]

IIRC NSC seminar groups are involved in a project that deals with CAP on a national level.  I was a student in 2001 following 9-11.  Seminar groups were assigned coming up with ways that CAP could be part of a HSL component.  Many of the "suggestions" / "observations" found their way to our current missions.  I was on NSC in 06 and 07.  Can't remember what  the project that was undertaken in 06 but last year the project dealt with Recruiting/Retention.    My understanding is that the work completed by seminar groups is given to NHQ to look at and possibly incorporate into policy.

[RiverAux]

We want to encourage everyone in CAP to advance. Adding another requirement would tend to discourage people from completing the level.

Advancement is not a goal in and of itself.  Advancement in the best program we can put together is what we should be shooting for.  We could guarantee that 95% of people make Level V rather than 5% by dropping all sorts of requirements, but it wouldn't help us. 

I would think that the Level V people, the senior leaders of CAP, should be focusing on the future of CAP.

Exactly what this would do, but do it in a more formalized way than has been done in the past and in such a way as to produce a "product" that could be distributed to the entire organization rather than disappear into the ether once the flip charts from NSC are thrown away.

What are the goals and direction of CAP? .....The top people have to establish where we're going as an organization, then training requirements can be developed to support that vision. 

Exactly the sort of question that could be addressed in these papers. 

[Trung Si Ma]

The idea of requiring something of use to the whole organization does have merit at that level.

Maybe an assigned topic with a pre-attendence required paper.  That topic could serve as focus during the NSC, followed by a rewrite of the initial paper based on the knowledge gained at NSC (the seminars, dialog, focused readings, etc).