Posted by Vice Admiral Daniel Lerner (Commandant) in New Course Supervisor position
Thanks for the input everyone, and I’ll try my best to reply. To cut the size of this post, I snipped out all the prior posts - nothing should be read into me doing that.

This post may delve slightly off topic, but may help with context.

As I see it, the Academy is specifically responsible for three things currently (putting aside a general and somewhat broad responsibility of mentoring/training), which in no particular order are:
1) Administering the Academy fleet ships (of which there is currently one, down from a peak of four)
2) Administering the club’s mentorship programs
3) Administering the courses

On the Academy Fleet side (which is the Challenger), things are going well. As ACmdt, I am in regular contact with the Challenger CO and XO, we’re doing some graduations, approved a new training sim, making sure we all understand each others expectations and the bylaw expectations, etc. Communication has been going well, and given my experience and who the CO/XO/GM/CNS are of the Challenger, I feel things are working out well. There’s also some behind-the-scenes things I had to address from just before my appointment as ACmdt.

On the mentorship side of things, we have three programs. The Academy mentorship program is addressed via Academy fleet administration exclusively at the moment. The non-Academy new member mentorship program needs a new coordinator - and given the small numbers, I am personally attending to any requested assignments. The Command Mentorship programs probably need to be marketed a bit at some point, and could also benefit when the coordinator position is filled.

That leaves the courses, which, frankly, may have become the Academy’s problem child at the moment. I’ll come back to that.

Traditionally, the Academy primary focus was the fleet. To that end, not only the bylaw have specific Academy fleet experience requirements for the Academy Commandant position, but presidents traditionally appointed Academy Commandants with the fleet primarily in mind. The mentorship responsibilities are arguably fairly new in the Academy and have generally be delegated to the coordinator traditionally. Except in rare cases, at least in the past six years or so the courses have taken a distinctly back row aspect to what the Academy Commandants have focus on.

The result is (a) the courses are not in a good state - we have inconsistent exams without a clear understanding of their purpose, inconsistent and out-of-date content, etc., and (b) Academy Commandants being appointed with clear background and experience administering something like the Academy fleet, but don’t necessarily have the skillset the courses need if they are going to improve. (I would fully admit I fall into that category of Academy Commandants.) It may be that part of my outgoing work as Academy Commandant may be to recommend future presidents re-look at the skills for a successful ACmdt candidate, but that doesn’t help us in the present. Nor, as I’ll explain below, may be possible.

Right now, the courses are on the verge of going in one of two directions. One direction is to just eliminate the exams and move them as reference pages in the library that can be linked to elsewhere in the club. The other direction is to build on them and push them in the club in a way that creates more buy-in with members and maybe (and I mean maybe) help us on retention issues. The latter attempt may fail, but it doesn’t hurt to try if we can do it. The problem is that in my opinion, improve of the courses is going to require a specific skill-set that I don’t think is necessarily common in the club, and certainly I don’t have (nor, I think many ACmdts have). That skillset would have to include an ability to write/improve exams with an understanding of the best way do exams in this environment and have exams and their grading match the goal (which is a whole other discussion that needs to happen, and James try to kick off already :P ). The skillset would have to include an ability to help tutors re-write and improve course content (which is a big ask, given that many tutors may not have the time themselves for any necessary re-writes). And ultimately, a general understanding of how to get the best out of courses.

I do think long-term work is required there. Keeping in mind that not only are we all volunteers, but that for many of us, we have many other responsiblities that take priority over STF, a re-write of many courses is not a single-term project. And I also believe long-term institutional memory is important here, something which STF has not done well at a cabinet level very recently.

At the same time, I do hear the comments that maybe a permanent position is not necessary here, and that once the heavy lifting is done on the courses, the work can be maintained by the ACmdt and VCmdt without the need for another position. But I still feel the position is necessary for the work contemplated at the moment, and future ACmdts can re-assess if the position needs to be kept.

Sorry for the super long post, but it was the only way to keep my thoughts in order on this subject.

Daniel

Thank you Dan for this expanded insight into what you were discussing earlier. I hope my playing devil advocate about ‘why can’t say you/kat’ do this did not offend you. I just wanted to propose it as a thought to get further explanations. As I later said I do agree that if we go down the route of a full overhaul of the courses it will be a long multi-term project given people involved will have to come to an overall consensus of what criteria, format, etc the courses will take. In short to me that some people will have one view others will have another and neither will get fully what they want so will need to compromise in the middle, or neither side or whatever gives in and then it’ll fall apart which brings us back to square one.

So I agree if we can get someone long term able and willing to spearhead this initiative I say let’s do it, I would say just lets define the exact role they should fill, responsibilities, etc, then give them the leeway and freedom to coordinate to make it happen. It also means future term leaders need to embrace this idea as well of overhauling the courses with this person/people.

Robert Archer