THE BIG ASK
As the Army gets a much-needed technological upgrade, the Naval Postgraduate School does its own technological upgrade of graduate education for acquisition professionals.
by John T. Dillard, Col., USA (Ret.) O
n Dec. 20, 2019, the first cohort of 30 Army Acquisition Corps officers graduated from the new degree curriculum, called 522, at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS)
with a master of science degree in systems engineer- ing management. In addition, most of those graduates have completed their joint professional military educa- tion and Army intermediate-level education at the Naval War College, which has a satellite campus on the same Monterey, California, naval base. Over the course of their graduate studies at NPS, students receive 34 differ- ent Defense Acquisition University course equivalencies as a concurrent benefit that saves them valuable time away from the acquisition work that needs to be done.
Tose 30 officers can credit their new systems engineer- ing management degrees to Lt. Gen. Paul A. Ostrowski, principal military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology (ASA(ALT)), and NPS President Ann Rondeau (Vice Adm., USN, Ret.), who steered the changes to the NPS curriculum in Army acquisition.
It was a big ask. And Ostrowski wasn’t the first princi- pal military deputy to request a technological upgrade to
162 Army AL&T Magazine Winter 2020
the program. Indeed, his two predecessors also wanted to see change.
Starting in 2011, three successive principal military deputies to the ASA(ALT) had asked for more science, technology, engineering and mathematics in the systems acquisition curricula at NPS, which has been sponsored by the Army since 1991. But it was Ostrowski who really pushed for it to come about in 2017, collaborating closely with Rondeau for implementation.
Despite pushing for the technological upgrade to the NPS graduate education, Ostrowski said it was Rondeau and her systems engineering faculty who were the real change agents. It also took some heavy lifting by the U.S. Army Director, Acquisition Career Management (DACM) and the U.S. Army Acquisition Support Center. Several iterations of combined courses were staffed and modified for optimal composition and sequencing. We had never seen that kind of supporting-supported rela- tionship to bring about educational advancements at NPS. Te two flag officers met face to face at NPS and immediately struck a partnership for the restructuring. We transformed the curricula from purely organizational dynamics to engineering reasoning applied in science
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