(radio static) - Roger 4807, approaching runway seven bravo. - The Air Force has announced the creation of a new information operations technical training school. - The First Command simply must arm our airmen to out think, out perform, out partner, out innovate any potential adversary. - Air Force basic military training has an updated curriculum with a new focus on readiness and lethality. - The First Command. The Air Force Starts Here. - Hello and welcome to "The Air Force Starts Here" podcast. I'm your host for this professional-development podcast, Jennifer Gonzalez, from the AETC public affairs team. In this episode, we are discussing the importance of continuing education and a department of the Air Force-funded degree program. The program is known as DAWN-ED, or Developing the Airmen We Need-Education. DAWN-ED is an advanced-degree program that will provide up to 15 eligible airmen an opportunity to pursue a master's degree or PhD from a university of choice in person. The application window for the program is open until June 25, 2021. I got the chance to speak with Dr. Steven Hansen, who is one of the DAWN-ED program managers, about the program and application process, as well as a recent recipient of the funding from last year's application. Thank you so much for joining us. - Thank you for the opportunity, Jennifer. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this exciting program. - Before we get started, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and the roots of where this whole program got started? - Absolutely. This actually marks my 40th year since I was commissioned. And I remember I went to... I was commissioned through an ROTC detachment. I remember walking through the gates during my four years there at school. There was a logo over the gate that said, "Enter to learn. Go forth to serve." And that kind of struck me as I've gone through my 40 years with the Air Force as an officer and as a civilian, how the Air Force has that same motto. We enter the Air Force to serve. And my Air Force career has been punctuated with many, many learning opportunities. So this DAWN-ED program creates opportunities for airmen now to be able to do those same things, to learn and to serve, to help create a better future. So as one of the program managers for the DAWN-ED program, we look for opportunities, and areas, and capabilities where the Air Force really needs to have expertise 10 years out. And the best time to grow some of that expertise is to start planting seeds right now. So we gather some of that information from various sources, like the national security defense document. And we've looked at the Air Force We Need document, from the blueprint that the Air Force war-fighting integration capabilities provided. And we've looked at the AETC force development strategy documents for the Developing Airmen We Need program there, and consulted with other senior leaders. And we've identified a list of different areas of concern or vulnerability or areas where the Air Force just believes we need to grow some capability off in the future. - So if I'm understanding right, you're saying that the DAWN-ED program, you guys looked overarchingly at what the Air Force is going to need 10 years down the road. And looking at those vulnerabilities, you were able to say, these are the types of airmen we need to begin training to ensure that 10 years down the road, we are safe and secure and where we need to be as an Air Force. Is that right? - Absolutely. The DAWN program fits under a larger program that's managed by the Air Force Education Requirements Board or the AFERB. The AFERB works with AFPC and the career-field managers to send a number of airmen to earn advanced degrees, but they are going to known positions with established duties. So there's some constraints and some limits on those quotas. We wanted to look across that entire portfolio of opportunities and say, here are some key areas that our senior leaders in our national command of authorities are telling us our services need to be able to provide. And we don't see those anywhere in the existing billets structure or the AFERB quotas that are being managed. So we created these so that we could specifically look for airmen who want to go do things, where we're not exactly sure where we're going to put them but we want to make sure that their follow-on assignment is to positions where their learning will influence and affect the Air Force. That's that "learn" part and then followed by the "serve" part. We believe that these candidates, these graduates will make huge impacts to future capabilities and help address vulnerabilities off into the future. And we think that's probably one of the most exciting things about the program is that it is flexible and responsive to what we anticipate the future Air Force will need. We're turning to the DAWN program in civilian schools because the civilian programs tend to be more responsive and more flexible, and there's more of them, so that they can have a better focus on some of these discreet up-and-coming areas, or areas like quantum computing. Most university schools in AFIT have computer-science programs, but quantum computing is one of those areas that's really new and the expertise across academia is very limited. Same thing with the strategic-foresight program. There's only a handful of schools that have gathered enough academic inertia and expertise to be able to build a degree program for them. We ask our candidates to be part of our eyes and ears. You have a program that you see somewhere in a university and you see what the Air Force problem areas are identified to be, your application as a DAWN candidate would be to help build a statement that says how that academic school and your experience and your vision would come together to allow you to come back into the Air Force and serve and be that agent of influence. - Well, I actually got the chance to speak with an officer who was accepted into the DAWN-ED program last year. Captain Ciara Figliuolo. Now, she applied for the 2021 school year and will be taking her courses online this summer and in-person this fall. So take a listen to what she had to say about how this program is going to help her and eventually the Air Force. Captain Figliuolo, thank you so much for joining us. - Thank you for having me. - And congratulations. - Thank you so much. I'm really excited. - So tell us a little bit about where you're going to be studying and what you're going to be studying. - I will be at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, studying artificial intelligence and innovation. And so when this opportunity came up, to be an operator who becomes a technical expert, it seemed to me like a really good opportunity to become a translator of sorts, that I could help solve that problem in the future and help engineers and pilots talk to each other. And then the more I looked into it, the more excited I got about the potential of the applications of artificial intelligence specifically, and all the ways that that can be applied. - So how do you think this Force Development initiative will make it possible for you to pursue your master's program? Or how did it? - There's absolutely no way I could have done this any other way. There is no way I could have pursued this degree. I have a master's in educational technology and I did that fully online and I got a lot out of it, certainly. But there is no substitute for being surrounded by some of the most brilliant minds in the world, working on something that is their passion, as much as it is yours. And that's something that you just can't get from a fully-online experience the way that you can from being an in-person institution. This program enables that, because it gives me the time to spend two years actually at the university, surrounded by the academic mindset. And maybe even more importantly to be for a little while separated from the military way of thinking, so that I can gain the academic perspective that will hopefully then when I get back full-swing into the military world, it'll make me much more prepared to interact with the academic world, right. I mean, the future of Air Force technology relies very heavily on the academic success of the institutions here in the United States and the industry folks, right. And so getting to interact with them on their terms, in their environment, I think is going to make it much easier for me to interact with them in the future, when I'm back in uniform in some kind of staff position, and I'm able to see it from their perspective. And again, that's just something that without being able to be full-time at a civilian institution, there's just no way to get that same level of experience. - So Captain Figliuolo there touched on what you just mentioned. That going to a specific school to learn a certain program, how that's going to benefit her and the Air Force. And it really sounds like it's going to have a substantial impact, not only on her development, but what she brings to the Air Force when she returns. - Absolutely. And I appreciate that she highlighted the blend of functional expertise that comes together. She acts basically as a translator. So her experience in the RPA world will provide insights in her research in artificial intelligence that can't be achieved if you brought a computer scientist major in to study artificial intelligence. So that is part of what we hope to glean from people like Captain Figliuolo. She did mention a couple things I'd like to emphasize about the program. These quotas allow you to go to a civilian institution, and your job, while you're at that institution, is to be a full-time and successful student. You have no other distractions. That is your job. Your supervisors basically are the administrative team at the Air Force Institute of Technology. You're typically attached for observation, administrative purposes with the local ROTC detachment. If there's one of the school, the Air Force pays your tuition and usually has some small stipends available for books and for publishing and things like that. But your out-of-pocket expenses essentially are, if any, they're nominal. It's a great opportunity to get a funded education at a quality civilian institution. And the contributions and the collaborations that you make with the students and the faculties, while you're at those programs, is a great recruiting tool as well for the Air Force. - You have 15 eligible airmen who are going to take part of this program. 10 master's. Five PhDs. But now we want to know, how do you apply? (laughs) I also spoke with Captain Figliuolo about that application process. Take a listen. The application process for the DAWN-ED program. Was that difficult? - The DAWN-ED application fortunately gave a pretty good amount of leeway on it. It was several months in advance that they put out the call for nominations. And so I had plenty of time to get everything done. One of the requirements is the GRE or the GMAT, depending on which program you're applying to. And then the other parts of it was just putting together some letters of recommendation. And then the other part of it was just doing the research on programs. And for me, that was one of the most fun parts of the whole application process, because I really got to see exactly what's out there and research which programs that I want to apply to. And why did each of those matter? And that helps continue to shape my perspective on why this is so important. And then the final piece of it was to create a personal statement of why I wanted to do this and how I thought it would benefit the Air Force. - What are some things that you wrote? - What I put in there is the start of this desire to pursue the technical side of aviation. For me, it came from interacting with software engineers, designing a new cockpit for an unmanned platform. And that process was so frustrating in our inability to communicate with each other effectively, that I mentioned that in my personal statement of I have personally experienced the frustration of trying to make engineers understand why operators need a certain feature. And the engineers, on the flip side, trying to make pilots understand that computers are not infinitely capable. They have limitations just like anything else. So I have mentioned that. I also talked about the... as an unmanned pilot, as an RPA pilot, I have seen the way that automation can be a game changer for our national defense. And so I would like very much to be a part of the future of that, and integrating the future of automation and the future of unmanned platforms into the technologies of tomorrow. And so from that point, it was kind of just a waiting game. So it was, I would say, a moderate amount of work to get it done but it never felt overwhelming. - And we have until June 25. That's the close of the application time. So she mentioned research programs. What programs, just really briefly, are you all looking for right now? - We've got some information as we were looking at those topics for this year and added a couple new ones to the list. Ones that senior leaders thought were particularly important and should also be addressed, where we're lacking capability or we want to grow some more. One of those areas was strategic foresight, which is a rolling program in a select number of universities, where techniques to anticipate the future and help do things to shape that future. Then go to building the visions, which then go to building the strategies and the other kinds of things that we see in the Air Force. So we've modified some of those topics this year. The full list is on the announcement, which is on myPers. And we hope that our applicants will do like Captain Figliuolo did. She'll see an area on that list that excites her. She'll take experiences from her career, in her case as an RPA pilot. And she'll say, I think RPA and artificial intelligence are a good mix, a good match, and this is something I want to pursue. And then as she said in her application, she helped build a picture for how those two areas would come together. - Wonderful, sir. Is there anything else you'd like to add or that I've forgotten to ask or you think our listeners might be interested to know? - No. We are very excited for this opportunity and look forward to getting the applications. We've learned a lot by reading the applications and we have such a capable group of officers, cadets, and airmen. It's a remarkable process. I should also add that it's not just the airmen, it's also the guardians. So the Space Force is also included here as well. So other than that, I appreciate the opportunity, Jennifer, and always welcome questions and look forward to getting the applications. - Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Hansen, for your time. So don't forget, active duty department of the Air Force officers interested in the Developing the Airmen We Need-Education advanced-degree program, you have until June 25th of this year to apply for the 2022 academic year. For more information about the criteria and application process, visit the myPers website. Thank you for the subscribed stream or download. And as a reminder, you can follow Air Education and Training Command at the AETC and the AETC command team on social media. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. You can also catch up on the latest news across the Command on our website at aetc.af.mil. From the entire AETC public affairs team, I'm Jennifer Gonzalez and talk to you next time on "The Air Force Starts Here" podcast. Okay. I'm going to stop recording, sir. And can I access that?