ASSOCIATE DEAN - WARFIGHTING STUDIES

Summary Click on "Learn more about this agency" button below for IMPORTANT information. The mission of the United States Air Force Academy is to educate, train, and inspire men and women to become leaders of character, motivated to lead the United States Air Force in service to our nation. USAFA, located just north of Colorado Springs, Colorado, is an undergraduate institution that awards the Bachelor of Science degree. Faculty applications are invited from candidates who can contribute by interacting with cadets, both in and out of the classroom, as instructors and mentors. The student body consists of approximately 4,000 students representing every state and several foreign countries. USAFA faculty is an integrated group of military and civilian educators. The curriculum includes core academic and professional courses, and 27 disciplinary and interdisciplinary majors.Major Duties: Major Duties of the Position: The Associate Dean for Warfighting Studies: - Provides academic leadership and portfolio administration (40%) for the Warfighting Studies academic portfolio, establishing priorities, translating senior-leader direction and emerging operational and technological developments into executable academic objectives, and overseeing curriculum, academic governance, assessment, faculty utilization, simulations, wargaming, experiential-learning environments, resources, and continuous improvement. Ensures Warfighting Studies functions as a coherent developmental sequence rather than disconnected treatments of tactics, operations, and strategy. - Supervises and develops faculty and staff (25%), including civilian and military personnel and subordinate leaders as assigned. Plans and assigns work; establishes performance expectations; evaluates performance; supports recruitment and staffing; identifies training and developmental needs; addresses employee concerns; and promotes accountability, professional development, and organizational effectiveness. - Oversees curriculum integration, academic quality, assessment, and cadet warfighting development (20%)across the portfolio. Guides curriculum that connects tactical action to operational effects, campaigns, strategy, constitutional authority, political purpose, and national interest while developing a distinctive Airman and Guardian perspective integrated with joint, coalition, and multidomain operations. - Provides leadership for immersive and experiential warfighting education, including advanced wargaming, simulations, decision exercises, campaign analysis, planning activities, and digital operational environments. Ensures these experiences require cadets to make consequential decisions against adaptive adversaries, assess outcomes, revise assumptions, and develop increasingly sophisticated judgment through repeated decision and after-action cycles. - Integrates emerging technology and the evolving character of war into the curriculum, including artificial intelligence, autonomy, cyber operations, contested space, sensing, electronic warfare, precision effects, and command and control, while maintaining attention to doctrine, human judgment, law, ethics, escalation, adversary adaptation, and political purpose. - Provides strategic integration, faculty and practitioner development, and institutional engagement (15%) by advising senior leaders, developing faculty and practitioner capability, encouraging scholarship and professional inquiry, and representing Warfighting Studies with USAFA, Department of the Air Force, other service academies, professional military education institutions, government organizations, universities, research centers, wargaming communities, industry, and other mission partners. The Associate Dean for Warfighting Studies is not expected to be an expert in every service, domain, doctrine, technology, or operational specialty represented in the portfolio. The position instead requires an academic leader capable of working with academics and practitioners from several fields; cultivating a distinctive Airman and Guardian perspective while remaining genuinely joint; understanding the emerging character of high-end conflict; asking good questions; identifying connections across domains and levels of war; making sound judgments; and turning broad educational goals into a coherent, immersive, and executable program.