Military Review English Edition July-August 2015 | Page 13

DEVELOPMENT AND MANAGEMENT

(Photo by Staff Sgt. Mikki L. Sprenkle, CSA photographer)

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno provides feedback 26 February 2015 during the 2015 Captain's Solarium discussion at
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

retains, challenges, and inspires its best, brightest, and
most battle-tested young officers and NCOs to lead the
service in the future, and we must complement these
efforts by encouraging and supporting our leaders to
continuously self-develop.

The Institutional Domain
The institutional domain represents a powerful element of the Army’s leader development program. It is
where we set expectations and a foundation of understanding for our leaders. As stewards of the profession,
we must always strive to improve and adapt, and we are
instituting several new initiatives to support this endeavor. Our strategy begins with precommissioning for
officers and continues all the way through the general
officer ranks. Similarly, our NCO Corps develops leaders from initial entry training and intermediate NCO
development through the Sergeants Major Academy.
We are evolving and transforming this process as
we prepare for a more complex future. One of the ways
we are doing this is by launching The Army University,
which will apply rigorous academic standards and
MILITARY REVIEW  July-August 2015

credentials to our existing professional military education programs. While The Army University will have
many impacts on the educational enterprise, one of its
most important features is to provide full college-level accreditation to many existing Army education
programs and to record those credits in a universal
transcript for every soldier and civilian. This will allow
Army professionals to pursue their educational goals
while they serve the Nation and give them full credit
for the work they have already completed.
The Army University is the next logical step in
the continued professionalization of the Army that
began with the creation of the all-volunteer force in
1973. This effort organizes all U.S. Army Training and
Doctrine Command’s (TRADOC’s) existing educational programs into a single university structure to
promote greater academic rigor, improve internal integration, and enhance external collaboration with many
of the Nation’s best universities and colleges. The Army
University expands the ability of soldiers to integrate
their military and civilian education and to receive
valid academic credit for their educational investment.
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