Military Review English Edition November-December 2013 | Page 20

Delivering the Command and
General Staff Officer Course
at the Operational Edge
Lt. Col. John A. Schatzel, U.S. Army, Retired
Lt. Col. Wendell Stevens, U.S. Army, Retired

I

Lt.Col. Wendell Stevens, U.S. Army,
Retired, is an assistant professor in the
Department of Distance Education for
the Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kan. He holds
a B.S. from the U.S. Military Academy
and an M.M.A.S. from the Command
and General Staff College.

Lt.Col. John Schatzel, U.S. Army,
Retired, is a facilitator in the Common
Core Division of the Department of
Distance Education for the Command and General Staff College, Fort
Leavenworth, Kan. He holds a B.S.
from the U.S. Military Academy and an
M.S. from Central Michigan University.

PHOTO: Graduates of Command
and General Staff College Class
12-01 take their seats for the graduation ceremony, 8 June 2012, Fort
Leavenworth, Kan. (U.S. Army)

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N 2011, THE U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command released its
vision for professional military education in The U.S. Army Learning
Concept for 2015. This publication challenges the Army to deliver knowledge to leaders at the “operational edge” to develop adaptive soldiers with
cognitive, interpersonal, and cultural skills and sound judgment in complex
environments, and to develop an adaptive knowledge delivery system that
is responsive, allows rapid updates in curriculum, and is not bound by brick
and mortar.1
Since 1881, the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth
has developed adaptable leaders using multiple resident and nonresident
methods. In 1923, the staff college added correspondence courses to educate the officer corps dispersed abroad. In his remarks to the 1937 graduating Command and General Staff College class, Secretary of War Harry H.
Woodring remarked:
Leavenworth may be said to be the metronome of the service. It establishes
the training tempo of the Army. Its students are by no means confined to those
within the limits of this old post. Through correspondence courses and through
its splendid publications, Leavenworth has attracted as students hundreds of
officers who have never seen this post. Each year scores of new alumni from
Leavenworth carry modern military doctrine to Army posts throughout the
country and in our island possessions.2
Seventy-five years later, the Command and General Staff College, through
the Command and General Staff School, continues to promulgate modern
military doctrine and educate thousands of field grade officers annually
both in residence and around the globe. The staff school accomplishes this
through an integrated approach of resident and nonresident venues, state
of the art technology, distributed learning, and one standard curriculum for
the Command and General Staff Officer Course. This approach also fulfills
requirements for Army Directive 2012-21 (Optimization of IntermediateLevel Education) to—
?? Provide a tailored, high-quality education opportunity for all officers.
?? Intermediate Level Education.
?? Reinforce education earlier in an officer’s development timeline.3
November-December 2013

• MILITARY REVIEW