Adapting Military Education to the Lessons Learned in Iraq
Then there is the daily work culture. "They don't want you to be all stiff and formal," he says. Caldwell recalls a White House fellowship he did during the George H. W. Bush administration, working for 18 months in the old Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House. "Both my bosses were females—very powerful and influential in the Bush 1 administration," says Caldwell. "I'd never worked with a female my whole life." Caldwell says he also "had to learn to be on a first-name basis with people."
He would also like to expand the work that the military does with Congress. Congressional fellowships were reduced from some 30 to 40 a year to closer to eight or nine under former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who was widely known, says one senior defense official, to "hate that program." Today, senior military officials in the Pentagon would like to see it revitalized. "We can offer to congressional committees Army officers who can spend a year with them," says Caldwell. "And from a military perspective, we benefit immensely. They come back to us with a greater understanding of government dynamics."
It's an essential time for midcareer officers, mainly majors who are in their 10th or 11th year of military service. Though many are taking part in a yearlong program that will commit them to one more year of service, "most of them could then leave the Army after a year if they wanted to," says Caldwell. "They are halfway to retirement, but at the same time, for those who have families, there could be different kinds of stresses placed on them."
To that end, Caldwell says, he is also commissioning a study of divorce rates among incoming students. Early in his career, he says, "I did a couple of deployments close together, and ended up getting divorced. I've been there, done that." Now remarried with three young children, "I realize that there's a balance out there that you have to strike, and each person needs to find that."
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