ASSOCIATE DEAN - WARFIGHTING STUDIES

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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.

Qualifications

QUALIFICATIONS REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS: Applicants must be current USAFA faculty members and hold the academic rank of either associate professor (AD-1701-23) or Professor (AD-1701-24). USAFA faculty currently serving in an AD-1720-25 academic administration role with the requisite academic credentials are also eligible to apply. ACADEMIC DISCIPLINES: Relevant fields may include military, war, strategic, security, or national-security studies; military history; international relations; political science; defense policy; airpower; spacepower; cyber; AI; autonomous systems; electronic warfare; information operations; intelligence; operational planning or art; joint operations; wargaming; modeling and simulation; operations research; military innovation; defense technology; logistics; acquisition; professional military education; or another closely related field supporting Warfighting. DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS: We are particularly interested in senior faculty who bring: - A strong record as a USAFA educator. - Sustained superior performance in teaching, scholarship, and institutional service. - Experience leading faculty, programs, courses, departments, military organizations, or significant academic initiatives. - A record of teaching, scholarship, or professional activity in military history, strategy, security studies, military operations, airpower, space power, cyber, joint or multidomain operations, or related fields that demonstrates interdisciplinary and/or integrated engagement with high-end warfighting problems. - A commitment to building a rigorous, formative, integrated warfighting program, with the ability to connect tactical, operational, and strategic problems across air, space, cyber, land, maritime, and undersea effects and experience with emerging technologies, advanced wargaming, simulation, digital operational environments, or comparable experiential learning strongly valued. This position offers an unusual opportunity to help shape the intellectual architecture, faculty culture, and educational experience of a new School during its formative years. Inquiries about the position should be directed to the Search Committee Chair, Dr. Mark N. Jensen, email: mark.jensen@afacademy.af.edu. Please do not email documents or completed applications to this address as they will not be considered.

Education

EDUCATION: If selected, you will be requested to provide original copies of ALL OFFICIAL transcripts for degrees being pursued or obtained (or letter of degree completion if an OFFICIAL transcript is not available due to recent graduation) to support your educational claims as stated in your curriculum vitae. Education must be accredited by an accrediting institution recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. For a transcript to be considered OFFICIAL, it should be printed on university letterhead and the registrar's official seal/signature must appear on the transcript. Your transcripts must also reflect the degree awarded/conferred date. Transcripts labeled UNOFFICIAL will not be accepted. Upon request, ensure you include ALL transcripts to support your educational claims as stated in your curriculum vitae (resume) even if not required for this position. FOREIGN EDUCATION: Education completed in foreign colleges or universities may be used to meet the educational requirements. However, you must show proof that the education credentials have been deemed to be at least equivalent to that gained in a conventional U.S. education program. It is your responsibility to provide such evidence when applying in the form of an "official" statement of U.S. equivalency from a Department of Education approved (non-federal) agency (i.e. AICE, NACES), who will complete a U.S. Standard of Education Conversion.