The United States Air Force Road to “Bright Horizons”

Abstract

“Bright Horizons” is the United States Air Force's new strategic roadmap for management and development of its military members and civilian employees who are scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians. The roadmap has been approved and signed by the Air Force Chief of Staff and the Secretary of the Air Force and was published in 2011. It has its origins in a 2010 report from the National Research Council titled “Examination of the United States Air Force's Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Workforce Needs in the Future and Its Strategy to Meet Those Needs.”

Acknowledgments

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Notes

For the purposes of Bright Horizons and this article the following definitions apply: Air Force Workforce – the total organic military and civilian personnel assigned in the Air Force. STEM-competent – people who lack a specific degree in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics, but who have undergraduate course work, training, or experience in these subjects, and who are conversant in these areas. This is a broad definition to be expanded on and applied by individual functional communities based on their respective mission needs.

STEM workforce – professionals who have degrees in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics.

STEM-degreed – people with a qualifying STEM degree at the undergraduate/graduate level; to include those who are not presently serving in a technical-degree-required position, such as a program manager or a pilot.

STEM-assigned – Air Force professionals who have degrees in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics, and who are presently serving in a technical-degree-required position.

See Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2005); Rising Above the Gathering Storm – Two Years Later (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2009); and Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited – Rapidly Approaching Category 5 (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2010).

Norman Augustine, Statement before the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, U.S. House of Representatives, 7 January 2009.

United States Commission on the National Security in the Twenty-First Century, Road Map for National Security: Imperative for Change, Washington, D.C. 2001.

“Carnegie Corporation, Institute for Advanced Study Establish Commission on Math and Science Education,” Philanthropy News Digest 9 November 2007, http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/news/story.jhtml?id=194000004 (accessed September 2011). Also, see The Opportunity Equation: Transforming Mathematics and Science Education for Citizenship and the Global Economy, Carnegie Corporation of New York and Institute for Advanced Study, Joint Commission on Math and Science Education, http://opportunityequation.org/uploads/files/oe_report.pdf (accessed September 2011).

Technology Horizons (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Air Force Chief Scientist, 2010).

Remarks of President Barack Obama, 27 April 2009, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.

See Rising Above the Gathering Storm (note 2).

Michael A. Peters and Tina A. C. Besley, “Academic Entrepreneurship and the Creative Economy,” Thesis Eleven 106: August (2008): 88–105.

Technology Horizons (note 6).

Bright Horizons, the Air Force's Strategic STEM Roadmap (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, 2011).

Air Force Priorities, Chief of Staff of the Air Force Vector 2010, 4 July 2010.

David Logsdon, “America's Aerospace Workforce at a Crossroads,” The Brown Journal of World Affairs (Fall/Winter, 2006).

Air Force Vice Chief of Staff (AF/CV) approved the STEM Advisory Council (STEMAC) Charter on 24 December 2009.

The Air Force conducted comparable reviews in the past. Air Force members ascertained with regard to whether they should be classified as “space professionals.” Sticking points on this process occurred as the Air Force attempted to consider whether missile operators, logisticians, communications, intelligence, science and technology and other career fields had requisite “space experience.” Some of these communities were characterized as working with space systems by fiat. This led to odd results wherein some Air Force professionals who had never helped acquire, operate, or sustain satellite systems were classified as “space professionals.”

National Science Foundation, Testimony, U.S. House Science and Technology Committee, 26 February 2009.

The Nation's Report Card: Mathematics 2005, National Center for Education Statistics, 2006.

President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, Report to the President, “Prepare and Inspire: K–12 Education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) for America's Future,” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, September 2010), vi.

Examination of the U.S. Air Force's Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Workforce Needs in the Future and Its Strategy to Meet Those Needs, (Washington, D.C.: National Research Council, 2010).

The U.S. Senate report of the National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2012 of 22 June 2011 states on p. 171: “The committee recognizes the challenges the Department of Defense is facing in meeting the needs for its future science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce and applauds the number of efforts across the services and the Department of Defense to better understand these challenges and develop strategies to address them. Of note, is a STEM Workforce Strategic Roadmap developed by the Air Force, called Bright Horizons, that in part was motivated by a recent study conducted by the National Academies for the Air Force entitled, Examination of the U.S. Air Force's Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Workforce Needs in the Future and Its Strategy to Meet Those Needs. The committee encourages the Air Force to pursue and adequately resource the implementation of this roadmap. Furthermore, the committee strongly urges the Departments of the Army and Navy to conduct similar studies by an independent third party organization and develop similar strategic roadmaps.”.

John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, 20 January 1961.