The essence of Academy research

  • Published
  • By Col. Robert Kraus
  • U.S. Air Force Academy Office of Research
U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. --  The U.S. Air Force Academy exists to educate, train and produce leaders for our nation.

This mission is successfully accomplished through many fronts, executed across a diverse set of mission elements and forged through the crucibles of academic excellence, athletic competition, airmanship, military discipline and an honor system. The Academy's four-year leadership laboratory is replete with mentoring and practical application.

The Academy's research program is an important and integral part of that experience, providing an overture for future officers to document, discover and interpret a world which they will soon inherit. In exit interviews, such hands-on experiences are lauded as among the most valuable -- that value stemming from opportunity.

The connection is implicit. The essence of research is opportunity -- opportunity to discover, to achieve and to better one's world through knowledge and invention.

Inherent and axiomatic to this process lays the ability to manifest one's vision. Execution must be purposeful. Opportunity doesn't arise from chance or serendipity, but from preparation and effort. Opportunity must be won.

In this manner, administration of the Academy's research program must be deliberate. It must instill an entrepreneurial spirit and adapt to global needs, market demands and internal atmospherics. It must successfully compete for scarce resources while protecting the veracity of the Academy brand. It must provide systematic, tailored and innovative solutions to unique requirements, balancing science and humanities, while instilling intangibles so important to the "making of a lieutenant." In short, a winning program must possess a business mindset, having clear goals and a structure for achieving the same.
Fairchild Hall is home to two important organizations: an institute of higher education and a federal lab. The oversight of the former is extensive and ubiquitous. The latter is more ad hoc with mission elements, academic departments and staff agencies overseeing the research activities of 19 research centers and two institutes.

The Office of Research ties together the structure, strategic direction and review inherent to leading research institutes -- and even those necessary to best carry out its statutory requirements as a federal lab. Supported by personnel with the 10th Contracting Squadron, base legal office, financial management and information protection, more than 150 cooperative research and development agreements and 50 memorandums of agreement are actively supporting the Academy as the top undergraduate-only research institution in the country.

As a federally funded laboratory, there must be consideration for bottom-line principles such as targeted investment, market share (customer base), fiscal solvency, operational efficacy and strategic communication. Today's era of constrained budgets and potential reductions of government personnel requires innovative processes and new partnerships to fully utilize the capabilities of our facilities and cadets.

Working closely with experts at the Air Force Research Laboratory, we are formalizing a more robust process for technology transfer and for licensing inventions discovered by cadets and researchers.

Athletic teams instill concepts like teamwork, accountability and decision-making by focusing on what's inherent to their DNA: competitive excellence. It would be unproductive for them to subjugate this intrinsic strength to pedagogical compulsion. In a similar fashion, the Academy's federal lab must operate from proven management best practices. In doing so, opportunity arises. Our goal to prepare our cadets to join the long blue line is addressing complex issues funded, facilitated and improved by a thriving, competitive enterprise.

The Academy rightfully shifted its emphasis from enforcement of an honor code to that of inculcating a culture of living honorably. For exactly the same reason, Academy Research is transforming from legalistic bureaucracy to corporate endeavor -- from indiscriminate administration to deliberate operation -- from academic to entrepreneurial.

Stanford, Georgia Tech and many other universities offer models for successfully partnering with independent but closely affiliated laboratories. The Academy is not trying to replicate them, but to apply the lessons learned at those institutions to enhance our reputation as the Air Force's Academy.

Today, far more cadets, faculty and staff, have more state-of-the-art, successful research opportunities than ever before. Rather than resting on our laurels, Academy research is designing the future with innovation, pushing the envelope of existing possibilities and producing the next lieutenants to lead our Air Force and our nation.

(Dr. Jim Solti, the Academy's deputy director of the Office of Research, contributed to this commentary)