An 'examined life': Academy educator selected for Air Force Ph.D program

  • Published
  • By Ray Bowden
  • U.S. Air Force Academy Public Affairs
U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. --  A political science professor at the Air Force Academy is one of three officers across the Air Force to be selected this week for a high-level doctorate program.

Capt. Brad DeWees was notified of his selection to the Chief of Staff of the Air Force Captains Prestigious Ph.D Program August 27 by Brig. Gen. Andrew Armacost, the Academy's dean, and Col. Cheryl Kearney, head of the Academy's Political Science Department.

"It was pretty emotional," DeWees said. "Hugs and high-fives went around. Colonel Kearney told me to call my wife Kate and celebrate."

The program sponsors the officers' doctoral studies. Now that he's been selected for the program, DeWees is compiling applications to various doctorate programs with help from trusted Air Force counselors, he said. 
  
"I plan on applying to public policy programs at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Georgetown and perhaps others," he said. "The three years I'll spend studying and working on a dissertation will be an investment in the future, an investment in how to think through complex, strategic problems facing the Air Force."
  
Dewees said he applied for the program to help the Air Force meet its strategic needs.

"We operate in a world where the rate of change is increasing," he said. "In the same way increasing complexity in warfare calls for a highly specialized officer corps, an increasing rate of change in warfare calls for a highly adaptable officer. The purpose of my academic study is to investigate how to meet this need." 
 
DeWees said learning and sharing knowledge is exhilarating

"Each lesson learned or discovery made has always triggered a new question," he said. "This is particularly true with questions like 'How do we make sense of the world?' and 'What motivates our human nature?' These questions lie at the root of an examined life. I take to heart the Socratic advice that 'an unexamined life is not worth living.' I would say an unexamined life is less capable of serving."

(Editor's note: Capt.'s Jason Rathje of Air Force Materiel Command, and Benjamin Schaftel of Air Mobility Command, were also selected for the program. Staff Sgt. Ian Hoachlander of Air Force Personnel Center Public Affairs contributed to this report.)