Cinquième rapport du Conseil des visiteurs du CFC

Meeting of the Board 25-26 April 2005

Fifth Report to the Commandant

3 May 2005

This Report reflects the Board’s discussions held at CFC in April 2005, against the background of issues raised by the Board since its first meeting in January 2003. In summary, those issues are:

• The proper graduate-level setting for study at CFC
• The admissions requirements for the MDS
• The development of the permanent academic staff
• The intellectual quality of the CSC

Threading through all these issues is the OCGS Review. The Board notes that its existence is an OCGS requirement and that its role is to provide advice and counsel to the Commandant. [1]

The Graduate Setting. Of the highest quality is the Information Resource Centre. This level of student provision is exemplary and allows middle-ranking military officers superb professional research opportunities at the graduate and PhD levels. The Board warmly welcomes the achievements in the print collections, the on-line subscriptions programme, and the research collection development. These developments set resourcing and management standards not only for other military colleges but also for universities. The Board also notes that continued progress is being made in the teaching setting: seminar sizes are being held at 10 per syndicate; there is a gradual move towards more active learning methods and participation by students. However, in contrast, say, to US war colleges, the programme remains extremely packed and busy. Progress has been made to reduce curriculum density for CSC 32 but the opportunities for professional reflection – inter alia, the contemporary nature of the military itself in conditions of strategic complexity, its emerging roles and missions, its frequently ambiguous political setting, the ethical dimension of military activities, the often contradictory impacts of new technology — remain inadequate. It is hoped that the Elective programme for CSC 32 will go some way towards addressing this, but the key difference between being a graduate student at CFC and at a university or US war college is the absence of time to develop critical and creative thinking skills. This is graduate study’s hallmark, the product of study and the graduate setting, not the subject of study itself.

MDS Admissions Policy. The Board notes the wholly constructive and decisive role played by RMC in resolving this issue over the past year. The Board has been made aware of the reservations which some of the RMC academic staff have had concerning the integrity of the MDS program and the efforts that were made to address those concerns. It appreciates the flexibility shown in accommodating the unique aspects of the MDS while maintaining RMC’s high standards in graduate education. All the developments, including the creation of a Department of Defence Studies, that have led to the inclusion of the MDS and course components of the CSC in the RMC Graduate Studies Calendar are most warmly welcomed. The autonomy thus awarded to CFC’s military and civilian staff gives opportunities for development that ought to feed into the further enhancement of the graduate setting at CFC and in further postgraduate study openings for CFC graduates at RMC.

The Permanent Academic Staff. In a series of briefings and commentary over the past two years, the Board has received assurances and given warnings about the size of the academic staff cohort. Despite the assurances, the Board concludes that not enough has been done to fulfil the requirement by the OCGS to develop a critical mass of academic specialists in security and related studies. If US War Colleges are the benchmark for development, it is mystifying why academic and research models such as Quantico, Maxwell, Carlisle and Newport are not taken as benchmarks to be imitated. Indeed, with the imminent departure of the two most senior and experienced members of the faculty, CFC is becoming less able to support the CSC, its supporting Co-Chair system, and the MDS. The Board is, frankly, astonished at:

• The few opportunities open to the academic staff to do front-line teaching as part of CSC delivery, in their areas of expertise and research, particularly as so much of the Course includes mainstream academic areas of International Relations and Security Studies
• The patchy performance of the Co-Chair system, even with the staff now available
• A tendency to use academics, especially junior ones, for administrative support duties, to the detriment of their research and teaching potential
• The limited use of academics for the crucial, overall assessment of the students’ intellectual – and therefore professional - potential
• The apparent intention to deny an expanding group of academics full-time administrative support
• The lack of initiative in seeking out senior scholars in security and international studies on sabbatical from their universities who would be invited to join the academic staff and contribute to teaching in exchange being provided with an office and access to the CFC resources to support their research. (We note with pleasure that next year Dr. Joseph Jockel, a leading American scholar on Canadian defence policy will be at CFC).
• There has also be no apparent effort to seek out senior, academically qualified officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs to serve at the College, who might add much to a program of study which necessarily involves consideration of issues that go beyond military operational topics.

The Board remains convinced that its recommendation of November 2003 remains correct: ‘Le nombre idéal de professeurs devrait être fixé à un minimum de douze, ce qui constitue une "masse critique", tant en termes d’enseignement que de recherche’. [2] The precise deployment of academics matters less than the recruitment of the right kind of academic, appropriately qualified, able to work in a team in a military setting, and led by a senior academic at the Director level. As this is being achieved, decisions can be made about the right mix of teaching, student assessment, syndicate involvement, research, and course design. [3] Achieving this is a matter of decision at CFC.

Until these decisions are definitely taken, and fully resourced, the Board feels it is premature to submit its draft project to the OCGS. Even as a professional master’s programme, the academic infrastructure now lacks the necessary robustness to ensure the avoidance of embarrassment. Board members regret that they have not had the time to study the draft submission in detail but are convinced that the worrying developments on the academic staffing front preclude the submission going forward this calendar year.

The CSC’s Intellectual Quality. The Board much appreciates the briefings provided on Learning Levels, DP3 Part I developments, and on the military perspective on Co-Chairs. Taken together with a review of the CSC 31 Syllabus, and the draft for CSC 32, the members explored a variety of questions, formally and informally:

• In the absence of a fully working Co-Chair system, how are the intellectual standards of CSC — and via that route, of the military profession itself — being maintained?
• Is too much time vested in confirming Learning Outcomes, but not enough effort being made in assessing actual student progress, for example, through appropriate evaluation and examinations?
• What are the reasons for most professional and experienced warfighters being attracted to a more educational agenda while those who are less operationally experienced tend towards training objectives?
• Just how valuable is the use of Bloom’s Taxonomy to the military or any other profession?
• Given the ‘Learner Retention’ guides adopted at CFC, is it appropriate to stay so strongly committed to the formal lecture format for CSC 32, followed by discussions chaired by non-experts, thereby eschewing more active and effective learning in the process? [4]
• Does the structure and content of the CSC (and of the still-embryonic DP3 Part I) not obviate the development, exercise and assessment of critical and creative thought?

As mandated by its Terms of Reference, the Board is interested in the whole of the CSC, not just the MDS deliverables – not least because the OCGS accredits the whole course. The Board notes that these, and other, questions would be entirely legitimate for the OCGS to ask during the Periodic Appraisal visitation but is not confident that CFC is, at present, in a position to answer them fully. Indeed, with the departure of the two academics and in the absence of any plan to make good the intellectual gaps thereby created, it is not unreasonable to ask whether the MDS is viable for CSC 32.

The Board is confident that CFC has the capacity both to respond to the encouraging suggestions and warnings that it has received over the past two years, and to do what it has for long promised it would do. If it is wrong in that confidence, it is very hard to see what the purpose of the Board of Visitors actually is.

• Albert Legault, Université du Québec à Montreal (Chair)
• Peter Foot, Joint Services Command and Staff College
• Brian Job, University of British Columbia
• Marc Milner, University of New Brunswick
• Stéphane Roussel, Université du Québec à Montreal
• Joel Sokolsky, Royal Military College of Canada
• Denis Stairs, Dalhousie University

Footnotes

[1] Specifically, the Board is charged with reviewing and commenting upon:

(a) the academic programmes offered at CFC;
(b) the instructional and assessment methodologies of CFC;
(c) the use and development of CFC’s academic staff;
(d) the operation and development of the IRC; and
(e) the use of both official languages in CFC Curricula.

[2] http://www.cfc.forces.gc.ca/Academics/bovrpt2_e.html
[3] The Board is aware that promotion criteria – teaching, research and service – belong to RMC.
[4]4 See CSC 31 Syllabus, p. 1-C-8/9.