Sixth Report of the CFC Board of Visitors

Meeting of 3 and 4 November 2005

The Board of Visitors (BoV) convened its Fall 2005 meeting at the College at 1330 hrs on 3 November, and was pleased to welcome three new members:

  • Dr John Hattendorf of the US Naval War College,
  • Dr Joseph Jockel, of St Lawrence University, Canton, NY, and
  • Dr Michel Fortmann from l'Université de Montréal.

It should also be noted that Dr. Peter Foot has resigned from the Board because of his new role as Visiting Professor and Director of Academics (DAcad) at the College. Given that the Board is now “up and running,” and given the other channels now available for effective liaison with the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC), Dr. Joel Sokolsky has also resigned. Dr. Brian Job and Dr. Stéphane Roussel were unable, on this occasion, to attend.

The BoV heard briefings from both the new Commandant, BGen Walter Semianiw, and the new DAcad, Dr Peter Foot, and was very favourably impressed with what it heard. Since its inception, the BoV has urged a shift to a stronger academic component at the CFC, and it heard a commitment from both the Commandant and the DAcad that this was in fact underway. Indeed, the news of the authorization of three UT positions, one replacement for Dr Ouellet and two new, was received during our meeting, and it was greeted warmly. That said, the BoV see this as simply the beginning of the process, and looks forward to its completion in a timely fashion. The BoV was also pleased to hear that the submission to the Ontario Council on Graduate Studies on the Master of Defence Studies programme has gone forward, and it wishes the CFC the best of luck in the review process to follow.

BGen Semianiw set the BoV three tasks for its Fall 2005 meeting:

  • to assess the impact of the recent International Policy Statement (IPS) by the Federal Government on Canadian university teaching and research;
  • the way forward for Faculty Development at the CFC; and
  • the teaching, exercise and evaluation of “intellectual agility” in mid-career CF officers.

The BoV's considered responses to these three issues forms the substance of this report.

The International Policy Statement
Apart from more fodder for the classroom and increasing the reading load of professors and their students, the International Policy Statement (IPS) will have no impact on teaching or research in Canadian civilian universities. Academic programmes in governance, international relations (IR) and conflict have normally focused on the limitations of military power in complex international and internal conflicts, and have consistently informed their students that security in the truest sense depends on stable political and socioeconomic conditions. Moreover, the idea that a government ought to formally co-ordinate its diplomatic, foreign and military policy is already a bedrock of public administration and IR teaching. For most academics, the fact that the government saw fit to issue a policy document on this subject is likely to provoke a combination of scepticism and curiosity, and little more.

That said, the IPS is something that the CFC — as a federal military institution — probably cannot ignore. In the first place, it is the policy of the moment, however transient it may turn out to be. In the second place, and more importantly in the present context, the College's responsibility is to offer training and education programs designed specifically for military professionals. The integrated “three-block war” conception of how to respond effectively to contemporary international conflicts obviously has operational implications with which CF personnel, at all levels, need to be very familiar; and hence, they may have to be reflected in College curricula. They are not, however, the primary focus of most courses — and certainly not of degree programs taken as a whole, even in the security field — in civilian universities.

In offering these comments, the Board wishes to emphasize that it is not itself taking a position on the IPS as an expression of government policy. While individual members of the Board may have opinions on the contents of the document, it is, of course not, the function of the Board as a whole to comment on the merits or otherwise of the government’s response to public policy issues.

Faculty Development
The BoV sees Faculty development as the key to CFC transformation. There was much talk at this meeting of “embedded faculty”, and the need for an “embedded academic culture”, in the College. We understood this to imply the placement of academically-qualified teachers on a much larger scale into the existing CFC course structure. As the Board has indicated in its previous reports, such placements are certainly required. They are the prerequisite for progress, and they would make it possible among other things to attach a civilian academic faculty member to each syndicate. By themselves, however, they would not be sufficient to produce the more fundamental cultural change that is the underlying objective. The BoV, therefore, rejected this model as inadequate in the absence of other measures, without which it would be a waste of the real value of trained scholars.

More specifically, in the BoV's view, the best solution would be to establish an academic faculty department in the College, and to give it autonomous control over a portion of the CFC curriculum. In fact, the BoV sees this as the essential pre-condition to achieving the “intellectual agility” demanded by the CDS of mid-career officers, as discussed below. Such a move would also require a major transformation of the CFC curriculum as it is presently conceived.

Apart from the establishment of a proper academic department within the College, under the ultimate aegis of RMC, the BoV was reluctant to make specific recommendations on how such a “faculty” should be organized and what its academic emphasis should be. Instead, it requests that the present faculty of the CFC, under the supervision of the DAcad, develop both a plan for a faculty department of 12 to 13 academics, ie, how many social scientists, historians, economists, and a conception of how such a department would contribute to a significantly revised curriculum in which up to one-third of the program would be delivered by the department.

Intellectual Agility
The BoV concluded that the concept of “intellectual agility” as explained in the briefings was neither measurable nor teachable. As a concept, it only exists as a pedagogical objective in the sense that it is a welcome by-product of being “educated.” In the strictest sense, education is defined as the ability to produce “a reasoned response to an unforeseen circumstance.” Training, in contrast, is intended to produce “a conditioned response to a predictable circumstance” — what to do if your weapon jams, for example.

Much of the CFC's current curriculum is devoted to training. It is intended to provide staff officers, i.e., functionaries, capable of doing specified tasks within a table of organization. The only way to move the mid-career CSC-qualified officers closer to having what seems to be intended by the phrase “intellectual agility” is to shift a significant portion of the CFC curriculum to “education,” and then allow an embedded academic department to educate CFC students by teaching the main elements of a liberal arts program, which entail the development of critical and analytical skills through research, writing and discussion in a Socratic setting.

The move to education delivered by an academic department can be achieved through the development of courses, seminars, modules and the like, built around material appropriate to Professional Military Education, such as strategic studies, military history, civil military relations, defence economics, international relations. Indeed, the BoV feels strongly that the CFC, the Command and Staff programme and the whole CF can only benefit from the full development and integration of a faculty department into the College and its curricula. Only by this means can it hope to contribute significantly to the development of the “intellectual agility” of its graduates.

The Board hopes that these comments will be helpful and it looks forward to a response in due course to its recommendation that an academic department be established within the College, and that it be given autonomous control over a portion of the CFC curriculum.

  • Albert Legault, Université du Quebec à Montréal (Chair)
  • Dr. Michel Fortmann, l'Université de Montréal
  • Dr. John Hattendorf, U.S. Naval War College
  • Dr. Joseph Jockel, St. Lawrence University
  • Dr. Marc Milner, University of New Brunswick
  • Dr. Denis Stairs, Dalhousie University
     
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