Septième rapport du Conseil des visiteurs du CFC
Conseil des visiteurs du Collège des Forces canadiennes
Ce rapport est présenté dans la langue de soumission.
Meeting of 8 and 9 November 2007
20 December 2007
General Comments
The Board of Visitors convened at the College on the morning of 8 November 2007 after a two-year interval, having previously met on 3-4 November 2005.
OCGS Review. A number of important developments had occurred in the intervening period, and the Board wishes to note with particular satisfaction the very favourable report to the Ontario Council of Graduate Studies of the external reviewers of the MDS programme, and the subsequent endorsement and approval of the programme by the Council itself. It congratulates all those involved in the College on the successful outcome of their hard work in developing the MDS degree over the past several years.
Expansion of Academic Faculty. The Board was also very pleased to learn of the impressive expansion of the College’s academic faculty. This is a development that the Board has advocated since its very first meeting, having regarded it as an essential vehicle for enriching the CFC’s intellectual life and educational effectiveness, particularly at a time when the responsibilities of the Canadian Forces and their officers go far beyond those associated with military operations as traditionally conceived. Military campaigns have always been about “politics” in the end. But in the new ‘3-D’ world, Canadian Forces personnel at all levels have had to cultivate a much broader interpretation of the tasks they face and of the multi-faceted techniques that performing them requires. Senior officers especially (but not senior officers alone) must be sensitive to a much wider array of political, economic, social and cultural forces than was necessary in the past, taking them carefully and creatively into account. The Board thinks the recent increases in the number of “academic” faculty will contribute greatly to the College’s ability to foster this sort of understanding, along with the capacity to work through its implications, whether operational or strategic.
Institutional Changes. The Board was much encouraged, in addition, by some of the institutional innovations that have been introduced as a means of supporting and strengthening the role and position of the academic staff in the College generally. Perhaps the most notable development here has been the formation of an academic ‘Department of Defence Studies’ which now has direct institutional linkages with the Royal Military College in a way that regularizes processes bearing on recruitment, tenure and promotion, along with other matters of academic importance. RMC itself appears to have been very receptive to the new arrangement.
In the view of the Board, this is a very constructive innovation, and it is having a positive effect on the role of the civilian academicians in the institution. Over time, it will continue to enhance their productivity and morale, and ultimately — albeit indirectly — their visibility in the wider academic community. That, in turn, will lend further credibility to the College and its programmes among both civilian cognoscenti and military professionals. (The Board does note, however, that the College’s strengthened connection with RMC may have an unexpected side-effect in accentuating its “identity” problem among outside observers — a matter that we address later in this report.)
Intensifying Burdens. Having said all that, the Board also became aware during the course of its meeting that pressures are mounting in favour of further elaborations of the College’s roster of programmes, some of them aimed in part at recruiting ‘students’ from a wider array of governmental and non-governmental constituencies. This is a natural consequence of the ‘3-D’ concept in its various manifestations, and it is certainly a reflection of operational experiences in failed or fragile state environments like those associated with the Balkans, Afghanistan, Haiti, and the like.
But the Board thinks it important to recognize that these pressures, if they bear fruit, could add very considerably to the burden carried by the College’s personnel and other resources. It thinks, therefore, that careful attention should be devoted to the resource implications of initiatives of this kind before they are launched. This is particularly important at a time when MDS programme enrolments are growing at a rapid rate, and members of the officer corps generally are being encouraged by the senior CF leadership to enhance their academic credentials. We will return to this issue at various stages later in this report.
Organization of This Report. On more immediately substantive questions, the first day of the Board’s two-day meeting was devoted to a number of relatively concrete issues upon which the Director of Academics and her colleagues wished to have comment and advice. On the following morning the agenda turned to larger programme matters that are currently of particular concern to the Commandant, although he, too, considered a number of the specific matters that had been raised earlier by Dr. Falk. The two groups of issues are addressed in the observations that follow. For easy reference, we have defined them respectively as Academic Issues and Programme Issues.
The Board was also asked to comment on its own role and functions, and we deal with this question briefly in the final section of our report.
ACADEMIC ISSUES
One of the Academic Director’s objectives is to enhance the participation and visibility of her Department and its members in the wider academic community — a development that she regards as essential to the academic growth and sense of accomplishment of her colleagues, to the intellectual stimulus they receive from their disciplinary peers, and to the reputation and credibility of the College’s programmes among interested civilian academics more generally. Her feeling is that one of the potentially useful roles of the Board of Visitors would be to provide “targeted” advice and comment on how these objectives might be pursued.
Clarifying CFC Programmes to Outsiders. One observation that the Board has made from time to time — and it came up again at its November meeting — is that academics outside the military educational environment are often uncertain about the substance of the CFC’s programmes. The common assumption is that they are focused entirely on practical and technical issues related very directly to combat operations, the development of tactical skills, the management of logistics, communications techniques and processes, styles of leadership, CF organizational practices, and the like. In some quarters, there may even be a perception that the military profession is attracted to “right wing” dispositions of a stereotypical sort, and that the requirements of military discipline go hand-in-hand with rigid and inflexible habits of mind.
While obviously ill-informed and unfair, such perceptions can make it more difficult for civilian academics who are attached to military educational institutions to be accepted in quite the same way by their disciplinary peers as are professors in “civvy street” universities. In practice, the problem is usually overcome very quickly by productive individual scholars in military colleges, because their reputations in the end (whether they be historians, sociologists, political scientists, economists, engineers, or whatever) will reflect the calibre of their published work and the quality of their presentations at professional meetings. But the departments and institutions for which they work can still seem puzzling to outsiders.
The principal corrective to all this over the longer term will have to lie with the academic accomplishments of the Department’s faculty — which means, in effect, that they have to generate high-quality scholarship and make sure that it is propagated in the usual way (through books, journals, attendance at academic conferences, electronic outlets of various kinds, the cultivation of joint projects with faculty members in other institutions, and so on). The Board has confidence that current faculty are making important strides in this direction.
In addition, however, it thinks the College needs to pay very careful attention to the way in which its courses and programmes are described in communications directed to external audiences. It makes this observation with particular conviction because it found it very difficult at the beginning even of its own operations to understand from course outlines and the like exactly what ground was being covered in the College’s classrooms, and in what way. This problem reflected the differences in the style of internal military communications on the one hand, relatively to the way civilian universities communicate with their (much more “eclectic”) constituencies on the other.
The Board understands that this issue is now being addressed, in part, by the course descriptions that have been included in the RMC calendar (where course and programme details are presented in a fashion more akin to that of civilian universities).
But the CFC is ultimately a ‘staff college,’ and this may complicate the communications challenge, particularly since the connection between the College and RMC will not be known, much less understood, by outsiders.
That being so, there may be a strong case for having the Department of Defence Studies generate a brochure on its own academic activities and on the publications and current research programmes of its faculty. Presumably the College web site can be used for similar purposes, but outsiders may not take the trouble to look unless their interest is sparked by a trigger of this kind. Such a brochure might usefully be distributed to various university departments across the country and to the Directors of SDF programmes. They could also be made available at conferences in which members of the Department were themselves making academic presentations.
The Board also thinks it might be useful to up-date any such a brochure on an annual basis, and, in the case of mail-outs, that it be directed where possible to known individuals (e.g., SDF Directors) with a personally-directed covering letter. Otherwise the brochure itself may be handled by office staff (filed, put on a bulletin board, deposited in the recycling bin, or whatever) without the key player being aware of its having arrived.
This sort of initiative could be important not only in strengthening the Department’s visibility among civilian academics and their advanced students, but also in the context of the College’s interest in attracting personnel from other government departments, the NGO community, and the like to its teaching programmes. NGOs, in particular, are often suspicious of the military enterprise and have concerns about ‘co-option.’ They, too, may need some education on the new direction the College has been taking if their reservations are to be overcome.
Strategic Partnerships. The Board was also asked to comment on ways of promoting a ‘thicker’ web of academic partnerships with appropriate civilian institutions.
In this connection, it thinks that one of the most promising avenues for pursuing this sort of objective would be through the Security and Defence Forum centres that are funded by DND and scattered in universities all across the country. These are already being encouraged by DND to enhance their own ‘networking’ activities, and in most cases they pose the obvious advantage of having on their staffs people who understand the military profession. They also have a good knowledge of their own institutions and what they can offer, as well as a sense of the best routes for ‘opening doors’ into their university bureaucracies.
The Academic Director is fully aware of all this, and has already taken the initiative in cultivating SDF community contacts (e.g., by attending SDF meetings). The Board thinks this effort should be maintained, and that other members of the Department should be encouraged to participate in SDF-sponsored activities where feasible and appropriate.
One additional possibility that the Department might consider — assuming it to be feasible given work-loads, available space and the like — would be to offer to host one of the SDF meetings at the College. This could well be a ‘draw,’ since it would be a new experience for many of those involved, and would at the same time allow the members of the Department to meet with their counterparts in other institutions and to expose them to what the College has to offer (including, for example, its very impressive library).
Even if the SDF programme were not itself open to this sort of initiative, the Department could still contemplate holding academic conferences (or workshops) of its own from time to time — starting, perhaps, on a modest scale, with carefully focused conference programmes. This sort of activity, if undertaken on an occasional basis, and if conducted to a high standard, could do a great deal to put the Department, as it were, ‘on the map.’
More elaborately, the Department could consider co-sponsoring and organizing the occasional conference jointly with other university departments and/or think-tanks.. This sometimes raises difficulties in relation to organizational burden-sharing, public relations (everyone wants the credit), funding, etc. But the difficulties can often be overcome with the injection of sometimes very small amounts of cash. (The Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute has been doing this sort of thing with its annual conference in Ottawa in recent years, and the Centre for International Governance Innovation at Waterloo has been doing the same thing on a fairly regular basis. In CIGI’s case, the “partners” are often international. The Canadian Institute of International Affairs — now the Canadian International Council — has also worked with other sponsors from time to time, as have think-tanks like the Institute for Research on Public Policy.)
On the more immediately practical side, the Board understands that there is a growing desire to make arrangements with universities that would allow for exchanges of credits, and permit (for example) students in Reserve units to take courses, say, in Security Studies, International Affairs, Comparative Politics, and so on in local universities as a contribution towards their military training programmes. Inquiries of this sort — perhaps under stimulus from senior commands B seem even now to be increasingly evident in a variety of locations where military establishments are substantial.
The Board does not see any major obstacle in the way of this sort of “partnership,” provided the students who wish to take the courses meet the admissions standards of the universities concerned. Most universities, moreover, have provision for administering these standards in flexible style in the case of so-called ‘mature students.’
The Board does recommend, however, that such arrangements be pursued wherever possible in a pragmatic style that accords with university regulations as they are rather than through complicated MOUs that have to be negotiated at senior levels and involve the mounting of entirely new courses, the offering of existing courses at differently scheduled hours, and so on. In most Canadian universities, responding to proposals that require this sort of policy change or policy development can result in bureaucratic nightmares, particularly if special financial provisions are involved. There will be exceptions, of course, but the easiest and most effective way to go is to have the necessary fees paid by the student (or at least on behalf of the student) in the usual way, and to have the students themselves explore the options in the light of their own needs, the university’s schedule of available offerings, and the like. (This may be more easily arranged for CF personnel in the case of programmes offered on a ‘distance education’ basis, although relatively few Canadian universities have exploited ‘distant ed’ opportunities to the full.)
As for universities granting credits for courses taken at the College, there are fairly standard procedures governing these matters in most institutions. Registrars who receive inquiries about such matters will in many cases refer them to the appropriate academic department for recommendation. In the case of the CFC, most such departments will be uncertain how to respond because of their lack of familiarity with the College’s programmes. It would probably be best for the Department to work at the beginning with a small handful of universities, focusing on the specific departments involved , and proposing only those CFC courses that seem to represent a good ‘fit’. There is little chance of escaping the labour-intensive effort that this is likely to require.
The Board wishes to emphasize the importance of targeting the “front-line” operators on university campuses as the initial point of entry, even if, at a later stage, formalities at very senior levels of administration come to be required. This is because the success of partnerships almost always depends on the willing engagement of those whose assistance is essential to making them work. On matters related to graduate studies, departmental ‘Graduate Co-Ordinators’ are often the key players here, although it would be particularly helpful to have a partner academic (preferably one who is committed to some aspect of military or security studies) “on side” early in the process.
Finally, the Board thinks it could be very helpful to CF officers seeking opportunities for higher academic study if the DND had a web site specifically listing the various options that might be open to them, at either military or “partner” institutions, in pursuing their objectives. We have a sense that serving personnel may not be aware of the multiplicity of opportunities that are available, and in the normal course of events it may be difficult for them to find out. If the senior command wishes to give them encouragement (beyond exhortation), this could be a relatively easy way of doing so.
Distinguished Visiting Professors. The Board recognizes that it may be very difficult for the College to attract ‘distinguished visiting professors’ for significant periods of time, since senior academics may be ‘locked in’ by family obligations, or by research projects that would normally take them elsewhere. Recently retired academics may be a possibility worth exploring, and the Board reiterates its suggestion at the meeting that advertising (or more pro-actively ‘beating the bushes’) via the SDF centres could prove to be a cost-effective way of publicizing the opportunity to the most pertinent “market.” We suspect, however, that the best way to proceed is to take the initiative in approaching promising possibilities and exercising the power of persuasion. Senior people may not respond very readily to simple advertisements.
One possibility that could be worth exploring is whether or not prestigious (and financially helpful) funding might be available in support of visiting professors from auspices other than the College itself — for example, the Fulbright programme, or the Donner Foundation, or something similar. Given the College’s ultimate affiliation with the Department of National Defence, this may be a very long shot, but with the right pitch to the right target, it could conceivably bear fruit.
Having said that, it is probably important in this area to be open to “visitations” of varying duration. Some individuals may be willing to come to the College for short periods (two or three weeks, for example, or perhaps a couple of months during the summer) even if they cannot commit for longer periods of time.
The Board notes, too, that ‘Visiting Professors’ do not necessarily have to be senior to be ‘distinguished’, although it recognizes that the maturity of the military officers who attend the College means that a certain gravitas is likely to be helpful. Younger scholars, however, often have more energy — and newer ideas — than their older colleagues. Perhaps the College could consider having more than one category of visiting professor, thereby opening up the catchment area.
Still another possibility here is to consider the appointment as “Visiting Professors” (or as “Senior Research Fellows”) of appropriately qualified personnel from the public service or the Canadian Forces themselves. Recently retired Deputy Ministers, ADMs, general officers, and the like come obviously to mind. These sorts of appointments need to be made with some care, since very senior retirees are sometimes “tired,” or harbour expensive expectations that they think appropriate to their status, or are not well endowed with attributes that are suited more generally to academic endeavour. But when carefully chosen, appointees of this sort can greatly enrich the intellectual life of almost any pertinent academic community, not least because of the wealth of practical experience upon which they can draw. (Dr. Hattendorf has described a number of variations on this general theme in a memorandum to Dr. Falk dated 31 December 2007.)
Adjuncts, Research Fellows and Post-Doctoral Fellows. The Board recognizes that these kinds of appointments could make a major contribution to the academic activities and capabilities of both the Department of Defence Studies and the College as a whole, but some of its members, guided by experience, warned in the discussion against making too many such appointments. They should be made carefully and with relatively specific objectives in view, and they should normally be of limited duration (three to five years is common). Renewals can certainly be entertained, but not automatically, and the working assumption should be that the appointments end when they are scheduled to do so. Unless such care is taken, the College may soon find that it is ‘mast-heading’ a long list of performers who do not, in fact, perform — not, at least, in ways that are helpful to the College. Making appointments for their ‘prestige effect’ alone should thus be avoided.
The Director has asked for our comments on how these sorts of arrangements are run, and in response we offer the following:
In university contexts, ‘Adjunct’ appointments are sometimes given to professors who have retired but wish to maintain an identification with their career employer for research purposes, or perhaps to legitimize their role as consultants, and so on. Graduate faculties often given retirees this designation as a way of maintaining a critical mass of expertise capable of contributing to the work of thesis supervisory committees, examination committees, and the like. If the ‘Adjunct’ plays these roles, it is usually on a pro bono basis, the quid pro quo being the continuing attachment to the institution, access to library resources, perhaps the use of an office, and similar privileges.
In some institutions, ‘Adjuncts’ may be appointed from the faculty of other universities — perhaps because they are close by and can lend expertise that supports the research and/or graduate programme operations of the appointing university. This is sometimes done also in the case of faculty members who are located far away — even abroad — but there is then usually a history of research co-operation or something of the sort. There are exceptions, but these sorts of arrangements often last longer on paper than they do in substance.
Non-resident Research Fellows may be appointed — with or without remuneration — because their research programmes are (a) active, and (b) directly relevant to the research specialization of a department or one or more of its faculty members. These appointments are often quite similar to those of ‘Adjuncts.’ In the case of think-tanks (like the CDFAI, for example), Research Fellows may receive modest retainers — ranging from a few hundred dollars to more substantial sums — in return for an understanding that they will contribute at a pre-defined level to the publications programme of their host. In universities, however, Research Fellows are more commonly expected to be on campus and to be engaged in a significant research project. In these cases, they will be remunerated for a fixed term, sometimes renewable, and may be expected to teach a class, deliver one or more public lectures, organize at least one conference, or otherwise contribute to the university’s academic life.
Post-Doctoral Fellows are often treated in much the same way, and with similar obligations, and they usually have a project to work on (frequently, in the case of the humanities and social sciences, the conversion of their doctoral thesis into a book or series of articles). PDFs are commonly (not always) appointed on a competitive basis, and are therefore expected to apply for their positions. Most universities will limit their terms (to a maximum of perhaps two years, or three), and will expect evidence of accomplishment at the end of each year as a condition of re-appointment in the second and/or third years.
In almost all of these cases, there is a clear expectation that the appointee will contribute to the luster of the university by doing significant research, and, if required, that s/he will contribute at professional standard to the process of advising, teaching and/or examining students.
Here, as elsewhere, the CFC may need to be more pro-active than a well-established civilian university would need to be in order to attract qualified candidates. Over time, suitable ‘Adjuncts’ are likely to come to the attention of the Department as a by-product of encounters at conferences, the responses of interested scholars to papers presented by its faculty, and so on. In the other categories — particularly that of PDFs — using Canadians abroad (notably the U.K., France, or the U.S.) as a source of suggestions can be a helpful way to go. The competition, however, is likely to intensify over the next few years as the pace of university recruitment accelerates in response to the retirement bubble (this process is already in evidence and will become full-blown in another three or four years).
Interns. The Board has also been asked to comment on its experience with DND interns and “co-op” placement students. While we do not have specific figures readily at our disposal, those who have been involved with graduate students specializing in defence-related subjects have the impression that a fair number have been appointed to internship positions (in government, the CISS, the CDA, etc.), and many have eventually graduated to permanent employment in the federal public service, NGOs, intergovernmental organizations, and the like. The same is true of students who have taken up internships with DFAIT or who have worked overseas on development projects. Students of both public administration and business administration seem to have similar experiences with their co-op placements, where these apply, but again we do not have hard data at our disposal.
The responsibilities of interns obviously vary, depending on the specifics of their appointments and on the agendas of the day. Some of us, however, have been surprised by the amount of responsibility that they are sometimes given — a reflection, perhaps, of the burgeoning workloads of the government departments concerned. This work is often related to policy development and policy research, which makes it particularly interesting for students with graduate-level backgrounds. Most interns, but not all, tend to have Master’s-level credentials.
If the CFC were interested in attracting such interns, it would probably have a reasonably plentiful supply from which to choose, and the SDF centres, along with institutions like the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, the Munk Centre, CIGI, etc. would be good places to start. The CFC and the Department of Defence Studies would find such interns particularly helpful if it were decided to embark on a series of occasional academic conferences on security-related or other “international affairs” subjects, since they could provide a great deal of assistance in handling the time-consuming chores of conference organization and logistics, the administrative nurturing of visiting participants, the writing of rapporteur reports, and so on.. (This kind of role is often played by graduate students in university departments, and they usually do it very well — their maturity reflecting, perhaps, the confidence they have acquired as a result, at least in part, of the emphasis in recent years of “positive reinforcement” approaches to pedagogy in the school system.)
Having said all that, the Board has one reservation that it thinks the College should keep in mind. Internship programmes, like “co-op” programmes, are normally designed to give students an exposure to the practical world — some would say the “real” world — as manifested particularly in their particular field of study and interest. Hence, Business Schools arrange for co-op placements in firms operating in the private sector, DND offers Internships at NDHQ, and so on. But the CFC is itself an educational institution, with purposes in many respects very similar to those of professional schools in regular universities. From that point of view, a programme aimed at attracting Interns from the university community might not be a very good “fit.” At the very least, careful attention would have to be given to the programme’s terms of reference, to ensure that Interns were receiving useful and challenging practical experience as opposed simply to more classroom education accompanied by an obligation to fulfil some rudimentary administrative chores.
External Examiners. The Board was also asked about the role played in civilian universities by external examiners. All institutions use them at the doctoral level, and some do also at the Master’s level (although in the latter case the ‘external’ is often drawn from a cognate department in the home institution rather than being brought in at considerable expense from another university). Honoraria are usually paid, but in most cases amount to little more than tokens (as little as $100.). The primary purpose of the external examiner is obviously to act as a safeguard to ensure the maintenance of appropriate academic standards. The obvious danger is that the relationship between the faculty of a department and their senior graduate students will become so close that the supervising academics lose both their professional perspective and their willingness to take a firm hand in insisting on a high level of performance. This function is also performed by the common requirement that the examining committee be chaired by a representative of the Dean of Graduate Studies and that it include one or more members from other university departments.
In the case of the Canadian Forces College, and in line with its own past practice in recruiting externals to assist with both the supervision and examination of research papers, the use of off-campus examiners may be particularly helpful in compensating for the fact that the number of faculty members on staff is relatively small. It can also provide an opportunity to promote an understanding of the programmes of the College among potentially interested civilian academics who might otherwise be unfamiliar with them.
The process can be expensive, however — particularly if the externals are sometimes recruited from far-away institutions. (Some universities have rules that require departments to seek examiners from a defined geographical area so as to minimize travel costs.) That being so, it would seem sensible for the College, where possible, to make use of academics who are within reasonable commuting range. Given the number and size of universities in the general vicinity, this should not be difficult. There may be a case for using the ‘Adjunct’ category of appointment as a means of establishing a reliable stable of suitably qualified specialists in the Toronto area who can perform this function.
The Board hopes the foregoing comments — discursive though they are — will be of some assistance to the Department and to the College as it continues to develop and refine its operations.
PROGRAMME ISSUES
General Fraser began his discussion with the Board on the second day by commenting on the growing complexity of military operations and the military function generally in the current international environment. The Canadian Forces can no longer be regarded as a ‘one-trick pony,’ nor can they perform their duties as if they were. The challenges they now confront need to be addressed by officers who have been exposed to a wide array of academic disciplines, notably including those traditionally associated with the concept of a “liberal education.” They also need to be aware of the importance of ensuring that all three environmental services can, and do, work with one another co-operatively and on a suitably co-ordinated basis. It is essential, as well, for them to develop the capacity to operate in tandem with other kinds of players in the field — development assistance agencies, NGOs, diplomatic personnel, police officers and the like — as well as with indigenous communities and their leaderships at multiple levels.
These requirements are pertinent not only to the situation in Afghanistan (although their significance has certainly been demonstrated very clearly in the Afghan context), but in other theatres as well, and the new realities are likely to persist indefinitely into the future. It follows that the CF needs to foster a new ‘state of mind’. In effect, it has to change its internal ‘culture.’ This process is bound to take considerable time, but the requirement itself is urgent. It has a direct bearing, moreover, on the task of military education, and hence on the programmes and activities of the College.
The Board is in agreement with these observations, and is happy to assist the College in any way it can in dealing with such curricular and other issues as may be implied by them. It hopes that the observations in the ‘Academic Issues’ section of the present report may be of some help to the College on the general question of how best to encourage the participation and involvement of the wider university community.
In responding more directly to some of the issues raised by General Fraser, however, the following observations occur to us:
Curriculum Review. The Board is certainly willing to comment on curricular issues, keeping the overall purpose of the new educational strategy envisaged by the Commandant carefully in mind.
But it should be understood that this cannot be done responsibly, as it were, ‘off the top,’ since it would require members of the Board to have a reasonably detailed knowledge of the substantive ground covered in the existing curriculum (whatever the particular programme under review); a sense of what portions of it were thought to be indispensable from the “technical/professional” point of view and what portions were open to being dropped in favour of alternative options; a clear understanding of the time-constraints that bear on the amount of ground that participants in the programme can reasonably be expected to cover; and so on.
The Board would thus need to have considerable background information on these and other details of the curriculum and how it is delivered before being in a position to offer useful advice at the broadest level of curriculum selection and design.
From the Board’s point of view, the job would be much easier, of course, if the questions it was asked to address were posed in more specific form. For example, ‘X numbers of hours are potentially available in Programme Y for “liberal education” options. Given the specializations of our in-house faculty, and given the educational objectives of Programme Y overall, what kinds of curricular offerings should the College consider for deployment in this “liberal education” category?’
If curricular issues cannot be posed in this relatively focused way, however, and if a more fundamental review of programme content is required, there will be no escaping the need to acquaint the Board in some detail with the substance and texture of the pertinent curricula in their present form.
In short, the Board would be pleased to offer its comments on curricular matters of this kind, but it thinks it would be very important to give careful thought in advance to the question of how its advice can be most usefully and efficiently pursued.
M.A. in International Studies. One of the consequences of the emerging emphasis on the need to broaden the education of CF personnel has been an attempt to encourage officers to pursue advanced degrees in subject-areas not traditionally regarded as “professional.” In this context, the College is contemplating the introduction of an M.A. programme in International Studies in conjunction with a re-organization of its programmes overall, and more particularly at the DP4 level. The objective is to make it possible for students to complete the requirements in 10 months. The arrangement would respond not only to the need to strengthen the “liberal education” ingredient of officer preparation, but also to the interest of the officers themselves in receiving an externally recognized credential at the end of their studies. It is hoped as well that the programme might prove to be an attractive option for non-military personnel, too — most obviously public servants in other departments of government. The Commandant wishes to proceed with this initiative as quickly as possible.
While supporting the enterprise in principle, the Board offers the following cautionary observations:
a. Establishing new degree programmes, especially if it is intended that they receive OCGS approval, is a lamentably time-consuming process, sometimes taking several years. The College itself may be much more nimble in matters of this kind than civilian universities (particularly if new resources have been made available to cover the cost so that substantive decisions are not delayed by prolonged budgetary negotiations), and its status as a federal government institution means that it can escape the scrutiny of provincial post-secondary education regulators if it wishes. In the case of the MDS programme, however, there was a very strong desire to gain OCGS approval in order to strengthen the legitimacy of the degree. Presumably the same considerations would apply here. But the procedures followed by the OCGS bureaucracy on matters of this kind are very time-consuming.
Given these realities, the Board’s view is that it might be best to begin the process by working in close co-operation with civilian institutions (for example, Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs in Ottawa), so that the educational function can be pursued through programmes that are already in place. It is possible that the partner universities in such cases would be willing to grant at last some credit for classes taken at other institutions, including the CFC, but that would depend on their general graduate degree regulations, as well as on their assessment of the pertinent components of the CFC’s own programmes. The Paterson School example may be particularly promising (assuming it has the capacity to bear the load) since it is located in Ottawa and hence is readily accessible to officers assigned to NDHQ, and since it operates on a multidisciplinary basis in a way that could make it more accommodative of the varied educational backgrounds of qualified military personnel. If workable arrangements could be negotiated with Carleton, perhaps they could be complemented by supportive understandings with other universities (e.g., Dalhousie and the University of Victoria in relation to naval personnel, the University of Manitoba in the context of Air Command, and so on).
b. The Board’s view of this matter is sustained also by another important consideration, which is that the Department of Defence Studies within the CFC itself — while happily enlarged — is nonetheless still quite small, and the specializations of its faculty run across a number of different disciplines. That being so, and given the existing responsibilities of its members, there is a very real danger that expecting them to deliver a new M.A. programme within a very short time-frame may be asking more of them than they can reasonably manage. This is particularly the case in a context in which the existing programmes of the College are being reorganized, and at a time when enrolments in those programmes have been increasing.
The Board recognizes that it might be possible (within limits) to obtain additional academic assistance from faculty members at RMC. Even so, if the need to expose officers to ‘International Studies’ at the graduate level is regarded as a matter of some urgency, the quickest way to proceed would be to tap into conventional university programmes that are already in operation. The development of a new programme centered specifically at the College could then proceed at a more measured and responsible pace.
Attracting Personnel to the College from Other Government Departments, the NGO Community, etc. The Board agrees with the view that the participation of a larger number of suitably qualified non-military personnel in the College’s programmes would enrich the intellectual life of the institution and contribute to the broadening of the educational experience of enrolled military officers. It is likely that the difficulty experienced thus far in recruiting “students” of this sort has resulted in part from the perception of the CFC as a ‘staff college’ devoted to traditional forms of purely military education. It follows that a broadening of programme content, and the introduction of an M.A. programme in International Studies, could both help to rectify the problem.
Having said that, and while not wishing to earn a reputation as the supplier of wet blankets, the Board thinks it only realistic to recognize that the recruiting problem is a product of other factors, too, and that these may prove very difficult to overcome. In the first place, public servants in other departments (and NGO personnel, too) have other options that may be much more convenient to them — including most obviously those represented by the ready accessibility in Ottawa (for example) of programmes offered at both the University of Ottawa and Carleton. A large portion of the students at the Paterson School, for example, fall into this category. They can take courses part-time — which sometimes allows them to pursue their educational objectives without giving up their employment responsibilities. Even if they are given a leave of absence to pursue graduate-level study, they can do so in the Ottawa environment without disrupting their families, their living arrangements, and all the rest.
In addition, many government agencies are very short-staffed, and are therefore reluctant to grant leaves to their more valuable personnel, even if the purpose is educational.
In the case of the staffs of NGOs, these same factors can also apply, but they are often compounded by lack of financial resources (as well as by ideological suspicions, in some instances, of the military enterprise). It has to be recognized, moreover, that even if
CFC programming is broadened in line with the current strategic vision, it must still cover the essential requirements of professional military education, and this will be a constraint on its capacity to attract non-military actors (who, at civilian universities, can pick-and-choose to their own liking from cafeterias well stocked with an eclectic array of offerings).
The Board realizes these observations are not very helpful, and it is certainly in favour of making the recruitment attempt. But it suspects the results will be somewhat disappointing unless a very determined effort is orchestrated in tandem with senior managers in the pertinent departments to encourage their staffs to take advantage of CFC-based opportunities. Perhaps such an orchestration is possible on the basis of ‘3-D’ arguments. It is likely, however, to require determined and committed “top-down” leadership. Whether such leadership will be strengthened — or weakened — by the Afghanistan experience remains to be seen.
Distance Learning Capacity. Among the educational techniques that are under discussion in the attempt to make graduate study accessible to serving officers are those associated with ‘distance-ed’, and rapidly evolving communications technologies are making these kinds of options more practicable (in principle, at least) every day.
The Board does not wish to claim significant expertise in this field, although (as noted earlier in this report) it has the sense that Canadian universities, with a handful of exceptions (Athabaska, for example, and Memorial in relation to the outports of Newfoundland and Labrador), have done relatively little to facilitate distance learning options. There are certainly some very successful examples, particularly in specialized fields — e.g., in the education of nurses stationed in the far North — and medical schools have been experimenting with systems that allow doctors in rural areas to gain ready access to diagnostic and treatment advice that is otherwise available only in urban-based tertiary-care hospitals. Everyone can think of operations of this sort, and they are apparently becoming more common.
But it needs to be noted that distance education initiatives come with a very heavy “front-end load”, and are highly labour-intensive, particularly in the early stages. It is quite possible that the College could serve the military community very well by taking some initiatives in this direction, not least because so many of its library holdings are electronically accessible. Given the work-loads involved, however, the Board thinks that staff should consult quite closely with institutions that have had a lot of experience in this field before embarking on specific projects, and that the College should probably ‘start slow’ — that is, by offering at the beginning only one or two reading courses, complemented with written assignments, in order thereby to “test the waters” before committing to a major distance learning initiative. A start-up course in international affairs (popular with students everywhere) might be a promising vehicle with which to begin. But it would add considerably to the burden of those involved, especially in the early phases.
ROLE OF THE BOARD OF VISITORS
Finally, the Board has been asked for comments on its own role.
In response, it wishes to emphasize again that it is very happy to assist the College in any way that the College itself finds useful. It can certainly do this by commenting on questions submitted to it for discussion — as in the case of the present report. Its members would be pleased as well to respond individually to requests for comments and suggestions at any time on issues with which they may have had previous experience. If they can help to “open doors” in their own institutions or in others so that College staff can have ready contact with potential “partners” and the like, they would be glad to do that, too.
As indicated earlier, the Board would also be pleased to help with curriculum review and other matters requiring detailed knowledge of the College’s operations, but it notes that to be effective in this area, it would have to meet more frequently, and the process in most cases would require careful preparation in advance by in-house staff.
In this connection, and somewhat more generally, the Board notes that advisory boards in comparable contexts elsewhere normally meet quite regularly — often two, three or four times a year, and certainly not less than annually. Their ability to help, moreover, is greatly enhanced by the common practice of ensuring that they are supplied with agendas, background briefing papers, and the like, well in advance of their meetings. For a variety of reasons, many of them quite understandable, this has not been the pattern at the CFC. One of the results is that a great deal of time is often consumed in bringing the Visitors up to speed on recent developments so that they can be in a position to address issues of current importance in useful fashion. In some areas, they may even need to be reminded of details that they have forgotten since the previous meeting — which in the most recent instance had occurred fully two years earlier, in November 2005. The Board is composed of very active folk, and they are not “looking for work.” But if they are to be used to good effect as a source of potentially helpful comment and advice on the academic operations of the College, their on-campus encounters may have to be more regular than in the past, and the preparation for them not quite so spontaneously ad hoc.
Ultimately, however, the Board is in place to serve the College in whatever way it can. It is up to the College to define what the Board’s agenda should be, and to make the arrangements necessary to ensure the it can be efficiently pursued.
Finally, if the Board is to be helpful in offering further assistance on many of the matters discussed in this report, it thinks it would be very helpful at some point in the relatively near future to have brief presentations from the various members of the academic staff on their own research activities and agendas. Among other things, that would help members of the Board to assist CFC faculty in identifying professors with similar or overlapping interests in other institutions.
Respectfully submitted,
Michel Fortmann (l’Université de Montréal)
John Hattendorf (U.S. Naval War College)
Brian Job (University of British Columbia)
J.J. Jockel (St. Lawrence University)
Marc Milner (University of New Brunswick)
Denis Stairs (Dalhousie University), Chair
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