The Air Force wants every active-duty captain to attend Squadron Officer School in residence. To make that happen, courses have been shortened from eight weeks to five weeks, and seven courses will be offered each year instead of five.
The changes take effect in November, said Phil Berube, spokesman for the 42nd Air Base Wing Public Affairs, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, where the school is located.
More than 4,700 Air Force and international officers and Defense Department civilians — an increase from 3,600 — will now graduate from the school annually, Maj. Joshua Watkins, Squadron Officer School director of staff, said in an email to Air Force Times.
"For 80 percent of the folks in the Air Force, Squadron Officer School will be their only in-residence Primary Military Education experience," he said. "Rather than concentrating on 'your' tactical expertise, in-residence affords officers the opportunity to learn about the many different missions that the Air Force accomplishes and the people who accomplish them. So it's imperative that we get it right."
The changes mean the removal of 61 hours of instructor-to-student contact time. A majority of the time lost was from the warfare portion of the curriculum, Watkins said. "We rewrote a significant number of courses taught at SOS to make sure that all of the learning objectives are still covered in the 5 week course."
Squadron Officer School has five focus areas: leadership, communication, international security studies, warfare, and the profession of arms, with leadership the primary focus.
Before the change, in-residence Squadron Officer School was available for all Line of the Air Force captains, and on a limited basis for Non-Line of the Air Force captains. Officers were eligible to complete distance learning as soon as they were selected for promotion to captain.
While captains will now study in-residence, they will do so later in their careers. Previously, the ideal time to attend in-residence was between the four- and seven-year service mark. "With the new eligibility requirements, active-duty captains will not be able to enroll until they are past seven years in service," Watkins said.
The change also will allow for additional seats for Reserve and Guard officers to participate, Watkins said. "Unfortunately, a strong majority of [Reserve and Guard] captains are traditional or part-time and unable to commit to an eight week in residence program because of their civilian jobs," he said. "Hopefully the reduction in course time will allow more people to participate."
The change from eight- to five-week courses will save the Air Force $1.9 million per year, Watkins said.
The move comes in step with the service's plan to motivate airmen to evaluate their schedules and job performance, and make better use of their time.
The Air Force in August announced it will now prohibit officers who have been selected for developmental education from finishing a distance learning course — maintained online — unless they are later picked to attend a program that requires a distance learning course to get full joint PME credit.
In addition, captains now will not be allowed to take the distance learning course for Squadron Officer School unless they cannot attend the school because they are deployed or are otherwise engaged in an operation, and are within one year of meeting the major promotion board.
Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve officers will still be able to attend the distance learning course for Squadron Officer School, the Air Force said.
Squadron Officer School, under Squadron Officer College at Maxwell, was a five-week program until 2011 when the college extended the course to be eight weeks.■
