Originally published by Defense Acquisition University
The Defense Acquisition Workforce is continuing to adapt to the changes in the Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act (DAWIA) certification requirements. One organization finding new ways to meet the workforce’s needs is the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS). NPS provides graduate-level education, and in 2022, NPS President Ann E. Rondeau and DAU President Jim Woolsey signed a formal Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) outlining how NPS can integrate DAU’s courses and education into NPS’s curricula.
“The MOA reinforced the key relationship DAU has with NPS,” said Andrew Gepp, DAU West Program Management Department Chair. This MOA has given DAU and NPS opportunities to learn from shared experiences while expanding each organization’s network and developing future acquisition leaders. NPS and DAU have maintained a working relationship for decades. The MOA evolved DAU and NPS’s relationship from the existing equivalency program to a more dynamic partnership. “The MOA is a win for the students, Services, NPS, and DAU,” said Dr. Bob Mortlock, NPS Principal Investigator for Acquisition Research Program and Professor of the Practice within the Acquisition Sciences Group.
Among NPS’s offerings are graduate degrees in the Acquisition Sciences, primarily in program management and contract management. NPS also offers degrees in acquisition functional areas to include financial management, life cycle logistics and manpower analysis. NPS students earn graduate degrees in relevant acquisition disciplines ranging from engineering to national security to information sciences.
NPS serves students across the Services including international students; in July 2023, the graduating cohort included Army, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Navy, and Air Force officers. International students have included officers from Germany and Djibouti as well as a female Afghanistan Air Force officer. These diverse perspectives allow students to consider what best practices from other countries and organizations can be applied in new acquisition scenarios, all while being grounded in coursework that solidifies their understanding of acquisition fundamentals.
“We’re teaching graduate-level courses for students to earn Master of Science degrees,” Mortlock said. NPS wanted to integrate professional training and certification requirements into their curriculum, Mortlock explained. “DAU is the lead for that since DAWIA and the formation of the acquisition profession.”
NPS Students and the Acquisition Workforce
“Many NPS students have not worked directly in the acquisition environment before coming to NPS,” Mortlock said. “But, they have all been the recipients of acquisition products and services as warfighters.” NPS helps prepare those students as they rise through the ranks and become senior leaders by giving them the background and information they need to work directly in the areas of program management, contracting, engineering technical management, test and evaluation, financial management and life cycle logistics, Mortlock explained.
“To maximize the Services’ investment in these warrior-scholars while at NPS, this MOA with DAU provides NPS students access to world-class DAU training courses, resources and faculty,” Mortlock said, with NPS faculty integrating DAU training into their courses while maintaining the academic standards of graduate-level courses.
“NPS is providing a variety of ways for current and future acquisition professionals to get better trained and educated,” Mortlock said. Students can apply this training to identify acquisition strategies for current and future mission challenges, including some with pressing deadlines. During their time at NPS, they may develop solutions that meet real-world challenges as part of Innovation Capstone Project teams that integrate expertise in acquisition, technological capabilities, and operational needs. After graduation, they will be able to determine the best approaches for future acquisition projects.
DAU and NPS did not previously have a formal memorandum of agreement or understanding, and this formalized the relationship between the two organizations. For DAU, this MOA has helped to try out new ways to collaborate, and NPS has been able to improve their students’ experience at the school.
“Feedback from the NPS students is overwhelmingly positive about the DAU course content, resources and faculty,” Mortlock said. “NPS students appreciate the opportunity to maximize their time at NPS to also receive DAU training.”
Benefits and Mechanics of the MOA
In August 2022, NPS and DAU jointly agreed to focus on offering NPS students quarterly seats in existing courses (notably, Intermediate Systems Acquisition and Program Management Tools courses). This allows NPS students to leverage DAU’s online training by ensuring these courses are available to NPS’s students. Thanks to the virtual and asynchronous nature of these courses, the students are better able to integrate the courses into their graduate schedules.
“DAU going virtual made this relationship much more viable,” stated Dr. Hank DeVries, Associate Dean for Academics, DAU West Region.
DAU’s courses fit together with NPS’s offerings. While previously, NPS focused on equivalency, the MOA has opened new ways for the organizations to partner and change what equivalency means, and changing how students can communicate and think. Multiple solutions were examined, and the MOA became the way forward.
“These courses are popular with students and allow them to earn fulfillment for DAU training courses for the Program Manager Practitioner level of DAWIA certification,” Mortlock said.
“NPS has a goal and vision of providing students maximum flexibility to tailor their graduate education to their personal goals and the needs of their Services,” Mortlock said. All of this helps to maximize the students’ and Services’ return on investment from an NPS graduate education.
The MOA’s alignment supports NPS’s vision to provide 21st century education that readily adapts to meet the needs of individual students and their organizations. NPS has transitioned its graduate degree curricula in the Acquisition Sciences to modular Master of Science degrees. Students can earn these degrees in as little as one year, but students can expand their education to up to two years by adding stackable certificates (usually 4 courses each) to the base degree. For example, an NPS student earning a Master of Science in Program Management or Systems Acquisition Management (that embeds DAU PM training courses) can also add a certificate in contract management, which includes embedded DAU contracting training courses. NPS also supports the Joint Professional Military Education certificate offered by the Naval War College in an 18-month program.
Results and Technology
“The benefits of graduate education are realized well in the future” of a student’s career, Mortlock said. These benefits are often qualitative in nature, with NPS-educated senior leaders making more-informed decisions in increasingly more challenging operational environments. “NPS produces military and civilian leaders who are better critical thinkers, problem solvers, decision makers and resource managers,” Mortlock said.
In training these students, NPS developed a strategy tailored to the unique constraints of NPS students, which took advantage of DAU’s virtual and online training (OLT) offerings. “NPS faculty can integrate self-paced OLT courses into NPS courses so that the DAU OLT training covers certain course objectives,” Mortlock said. This frees up NPS faculty to focus class time on learning objectives that benefit more from team exercises, case studies, and integrated lab assignments. Faculty also can then focus on the application of basic principles at a higher level.”
“The strategic alliance is a win-win,” DeVries said. “NPS gets acquisition training for their students, who are pursuing a focused education path, and DAU augments our classes with NPS students to add diversity and maintain a consistent demand signal for coursework.”
MOA and partnerships like this allow DAU to find new ways to handle equivalency and work with the Services. The MOA has demonstrated new methods to deliver training in diverse ways to students, including helping both NPS and DAU to make connections with the students.
“The NPS-DAU partnership is an example of two organizations with similar and complimentary missions mutually supporting each other,” Mortlock said. “We are focused collectively on our customers: warrior scholars, the Services and acquisition professionals that can deliver warfighter capability at the speed and scale of relevance.”
Read this article on the DAU website.