The Air Force Starts Here

Welcome to episode #21 of Developing Mach-21 Airmen! In this episode, we’re featuring the audio from a recent Facebook Town Hall with the AETC Command Team where we sat down with Lt. Gen. Brad Webb and Chief Master Sgt. Juliet Gudgel and talked about a host of topics, including the First Command’s new mission, vision, and priorities. We also in depth in each of the four priority areas, which align with the letters of AETC:

Advance Force Development

Enhance Lethality & Readiness

Transform the Way We Learn

Cultivate an Environment of Excellence

We also took some questions from the viewers, including one asking for Lt. Gen. Webb’s favorite song to play on the guitar. Listen to find out.

Episode 20 of the pod has Maj. Lindsey Torres, the Special Warfare Training Wing’s lead performance dietitian, sitting down with us talking about how the wing is using a holistic approach to nutrition education and training that will help the readiness of the Air Force’s future Special Warfare Airmen, enabling them to ultimately perform better across the length of their careers.  Torres speaks to how the nutrition plan has evolved over time at the wing,  as well as what it actually looks like in terms of the execution, including hydration, on a daily basis to build those healthy habits that will stay with the trainees long after they leave the formal training pipeline.

Welcome to episode #19 of Developing Mach-21 Airmen! In this episode, we have a guest interviewer learning more about the "Classroom of the Future" that is used at the Inter-American Air Forces Academy, or IAAFA: 1st. Lt. Kayshel Trudell, a public affairs officer currently at the 37th Training Wing at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland. In this episode, Trudell sits down with Lt. Col. Isaac Davidson, the IAAFA commandant, and Staff Sgt. Hugo Garza Salas, a Classroom of the Future cyber instructor at IAAFA. They talk about how the Classroom of the Future provides the tools and technology to optimize and streamline learning. the Classroom of the Future pushes Force development along the Continuum of Learning by flipping the teaching model to a learner-focus approach that dramatically shortens students’ learning curve and allows for hands-on experimental learning that is focused on solving real-world problems in a classroom setting that can immediately be implemented in the field. They also talk about how the relationships built at IAAFA span the Americas, making the U.S. a partner of choice and giving students the advantage of a connected environment and collaboration workspace from anywhere in the world.

Welcome to episode #18 of the Developing Mach-21 Airmen podcast! In this pod, Captain Kyle Palko chats with 2nd Lt. Robert Guest about Project Nexus, an AETC Integrated Technology Detachment and AFWERX-Austin collaboration that is testing one way to fuel technology problem-solving efforts for Airmen across the Air Force. Capt. Palko, the Project NEXUS project manager, talks about the three test groups of Airmen, or cohorts. All Airmen are being taught software design by contracted, tech-bootcamp-style companies. Each Airman also focuses on either data science, software design, or user experience/user interface design. Capt. Palko goes in-depth on the types of problems that Project Nexus is aiming to solve. Some are specific, like one cohort’s capstone project to create a mobile app for instructor pilots to grade students in-flight. Others are more about changing culture and enabling Airmen to solve problems using data science and software organically, at their home units, aligning with larger Air Force goals such as revitalizing squadrons.

Episode #17 of the pod features Lt. Col. Jamie Wiley and Vincent Villanueva, the director and deputy respectively, from the HQ AETC Occupational Competencies Branch, talking about their develop competency-based learning models across the Air Force’s 266 career fields. The competencies, which combine the knowledge and skills needed to complete a task with the behaviors and other skills, such as critical thinking, stress management, teamwork or leadership, help lay the foundation for force development, tying directly into the profession of arms and making Airmen more well-rounded. Additionally, career fields can use these competencies to give them time back as part of Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein’s focus on revitalizing squadrons.

On the pod, Chief Master Sgt. Steve West, Air Force Handbook 1 program manager at Air Education and Training Command's Studies and Analysis Squadron, discusses the AFH1 phone application intended for both professional development and promotion testing prep. Chief West talks about the learning tools inside the app, as well as resources and saved content capabilities of the app, which is available on both iOS and Android at no cost to Airmen.

On this episode, Lt. Col. Eric Frahm, director of the AETC Integrated Technology Detachment up at the Capital Factory in Austin, Texas, joins the show, talking about innovation in the multi-domain operational environment, technology, and Learning Next amongst other topics. During the conversation, Lt. Col. Frahm talks about his role at the ATID helping lay down the infrastructure, tools and resources that teams need to innovate inside their work environment, as well as how the ATID works in conjunction with numerous other innovation entities to include the AETC staff and innovation ecosystem. Lt. Col. Frahm also goes in depth about the awesome partnership between AETC and the Air Force Research Laboratory to support the emerging innovation mission.

On the pod, Senior Airman Francisco Melendez from the Air University public affairs team sits down with Tech. Sgt. Joshua Steward and Senior Master Sgt. Markesha Crawford from the Barnes Center at AU to talk about the Enlisted Professional Military Education Instructor Course, or EPMEIC. Topics include what the course is & how it prepares Airmen to become instructors and get comfortable facilitating and teaching in the classroom, along with the curriculum development process. Additionally, Crawford talks to her role as the superintendent of the team that develops the curriculum across enlisted PME, the continuum of learning & how people grow through education in their life, and more!

On the pod, Air Education and Training Command public affairs sits down with the commander, Lt. Gen. Steve Kwast, talking through the last two years and what has stuck out to him about the recruit, train, and educate enterprise. Topics include how the command has executed its strategic goals, including flipping the headquaerters organizational structure; breaking long-held, industrial-aged paradigms; innovation; and the general's battle cry to the Airmen of AETC as he prepares to hand the guidon to Lt. Gen. Brad Webb July 26, 2019.

Dr. Kristen Lewis from the 381st Training Group at Vandenburg AFB, Calif., talks about the research behind student-centered learning in communities of practice, which is meant to maximize the learning potential of students by focusing on the needs of individual students. Topics include the research behind the method; it's components and implementation; how it breaks long-held, industrial age paradigms in training; and how to win over the skeptics!