Upcoming Episodes

• Esteemed resident ECE instructor, Capt Jonathan Reasoner, shares his extensive experiences as both a Civil Engineer and Explosive Ordnance Disposal officer.

• Nuclear Physicist and inventor of the Gamma Ray detection system Jack FitzGerald ‘10 discusses his optimism in artificial intelligence as a Principal Applied Scientist at Amazon. He also shares a spirit mission from his time as a cadet.

Recently Published

• Space Foundation CEO Maj Gen (R) Heather Pringle ‘91 joined me to discuss her time as AFRL Commander and how Human Factors will play a role in wars where weapons systems are remotely piloted.

• Harvard Business School Alumni and now Admissions Board Member Vai Schierholtz ‘11 discussed how he was able to try so many career fields including Aircraft Maintenance, Acquisitions, Investment Banking, Sales, and Marketing.

Pulse of the Wing

The Spring ‘24 semester just kicked off and there is a lot of change happening in the wing.

4-Class system vs 4th Class system

— Culminating Events

In recent years, Doolies were the focus of training sessions and outside of Firstie Flag, there were no real culminating events after recognition. Soon there will be a culminating event for every class at USAFA, but the cadets still don’t know what this looks like.

OPINION - I understand the reasoning behind this, as Doolies have way more variables factoring into their MPA relative to the upper 3, not to mention MPA is a joke when it comes to AMIs and other subjective inspections. However, the DEOCS survey revealed high stress among the cadet wing and Gen Marks plans to “give cadets their time back,” I’m not sure how creating another culminating event would help this survey result. Then again, I’m sure the Chinese AFA Comm isn’t making concessions for his cadets.

— Passes

The upper 3 classes will no longer have unlimited passes but rather have monthly allotments of passes. This means that Firsties, 2 degs, 3 degs, and Doolies will have 16, 12, 8, and 4 passes respectively. There are some nuances with gaining passes for being on merit lists to my current knowledge.

OPINION - Although this doesn’t affect me since 12 is the perfect number to stay off base every weekend of the month, I’m not a big fan of this one. I get it, it tiers the classes to have more privileges, but I don’t see the purpose in keeping cadets on base in the first place.

AFSC Matching

The class of 24 and soon the class of 25 will experience a new AFSC matching process. For those unaware, before this change was made, matching was based more or less only on OPA, academic major, and AFSC preferences and the algorithm was a black box.

Now, career field managers were asked what they want out of a new LT to take into consideration more important things than just class rank. There is an open-response section and more opportunities for AFPC to collect more necessary data from cadets. The effect of this could look like a middle-of-the-pack cadet who codes in her free time could have a much higher likelihood of getting a cyber-related job (assuming that’s what career field managers are looking for). Check out my episode on this topic.

OPINION - I can see this change having massive positive effects on job satisfaction and retention in the Air Force. Since it resembles a real job market with an employer and applicants, I forsee so many more cadets getting what they want. Academic standings are important, but shouldn’t be the primary factor in the job search.