A Corporate Approach to National Security Space Education
Bruce Gardner
The Aerospace approach to continuing learning draws upon the expertise of its technical staff to present a flexible curriculum that can be tailored to the needs of a diverse workforce.
Many corporations are placing stronger demands on their in-house training and development organizations to provide more cost-effective educational approaches that are tailored to the unique learning needs of the national security space workforce. In particular, educational approaches are sought that effectively exploit the knowledge and experience of in-house engineering and scientific staff.
At The Aerospace Corporation, an integrated approach to space education has been developed for the design, delivery, and exploitation of in-house learning opportunities and resources supporting the corporation's engineers and scientists in addition to Aerospace customers and the broader national security space community.
Background, Drivers, and General Approach
Prior to 1994, the corporation's resources for formal training and education consisted of three primary elements: educational assistance for courses and degree programs at local universities; funding to attend professional conferences and workshops; and a small curriculum of in-house courses on specific technologies and professional skills.
The technical courses were taught by Aerospace engineers and scientists with a desire to share their expertise. Nontechnical classes, provided primarily by external vendors, emphasized the development of specific behavioral skills.
Until the mid-1990s, this approach was considered adequate; however, with the tightening of the defense budget, the advent of acquisition reform, and the increasing pace of senior retirements at the corporation, it was clear that a new approach would be needed. In particular, the corporation faced a growing need for employees who could identify and resolve complex, multidisciplinary systems issues beyond their particular area of technical expertise.
In 1994, the corporation established The Aerospace Institute to develop more effective ways of enhancing systems engineering skills throughout the technical workforce. Key aspects of the Institute's strategy were to promote the capture and sharing of existing cross-program knowledge, to introduce new ideas and approaches learned from the broader space industry and academic communities, and to develop a more systematic corporate approach for providing continuing space education for Aerospace personnel as well as the broader space community.
This third element has been addressed through the development and implementation of an integrated Space Education Support System (SESS). Through the years, this systematic approach to space education curriculum development and delivery has helped ensure proper alignment of in-house learning programs and resources with key corporate commitments and the unique educational needs of individual space professionals.
The Learning Curriculum
The core of the Space Education Support System is the learning curriculum. It features more than 100 individual courses organized into specialized continuing learning tracks to accommodate gradual employee development along a variety of potential career paths. These include the Corporate Business Orientation track, the Technical Orientation track, the Technical Specialty track, and the Critical Leadership/Behavioral Skills track. These tracks are further augmented by a number of corporate development programs targeting specific segments of the employee population.
Business and Technical Orientation
Soon after joining the corporation, a new engineer or scientist is encouraged to participate in the Corporate Business Orientation track by attending the one-day "Learning the Culture of Aerospace" course, which presents senior management perspectives and expectations concerning the corporation's core values, organizational vs. personal accountability, job performance, and career progression. The track continues with the three-day "Learning the Business of Aerospace" course, which provides a comprehensive overview of the corporation, its mission, its major business units, and supporting processes. Employees typically take this course within their first year. It features presentations by corporate executives and includes guided tours of the engineering and research laboratories.
After attending these two courses, engineers and scientists may take courses in the Technical Orientation track, which features a series of two-day technical overviews of the major satellite, launch, and ground systems that Aerospace supports as well as a one-day overview of systems acquisition, which describes the processes and organizational structures that control how national security space systems are procured and deployed.
The learning curriculum begins with a broad business overview, followed by a more focused orientation to the technical aspects of major national security space and acquisition support systems. After completing these two tracks, students can delve deeper into technical specialties, develop the behaviors required for effective project and team leadership, or participate in one of the corporate development programs. |
Technical Specialty and Leadership Skills
After completing the business overview and the technical orientation courses, staff members can move on to individual courses in the Technical Specialty or Critical Leadership/Behavioral Skills tracks. They may also choose to participate in one of the corporate development programs.
The Technical Specialty track targets engineers and scientists who wish to increase their understanding of new developments in their field of expertise or a related field of interest. It features more than 50 courses developed and taught by more than 280 senior Aerospace engineers, scientists, and program managers. The track is continuously updated to ensure that topics and content meet employee needs. It includes a number of short courses attended by senior Aerospace employees and customers. These cover a wide range of diverse topics of high interest to the national security space enterprise, such as system procurement, modeling and simulation, evolutionary computation, deception and denial, synthetic aperture radar, spread-spectrum communications, and others.
The Critical Leadership/Behavioral Skills track features courses taught by external vendors and experienced in-house technical staff that develop interpersonal and teaming skills and approaches found to be effective in working with customers at all levels. These include courses on critical thinking and decision making, influencing and negotiating, managing conflict, and presenting critical issues to senior management.
Corporate Development Programs
Three major programs—the Aerospace Systems Architecting and Engineering Certificate Program, the Aerospace Rotation Program, and the Corporate Leadership Program—are structured to develop critical core competencies, promote career growth, and prepare individuals for potential future roles in corporate management and technical leadership. They feature highly structured classroom learning and networking activities closely integrated with mentored, on-the-job development experiences sponsored and directed at the corporate level.
The Aerospace Systems Architecting and Engineering Certificate Program is the primary corporate educational vehicle for teaching critical cross-program systems knowledge and lessons learned. It is designed to promote awareness of the wide variety of technical roles that Aerospace performs and to develop a strong contingent of Aerospace employees with the broad systems-level perspective and skills needed to provide technical leadership within the national security space community. This program begins with a four-day introductory course focusing on Aerospace's roles and capabilities in systems architecting, engineering, and acquisition management. Those who wish to develop greater capabilities in one or more of these disciplines enter the "knowledge-building" segment, which begins with a four-day course that teaches how to work effectively on technical teams with customers and contractors. Next, students select one of three 120-hour programs designed to develop skills in applying Aerospace methodologies, tools, and resources to the three major systems disciplines: systems architecting, space systems engineering, and acquisition management. The final phase of the certificate program is the professional development segment, which features a one- to two-year on-the-job training assignment under the mentorship of a senior Aerospace program office or engineering group manager. Employees who complete all requisite coursework and mentored assignments and deliver a final presentation to a senior executive review committee are awarded the "Aerospace Systems Architect-Engineer" certificate. Since program inception, more than 1200 technical employees have participated in this program, 225 have completed at least one of the major curriculum tracks, and 26 have been awarded the certificate.
The Aerospace Systems Architecting and Engineering Certificate Program (ASAECP) is designed to impart the broad systems-level perspective and skills needed to provide technical leadership within the national security space community. More than 1200 technical employees have participated in this program, 225 have completed at least one of the major curriculum tracks, and 26 have been awarded the certificate. |
The Aerospace Rotation Program gives employees the opportunity to broaden their knowledge of company operations through temporary assignments in other departments. The long-term goals are to foster closer communication among the technical organizations, to enhance the technical and business skills of program participants, and to expand the corporation's career development options. The Aerospace Rotation Program creates temporary positions in all technical areas. Members of the technical staff may apply for an assignment for up to 12 months with the full assurance that upon completion, they may return to their original organization and position level. The Institute works with the Human Resources department to provide orientation, courses, coaching, and Web resources to prepare participants and their supervisors and to reinforce learning and development throughout the entire program. Currently, 29 employees are participating.
Corporate leadership programs include TIER (Teamwork, Innovation, Excellence, and Resources) and the Leadership Development Program. TIER, which targets midlevel directors, provides opportunities for collaboration and networking with executive managers and helps develop the behavioral competencies needed to function effectively in a dual role as an organization manager and technical project leader. The Leadership Development Program prepares upper-level directors and technical staff for executive positions by presenting them with complex corporate strategic issues to be worked in teams advised by senior executives and external consultants. Several of the projects undertaken in this program have led to recommendations for corporate change and contingency planning that have supported executive management decisions. To date, more than 120 midlevel and upper-level managers have participated in these two programs, many of whom subsequently achieved career promotions.
Classes for Aerospace Customers
The Space Education Support System learning curriculum also includes a number of programs that are made available to and, in some cases, tailored to the needs of government customers and support personnel in the defense, intelligence, and civil space sectors. Up to 20 percent of seating capacity for all courses is initially reserved for government customers at no charge. Unused customer seats are released for employee participation. The Space Systems Acquisition Management Program, part of the Aerospace Systems Architecting and Engineering Certificate Program, includes courses of benefit to newly hired personnel in customer program offices and is offered in-house annually.
While the Institute regularly schedules courses at primary corporate locations, customers at other locations often request special offerings to meet a specific need. Upon request, the Institute clears for public release a selected subset of courses for the general public. These enable contractors, professional society members, and others to participate individually or as teams along with Aerospace and government staff.
The participation of government and contractor personnel in the Aerospace educational program has proven beneficial in three major ways. First, Aerospace engineers and scientists gain a better understanding of the technical and programmatic underpinnings of the missions they support, enabling them to make better decisions on central issues. Second, customers learn about the capabilities of Aerospace and the best way to use these resources to help them perform their missions. Third, the instructors and students from Aerospace get a chance to showcase their talents and make networking connections.
Developing the Curriculum
The learning curriculum represents the most visible part of the Space Education Support System, but its success depends on the efforts of critical support groups working behind the scenes to ensure the consistent delivery of useful educational material (see sidebar, Top Lessons Learned). Foremost among these are the senior management advisory panel and the instructional design teams. Also crucial are the proven Aerospace problem-solving methods and relevant case studies that make the educational experience memorable and applicable. Rounding out the support network are the multimedia/e-learning support resources, job skill-need surveys, and learning maps that help to validate the curriculum design and guide employee selection of specific classroom experiences.
The learning curriculum forms the core of the Space Education Support System (SESS). It is continuously updated and enhanced based on inputs from corporate critical-skill-need surveys and the senior management advisory panel. The instructional design and delivery teams draw upon corporately sanctioned tools and methods, real case studies, and multimedia/e-learning resources to develop and deliver highly relevant instruction via classroom or computer to employees at all Aerospace locations. |
Senior Management Educational Advisory Panel
One of the most important elements of learning curriculum support is the advisory team, consisting of general managers from each major business unit and senior vice presidents from the engineering and program groups. Semiannually, Institute management and the technical design coordinators meet with this team to review overall objectives and assess progress and accomplishments. One major function of the advisory team is to help ensure that courses are aligned with emerging business trends as well as corporate needs and initiatives. A second function is to help establish numerical goals for course participation across the company based on demographics and customer needs. The third major function is to review the career progress of program graduates and help place them in areas where their new skills can be best used.
Instructional Design/Delivery Teams
One of Aerospace's unique strengths is the extensive technical knowledge and cross-program experience of its engineers and scientists. A primary challenge faced by the Institute in developing new courses involved devising a structure that would focus the talents of these technical specialists into a cohesive set of learning objectives and themes. Rather than rely on the efforts of individuals to develop and teach entire courses, the Institute implemented a team-based approach that takes advantage of the backgrounds and capabilities of numerous contributors.
Each year, more than 280 Aerospace engineers and scientists across the nation help design and deliver portions of the basic curriculum. More than 10 engineers and scientists from multiple sites are typically involved in designing and teaching the major courses in the systems architecting certificate program. The lead course designer, who may be either an Institute staff member or senior engineer or scientist, is responsible for gathering a team of subject matter experts and working with them to ensure that clear learning objectives are established and that key learning themes are reinforced throughout the course.
In addition to helping ensure the development of high-quality technical courses, the team-based approach has resulted in a number of significant benefits. For example, it has helped define a corporately approved technical approach or position on important issues. It has fostered a corporate network of experts in key technical subjects. It has improved collaboration amongst organizations participating on the teams. It has also enlarged the pool of potential instructors capable of delivering the core set of course material at multiple Aerospace sites.
Problem-Solving Methods and Tools
Students have indicated that some of the most helpful tutorial devices employed in the learning curriculum are the exercises and case studies that use Aerospace-developed problem-solving methods and tools. In addition to providing a tutorial focal point for overall course design, these methods and tools are often used by participants in their jobs after completing the class. For example, "Aerospace Systems Architecting Methodology" provides a framework for helping students learn how to work with customers to define needs and explore potential architectural approaches to complex, unstructured systems of systems.
The methodology and tools associated with Aerospace's Concept Design Center are taught extensively within the space systems engineering track to help students learn how to participate effectively in space system design synthesis and tradeoff studies. Systems acquisition management courses introduce state-of-the-art methods and tools that many Aerospace technical employees have found helpful in addressing program acquisition planning and execution issues associated with requirements generation, risk management, test management, and cost and schedule engineering. To reinforce the strategies introduced in the teaming course, instructors developed a "team map" to provide a mental model or frame of reference for assembling and directing project teams and evaluating their effectiveness.
Relevant Case Studies
The use of case studies that students can personally relate to has significantly enhanced the credibility of courses in the systems engineering certificate program and has made a significant difference in participant enthusiasm and receptiveness. For example, the Aerospace Systems Architecting Program employs two central case studies that provide a staged learning experience, from well structured to unstructured. This helps to separate basic and advanced process issues and facilitates evaluation of student progress. In the second case study, students investigate the development of a tactical communications architecture to support nation-building and peacekeeping operations in the period from 2005 to 2015. The Space Systems Engineering Program employs a realistic theater missile defense system case-study designed to provide students with experience in exercising key systems engineering methods over the complete system acquisition life cycle. Case studies for the Space System Acquisition Management Program are revised each year based on actual experiences to illustrate how acquisition programs differing significantly in scope have effectively addressed each of the major program management disciplines.
Realistic case studies employing proven problem-solving methods enhance the classroom experience and reinforce core lessons. This theater missile defense case study was used to give students practice in exercising space systems engineering methods and tools over the entire range of the system acquisition life cycle. |
Multimedia Support Resources
One major challenge associated with implementing the educational curriculum on a corporation-wide basis was how to deliver useful content from classes taught in El Segundo, California, to employees in regional offices. A related challenge was how to package lectures and related information in an accessible Web format that could be used by instructors during class and by course graduates afterward. To address these issues, the Institute uses three multimedia/e-learning support resources.
The first is the electronic classroom, which uses laptop computers instead of paper notebooks to store and display course materials at each student's seat. This permits greater student interaction and is especially useful for modules involving exercises or practice with software tools. The second resource is the server-based electronic storage area for course materials and references. Traditional course books grow stale after the class is over, but this corporately accessible electronic repository allows materials to be continuously updated. The third resource is a Web-enabled capability supporting real-time broadcast from the classroom to remote locations along with recording of class sessions. While the live sessions represent a new opportunity for distance learning, the recording function has been much more thoroughly exploited. It allowed for development of a process that combines course materials with recorded class sessions into a variety of formats that can be used by employees whenever convenient. This process was piloted in September 2003, capturing 24 sessions of the "Launch Vehicles Overview" course in two days. Since that time, more than 20 courses have been recorded and are now available to employees via the corporation's internal network or on CD-ROM.
Many of Aerospace's course materials are made available to employees in several multimedia formats. Here, Fong Tien reviews slides and notes from the Space Environment and Spacecraft Environmental Hazards course, conveniently presented in a user-friendly e-learning format. |
Job Skill-Need Surveys/Learning Maps
Given the exceptionally broad range and technical complexity of engineering and scientific jobs that Aerospace performs, it is vital that the learning themes, objectives, and content for all major curriculum elements be well aligned with the key employee skills needed to execute these jobs effectively.
The Aerospace Institute employs a variety of mechanisms for identifying and analyzing the critical competencies needed for major Aerospace job categories. These include individual employee suggestions; course evaluations and feedback; corporate strategic initiative briefings and recommendations from related virtual communities of practice; customer interactions; and special requests from senior management, corporate advisory groups, and Aerospace service organizations. Periodically (e.g., every 2 to 3 years), the Institute conducts formal Web-based surveys and follow-up interviews with executives, mid-level managers, and the general employee population. Data collected from these sources are used to determine and prioritize annual course-enhancement and new development efforts. In addition, the data are used to create "learning maps" that tie specific competencies for a given job or career stage to the available courses and electronic learning resources. The Institute's career learning support site conveniently groups course descriptions and schedules based on three different career stages and employee development needs: performance enhancement tied to annual appraisals; major job transitions within the company; and general growth and development within a chosen career path.
For major corporate development programs such as the Aerospace Systems Architecting and Engineering Certificate Program that are focused on specific technical employee populations, the Institute will typically conduct a more extensive survey involving a corporation-wide sampling of employees at various customer sites. The intent is to identify and prioritize a limited set of clearly articulated core competencies (no more than 10) that will form the basis for subsequent curriculum structuring and design of educational objectives. For example, a recent survey distributed to more than 180 alumni of the Aerospace Systems Architecting and Engineering Certificate Program showed that the skills needed to support customer systems architecting activities varied depending on whether that support is delivered in the form of systems analysis, project leadership, or line management of an Aerospace engineering support organization. Results from this survey led to an extensive modification of the certificate program curriculum, significantly improving its structure and focus (as evidenced by recent participant evaluations).
Effectiveness and Value
Attempts to systematically assess the effectiveness and value of the learning curriculum have been made at several levels by the Institute over the past several years. For example, a comparison of actual attendance with goals and projections indicates that all major elements are well attended and that employee participation has risen dramatically (e.g., more than 3500 enrollments in 2006 vs. fewer than 500 prior to 1995). In addition, student ratings show significant improvements in perceived course quality and utility as the experience of instructors has increased. These ratings provide a rough measure of course content value and the effectiveness of the course design approach.
Even more indicative are the results of a survey sent out to more than 100 graduates of the four-week classroom segments of the space systems architecting and space systems engineering certificate paths. More than 80 percent of respondents indicated that customers had noticed a measurable, positive effect of student learning on their decisions or approach to addressing key program issues. Nearly 50 percent reported that participation in the classes had helped them achieve a promotion or expanded job assignment. Nearly 90 percent indicated that course concepts, methods, processes, and tools were being applied directly to their job. Also, 75 percent reported significant improvements in their personal networking and use of company resources as a result of their participation in the program.
On a more general qualitative basis, comments on student evaluations and corporate surveys reinforce the notion that in-house technical education, designed to make use of expertise and experience within the company, is being received more favorably and considered more economical than an educational approach that relies primarily on external providers.
Future Directions
The near-term focus for the Space Education Support System is on four primary areas. The first entails modifying the learning curriculum objectives and content to reflect new developments in space systems acquisition policy, particularly in regard to recent changes in Aerospace positioning within the Department of Defense and intelligence community reporting chain and the accompanying development of new expectations related to corporate and personal accountabilities. The second is increasing the desktop accessibility and capability for capture and editing of courses that are taught at corporate headquarters in El Segundo and delivered to engineers and scientists at regional sites. The third is continuing to improve the corporate use of program graduates and enhancing the metrics by which program effectiveness and value is assessed. The last involves applying the approaches and methodologies developed for the Space Education Support System to support broader efforts to revitalize systems engineering throughout the national security space community.
To Spring 2007 Table of Contents
