Chancellor John Christenson speaks in front of USSTRATCOM Fellows in Mammel Hall.
By Stefan Snijders, Contributor
The start of the second annual Strategic Leadership Fellows Program, sponsored by the United States Strategic Command, (USSTRAT-COM), and hosted at the University of Nebraska at Omaha commenced Jan. 31.
According to a press release from UNO’s Charles Reed, a select group of civilian members of STRAT-COM will spend the next 13 weeks studying and learning from a partnership comprised of community business leaders, UNO instructors and several military officers.
According to a press release from the office of Charles Reed, media relations coordinator for UNO’s Communications and PR offices, this program is designed to edu-cate these select STRATCOM employees in advanced leadership and joint operation within the community.
The focus is on task and project management, critical decision making based in data interpretation and collaboration management. UNO hosted this program in 2014 and was tasked to do so again this year.
“Quite simply, they are the best of the best civilian leaders at USSTRATCOM, which is why the government is making a significant investment in their development,”said Dr. Doug Derrick, UNO assistant professor of IT innovation.
Derrick will be handling combined oversight of the program along with Dr. Gina Ligon, an assistant professor of management and collaboration science at UNO. The two co-operated the panel in 2014.
The program is anchored through the National Strategic ResearchInstitute (NSRI), a University of Nebraska operation that is unique in its existence.
According to the university, the NRSI researches nuclear and chemical or biological weapons detection and how to combat weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and advises USSTRATCOM and several other federal agencies on how to manage and implement these counter-tactics. They also research in areas of technology as applicable to defense utilization.
The Leadership Fellows Program helps to educate civilian leaders on how to integrate this sort of information. It also encourages them to learn to effectively communicate and pursue collaborative efforts with a greater community focus, encapsulated in a graduate leadership course.
The education goes both ways, however. According to a university press release, engagement inactivities with local businesses, including Union Pacific and First National Bank, have been selected for the course agenda. Employees of the businesses involved will learn firsthand how the military’s communications operations are implemented.
“It is a great opportunity for public-private collaboration and mutual learning,” Ligon told the university in a statement.
The fellows joining on campus for the program will attend classes at Mammel Hall in its Executive Decision Laboratory. The program will also qualify as credit in a graduate level course, should the participants consider attending classes at UNO for graduate studies.
