Return to the "POINTER VIEW"June 22, 2001
Return to the "POINTER VIEW"
June 22, 2001
Senior conference wraps up
By Sgt. Christopher Land
Staff Writer
The United States Military Academy’s Department of Social Sciences hosted Senior Conference XXXVIII, "The Future of the Army Profession," at Arden House in Harriman, N.Y., June 14 to Saturday.
Military and civilian scholars and leaders from across the academy, the Army and the nation delivered talks and participated in discussions dealing with maintaining professionalism in the Army during the privately funded event.
"It is past time to reintroduce the subject of The Army Profession and its functional effectiveness into the nation’s discourse and policymaking in such a manner that Army leaders can redefine and renew the profession for this new century," the conference organizers state on their Web site, which can be found on the Social Sciences Web site at www.dean.usma.edu/sosh
.The topics discussed at the conference will be "refined into a policy monograph and a book. Both a new analytical framework for the Army profession and specific analyses and policy recommendations will be offered for the vitally needed renewal of the Army profession."
Having experts from various disciplines examine the Army profession will help the Army do that, according to Dr. Gayle Watkins, a retired colonel and a co-director of Senior Conference XXXVIII.
"No one field has all the answers, but looking at it through the lens of a number of disciplines, we’re more likely to come up with some of the answers," Watkins said.
The panel the academy brought together was made up of leading sociologists, political scientists and other experts on the military profession.
"The scholars were very impressed that West Point could gather the number of critical Army policymakers to discuss their comments on the Army profession," said Dr. Don Snyder, a professor in the Department of Social Sciences here who served as co-director for this year’s conference. "The policymakers were impressed with the breadth and depth of the papers and presentations by the researchers."
Bringing those people together to discuss their work added benefits, according Watkins.
"When you pull people together in a conference, you can go beyond the specific topics and grapple with the larger issues that the Army is facing," she said.
"The conference provided a great contribution to the work that the Army is currently doing on the role of the officer and the study of the profession," said Academy Professor Lt. Col. Michael Meese, the deputy head of Social Sciences.
"It had a great benefit to the Army as a whole in terms of the teaching of the Army profession," added Lt. Col. Kevin Dopf, a Social Sciences professor who Meese said did much of the logistics work for the actual meeting.