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Commandant’s Foreword
Foreword from Maj Gen Andrew Roe
Chief Executive Defence Academy and Commandant Joint Services Command and Staff College
DEAR CORMORANTS,
First of all, congratulations on completing ACSC.
It is designed to be a
year that stretches you,
both academically and professionally, but also gives
you the space to think,
reflect and consider how you shape your future career. For most, ACSC marks the
transition from junior to senior officer, and what has served you well before, may not serve you as well
in the future. It is also supposed to be fun; anyone whose overriding memory of ACSC is relentless academic grind has probably missed the point. I
also want to pay tribute to you all for how you have handled the profound change that COVID-19 has brought. ACSC will have been a course that you will have worked hard for, and yet you will have had a very different experience to your forbears. You have adapted brilliantly and not missed a beat. Thank you.
Looking through these pages though, I get the impression that the vast majority of you made the most of the opportunities available: sports, socials, and other extra-curricular activities such as charity fundraising and visits. Well done to you all. Education
“
and training are very definitely at the heart of ACSC. This year you built on the initial success of the first iteration of the Master’s by Research and piloted
the Hacking for Defense option. Your experiences
will continue to shape and improve this for future cohorts. For the coming years, I am determined to change the education experience further to make it more relevant to today’s world as it is, not as we wish it to be. We are preparing our graduates for war, and the relentless pace of change and the clear paradigm shift in the nature of conflict means future wars may not resemble those of the past. Among other things, I intend to focus on: warfighting and the professional skills necessary for warfighters; understanding and employing technology and innovation; ensuring that all students are stretched to new cognitive limits; giving space in the syllabus to exploit peer-to-peer and group learning; and ensuring that skill with the written word continues to underpin these as a core art. These are just the academic changes though.
Alongside these, we must also look to our wider behaviours. Our manner and actions as officers will set the tone and behaviours of all those we lead. You have all taken part in the Active Bystander programme. This is now regularly singled-out across Defence as an exemplar of best practice, and as such I am pleased that it is being extended for future
cohorts. This brings me back to my starting point. From here, you are going out into Defence as future leaders, in command and senior staff assignments where your actions will have a significant influence on others. Think hard about what sort of officer or civil servant you intend to be. Think also about how you pursue and harness the diversity and inclusion that will be vital to Defence – and you as individuals – meeting future challenges. You have the opportunity to change Defence for the better, and I am confident that ACSC has given you the tools to effect that change.
Finally, I would encourage you all to keep in touch with one another and with the Defence Academy. The overriding message that I receive from ACSC students is that the most important part of the course has been the friendships you have made and the networks you have developed. These, as much as the academic and professional skills you have learnt, will stay with you through your future careers.
Let me leave you with a quote from Eric Hoffer, the American moral and social philosopher: “In times of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”
Our manner
and actions as officers will
set the tone and behaviours of all those we lead. ◆◆◆