MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE, Ala.— Five minutes before a group of chiefs is supposed to brief, the problem changes.
They've been working toward a solution. Now an Airman needs attention. The wing commander wants something else, and time is running out.
The students ask for more information.
They aren't getting it.
“No, it's ambiguous for a reason because you're not always going to have what you need out there,” said retired Chief Master Sgt. Jenny Green, an instructor at Air University's Chief Leadership Academy.
Green keeps the clock running.
That's part of the exercise. Through the Chief Leadership Academy, Air University puts the Air Force's newest chiefs in situations where information is incomplete, priorities change and they still have to decide what comes next.
“We give them a problem and, hey, go solve it,” Green said. “And then in the middle of it, hey, we're going to change it.”
Sometimes that happens only minutes before students have to present.
“They have to pivot very quickly,” she said.
The exercise offers a look at how Air University is using the redesigned Chief Leadership Course now that the curriculum has been in place for more than a year. Instructors change conditions, limit information and bring current issues into classroom discussions to get chiefs working outside what they already know.
Chief Master Sgt. Michael “Hub” Hubbard, commandant of the Chief Leadership Academy, said that's important because of the experience many students bring with them.
They've spent years becoming experts in their career fields. They've generated aircraft, maintained communication networks, led medical teams, managed people and kept missions moving. Becoming a chief changes what the Air Force asks of them.
“A lot of chiefs that come here, they've been in the grind,” Hubbard said. “They've been focused on the tactical level, looking down and never picking their head up.”
At Air University, they're asked to pick their heads up.
Before arriving at Maxwell for the in-residence portion of the course, students begin facilitated distance learning on subjects that include the National Defense Strategy and manpower. Once they're together, the conversation moves beyond their individual organizations and career fields.
The goal, Hubbard said, is “a more strategic-minded leader.”
That work sits inside a larger Air University mission. As an integrated enterprise, AU brings education, research, doctrine and leader development together to forge expert joint warfighters and solve operational problems for the Joint Force. The university's schools, centers, academies and other organizations contribute specialized capabilities toward those efforts.
At the Chief Leadership Academy, that contribution is focused on senior enlisted professional military education.
In Green's classroom, students don't always get everything they want before they're expected to act.
“You can't just stop what you're doing,” she tells students when they ask for more information. “You have to figure that out.”
Sometimes students have to move forward without all the information they'd like. Sometimes the solution they come up with creates another problem.
Chief Master Sgt. Neel Rodgers, an academy instructor, said chiefs have to think beyond the immediate result of a decision.
“As chiefs, a lot of times what our commanders come to us is to think about the second and third order effects of the decisions they're about to make,” Rodgers said.
Those effects can involve readiness, resources or the Airmen expected to carry out a decision. Rodgers said instructors use the course to get students thinking about what happens beyond the immediate problem.
The people sitting around the table add another part of the discussion.
Air University brings active-duty, Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve leaders from different career fields, installations and operational backgrounds into the classroom.
“Every class is a melting pot of experience,” Hubbard said. “All different bases, Guard, Reserve, different branches of service.”
Hubbard tells students not to overlook what's already in the room.
“They know more than you think they know,” he said. “You just have to talk to them.”
Green saw that during a recent discussion about manpower. Guard and Reserve chiefs started explaining how their organizations handled personnel differently from the active component. Other students asked questions and compared those processes with their own experiences.
“We don't always understand what Guard and Reserve does and we should be better about that,” Green said.
The conversation moves beyond component lines, too.
Students work through joint, interagency, intergovernmental and multinational considerations, including how they may interact with other services, government organizations, outside agencies and international partners.
Green said some students initially question how much they'll use that material if they aren't headed to a traditional joint assignment.
“Everything that we do across the forces is joint,” she tells them.
Chiefs who've worked in those environments add their experiences to the discussion. Sometimes someone in the room has already dealt with a problem another student is seeing for the first time.
“It's bigger than that,” Green said. “It's way bigger than that.”
Those perspectives aren't limited to the people who come to Maxwell.
Mike Wester, the academy's director of operations and a retired chief master sergeant, said the organization maintains relationships with senior enlisted education institutions in other services. Those relationships give Air University another way to bring perspectives from across the Joint Force into its enlisted education.
The academy also talks with operational organizations about what they're seeing.
“What are you doing on the operational front and what are the things that we're missing in our educational environments that you think our forces need to be able to operate in the joint environment?” Wester said.
For Wester, those conversations help keep the course current.
“As the strategic landscape changes, you have to continue to evolve and adapt to make sure that what you're providing is timely and relevant to your student population,” he said.
The course itself has already gone through that kind of change.
Air University paused the Chief Leadership Course for nine months while the curriculum was rebuilt. It returned in June 2025 with formal assessments and learning outcomes focused on command leadership, organizational functions and domains, strategic leadership, and joint, interagency, intergovernmental and multinational operations.
The overhaul included input from major command and combatant command leaders, Air University staff, field leaders, subject matter experts and previous graduates.
Hubbard said the previous curriculum wasn't giving students enough exposure to the strategic environment senior Air Force and joint leaders expected chiefs to understand.
He said the redesigned course is operating at initial operating capability, and the staff continues to adjust it as requirements change.
“The speed of relevance is kind of the flexibility we have within our course,” Hubbard said.
That flexibility gives instructors room to bring what's happening across the force into the classroom.
Green said she stays in contact with active-duty leaders and uses current examples in discussions. Students bring their own experiences with them, too.
What happens in one class may not happen the same way in the next because the people in the room change.
One example is a short briefing Green recently added on home station missions.
Students explain what their organizations do, what they support and how their work fits into the larger mission. The briefs often lead to questions from chiefs who haven't worked around those missions.
A chief who's spent a career around aircraft may know little about another student's mission. Someone from communications, medicine, security forces or another part of the Air Force may see the same problem from a different angle.
Green said she wants chiefs to understand enough about the larger mission to explain it to the Airmen they lead.
“What are your Airmen going to think?” she asks students. “What are you going to tell your Airmen?”
“If our chiefs can understand that, then they can explain that to their Airmen,” Green said. “Their Airmen can come and say, ‘Oh, I know what my why is. I know what I'm doing, and I know why I'm doing it.’”
That exchange between the operational force and the classroom is one way Air University operates as an integrated enterprise.
Students bring experience and current problems into AU. Faculty draw on expertise from across the university and beyond it. Other services and operational organizations add perspectives that aren't always available within a single career field or component. Graduates then carry what they learned back to squadrons, groups, wings and staffs.
The Chief Leadership Academy is one part of that larger Air University enterprise. Across AU, subordinate organizations contribute different capabilities toward the university's work to forge expert joint warfighters and solve operational problems for the Joint Force.
For the academy, that starts with chiefs working beyond their functional expertise and considering problems from perspectives they may not have encountered before.
Rodgers said there's a difference between reaching the Air Force's highest enlisted rank and becoming the kind of chief the course is trying to develop.
“Our goal is to build chiefs, not chief master sergeant E-9 types,” he said.
Green knows the classroom can't reproduce every problem they'll face once they leave.
“We can't hit all the scenarios,” she said. “But we can hit a majority of them to get them thinking.”
For now, the chiefs in her classroom still have a problem to solve.
They don't have all the information they asked for. The situation has changed, and the solution they started with may not work anymore.
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