WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio -- WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio – Earlier this month, a group of noncommissioned officers participated in a new, two-day professional development course at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.
NASIC’s Senior Enlisted Leader Top-Off is a continuation of the Non Commissioned Officers and Senior Non Commissioned Officers professional enhancement seminar course offered at Wright-Patt’s personnel development center.
What makes the Top-Off unique is that it’s geared toward Airmen within NASIC, with tailored content and instructors sourced directly from the Center. This will better prepare students to fill SEL positions and duties here, said Senior Master Sgt. Roi Yeandel, NASIC Center Staff SEL.
“Having current NASIC SELs instruct and mentor the students during this course brings first-hand experience of lessons learned and allows knowledge to be passed to set up future enlisted leaders to be successful in the Center,” said Yeandel. “This course eliminates some of the trial-by-error that can occur when transitioning to an SEL position, especially when filling an SEL position within NASIC which can be uniquely different from other organizations and how an SEL would operate.”
Master Sgt. Elizabeth Page, Information Exploitation Squadron operations superintendent, echoed the importance of the Top-Off for NASIC.
“It brings a close-to-real-time relevance to our unique workforce. NASIC has a majority of personnel in the ISR, engineering, cyber career fields and in a combination of unique requirements that aren't necessarily represented anywhere else across Wright-Patterson,” said Page. “I think it’s important to bring home the relevancy of our unique position of not falling in a traditional MAJCOM, and how it affects routing processes, career navigation and vectoring, and ultimately, how we take care of our squadron’s wellbeing.”
Looking forward, organizers are focused on how to improve the next offering of the course.
“In the future, our goal is to include our mission partners and civilian supervisors in this course to maximize the synchronization of our Total Force team within NASIC,” said Yeandel.
Page had her own views on the future of the course.
“Each NASIC SEL Top-Off course is meant to address current trends, issues or skill gaps for NASIC SELs. I anticipate future iterations would include how to manage and action enlisted-civilian relationships, deliberate development planning within command teams for enlisted, officers and civilians, and how to navigate new tool sets being released across the DoD,” said Page.