President’s Spotlight: Dr. Vacchi, Dr. Zwilling and the Assessment Committee

Through the end of my time here at the U.S. Naval War College, I’m regularly highlighting someone or something that’s caught my attention over the previous couple of weeks. It might be a person – student, faculty or staff – who deserves recognition, or it might be an occasion I want to draw more attention to. These short ‘President’s Spotlight’ pieces will be posted about once every two weeks.

You may have seen in Provost O’Hara’s email update a few weeks ago that the NWC reached Milestone 3 in our Outcomes-Based Military Education certification.

Reaching that milestone took years of hard work, and I want to use this space to highlight the Assessment Committee – now under co-chairs Dr. David Vacchi of the Office of the Provost and Dr. Andrew Zwilling of the College of Distance Education (CDE) – who shepherded our institution through that process.

Joint Professional Military Education is – and should always be – under heavy scrutiny. We should remain ready and willing to explain in detail how we’re teaching about history, strategy, operations and the evolution of war to prepare our next generation of military commanders to fight and win on the battlefield.

And we are.

We at the war college hold ourselves to incredibly high standards and are confident that our rigorous and thorough programs stand up to any review.

The military’s new Outcomes-Based Military Education, or OBME, certification process is one way the Joint Staff, on behalf of the Department of War, validates what we’re doing here, and our achievement of Milestone 3 – with the fourth and final milestone close behind – should confirm to our hardworking faculty and staff that we’re meeting the mark and contributing to a stronger, more effective fighting force.

Now, I say “new.” Everything is relative.

The OBME process was developed and implemented by the Joint Staff between 2018-2020 after decades under what was called the Process for Accreditation of Joint Education (PAJE), which was an “inputs-based” system of assessment.

The value of this newer approach is that, just like the name implies, it’s based on outcomes: A series of evidence-based and trackable Program Learning Outcomes (PLO) that our students must meet in order for our institution to be considered successful.

To reach Milestone 1, the Assessment Committee, working with subject matter experts throughout the college, developed and received higher headquarters approval for eight PLOs, four each for the Colleges of Naval Warfare (CNW) and Naval Command & Staff (CNCS).

These are substantial. One example for CNCS is “Demonstrate joint planning and joint warfighting ability in military operations and campaigns across the continuum of competition,” while another for CNW is “Create national security strategies designed for contemporary security environments.” We achieved that milestone in 2023.

By late 2024, we reached Milestone 2 after the committee developed a plan to collect data to demonstrate student achievement using our Program Learning Outcomes. This plan involves evaluators from outside a given seminar using a detailed rubric to assess whether our students demonstrate the desired competencies in their work, and assigning a numerical score on a simple scale that, in the aggregate, can tell us if we’re successful or not.

Spoiler alert: We are.

Milestone 3, the one we just achieved, required the committee to test these plans and validate our data. In essence, Milestone 3 was our test drive of the full OBME program we developed for the Naval War College, and with conditional certification, we can now say it was a success.

Of note, those same Assessment Committee members who have so diligently been navigating this OBME certification process on behalf of the NWC have also been lending their expertise to other military education institutions, serving as outside evaluators for other war colleges and schools going through this same process.

Milestone 4 involves the collection of a second year’s worth of data – which we now have from the 2025-26 Academic Year. The committee is collating, analyzing and submitting those numbers for another round of reviews by The Joint Staff, J7. We’re very close to the goal line for full certification and that’s a testament not only to the dedication of the Assessment Committee, but to all the faculty and staff who make these NWC programs rigorous and effective.

In addition to co-chairs Vacchi and Zwilling, the committee now includes Strategy & Policy Department Prof. Dr. Michael Pavkovic, Joint Military Operations Department Prof. Joseph McGraw, College of Leadership and Ethics Assoc. Prof. Dr. Lisa Kerr, National Security Affairs Department (NSA) Prof. Dana Struckman, College of Maritime Operational Warfare Assoc. Prof. Glen Leverette, CDE Assoc. Prof. Adrian Schuettke, CDE Assoc Prof. Brad Hawksworth, Librarian Andrea Groce and Associate Dean of Academics Tim Schultz.

NSA Prof. Kristin Mulready-Stone and Assoc. Prof. Dr. David Burbach are among many, many other invaluable contributors to this process over the past six years – there are more people who deserve credit than I can list in this space, frankly.

I want to thank all of them, past and present, for helping the U.S. Naval War College achieve this incredibly important milestone.

– Rear Adm. Darryl Walker,
President, U.S. Naval War College