Whitman Adapts Quickly to Address Army Training Needs

In 2019, the Army added a requirement to the DCP program for a concentration in data analytics. “The amount of data available for analysis and the need to capture and use the data for decision making drove the requirement for this change,” says Fran Machina ’90 MBA, associate director of the defense programs. This requirement gives graduates an MBA with a concentration in business analytics. (Like Finocchiaro, Machina is a DCP graduate.)

Moving courses online was straightforward, according to Machina. “We relied on the capability and ingenuity of the professional faculty at Whitman. The individual professors for each course designed their online presence and worked closely with our DCP students to develop successful virtual classes. The Whitman IT department also played a key role in supporting the professors and students,” he says.

We were very impressed with how quickly the DCP students adapted to an online mode of instruction and displayed tremendous resiliency in dealing with the challenges both from learning online and working from home.” -Irma P. Finocchiaro ’91 MBA

In March, like all University students, the DCP 2020 class went home. Since then, all instruction has been online. In the spring semester, DCP 2020 students took five classes for 7.5 credits both before and after the pandemic disrupted on-campus learning. They completed their studies in their second, shorter summer semester, taking four classes for 12 credits, including the MBA and EMPA capstone projects.

For the DCP 2021 class of 28 students, their first summer semester is virtual, as they take seven classes for 15 credits. DCP opens with a 12-week summer semester, followed by fall and spring semesters, concluding with a second summer semester of approximately nine weeks.

The Defense Programs Office at the Whitman School also runs executive education training courses, referred to colloquially as “short courses, for Army personnel in resource management. Students from various Army installations across the United States and the world have gathered on campus for the courses, housed in one hotel to facilitate networking and group projects. However, the pandemic’s restrictions on large gatherings necessitated a move to online learning, says Machina.

The primary short courses — the Army Comptroller Course (ACC) and the Executive Comptroller Course (ECC) — are three-week programs for Army personnel and civilian employees. The ACC is for more junior personnel; the ECC is targeted to more experienced personnel, he says.

The ACC provides a financial and resource management overview to Defense Department civilian and military personnel newly assigned to the comptroller career field and to other personnel lacking a multi-disciplined background. The ECC provides mid-level military and civilian resource/financial managers a perspective of the core competencies of defense financial management. The primary methods of instruction are lecture, practical exercises, group projects and guest speakers.

ACC programs are scheduled in November, April, and July, with ECC offerings planned in January and July.

Adjusting to the pandemic’s impact was easier for DCP than the short courses.

“There was no need to create something entirely new online for DCP,” says Finocchiaro. “The classes only had to move to the online format.”

For the short courses, “we had to adjust our practical exercises and develop new modules to be more effective in the online environment,” Machina says.

The lessons learned, he adds, are about adaptability, he says, “We found that flexibility is the key to live online instruction. Hardware, software and connectivity issues can’t always be anticipated, and you have to be prepared to adjust on the fly.”