Welcome to the Air Force Institute of Technology

The past year has been a very busy one for the team of Air Force officers and civilians who instruct our Air Force Fundamentals of Acquisition Management (AFFAM) course. This course is the initial skills (badge awarding) course for many of the Air Force’s acquisition professionals: Program Managers (63s), Engineers (62s), and Scientists (61s). In addition, increasing numbers of civilian program managers (1101s) are taking this class as a requirement of their Palace Acquire internship. Demand for this class continues to expand and will explode in the coming years.

Although they’ve delivered the AFFAM course to roughly 450 students per year, special funds set aside by Congress in the FY08 National Defense Authorization Act to enhance the DoD acquisition workforce will increase their student throughput by at least 240 students per year for the foreseeable future. This surge will require that AFIT’s School of Systems and Logistics increase the number of class offerings from seven a year to ten or more.

Though accommodating this surge will be a major challenge for the team, they have undertaken an even greater challenge – a major revision of the course. While keeping intact thier lesson objectives, the team is updating the course material, schedule, and delivery with a mind toward creating a tighter, more integrated, and interactive learning experience. Additional projects and exercises will be added as well to lessen their dependence on lecture. Finally, a major capstone project is being added, which ties together many of the acquisition lessons. Through enhanced learning delivery methods, the team will move from teaching almost entirely at the knowledge level to instructing a portion of the AFFAM curriculum at the comprehension level and parts at the application level.