Educating the Army's Sustainable Range Managers: A professional development concept

The increasing complexity of range operations and the changing paradigms for Army doctrine, training and installation management demand well trained and educated range operations professionals. Sustaining Army ranges and training lands in the decades ahead will require more integrated knowledge and technical skills across a wide spectrum of activities. As senior range operations professionals, many with military and combat experience, leave the workforce a critical need exists to train new range managers. These new managers will require knowledge and skills in range management, as well as geospatial technologies, environmental and land management integration, and community outreach. To meet this requirement, the Army G-3, under command guidance for the Sustainable Range Program (SRP), initiated a functional training and education program called the Range Officer Professional Development (ROPD) Program. Distance learning tools and delivery systems were incorporated into the concept plan as a cost-effective approach for focused, cooperative learning across a distributed network. A total of 685 functional tasks were identified by subject matter experts and were prioritized and organized into a modular curriculum blueprint of eight courses. The resulting framework will be used for course development and implementation as a key component of the Army's Sustainable Range Program strategy.