Leave your desk & learn during Focus Week

  • Published
  • By Benjamin Newell
  • 66th Air Base Group Public Affairs

HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. -- Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s Spring Focus Week will run April 23-27, providing online and in-person training opportunities for acquisition personnel and military and civilian employees.

Focus week occurs once a quarter and involves several organizations in the acquisition orbit, providing continuous learning points to those on specific career tracks. Distance learning courses will be available through Defense Collaboration Services.

Organizers say they designed the week to be interesting to as many people as possible. According to event leaders, if a session is happening at another base, chances are you have digital access to it. Employees should work with their supervisors to schedule duties around virtual attendance.

The calendar denotes which courses are in-person at specific bases, and which are accessible via distance learning with “DL” before the class title. Those at Hanscom are marked “HAFB.” Register for courses here.

Contractors may be able to attend some courses, but should work with course points of contact if their government lead approves attendance and their contract does not prohibit attendance.

Hanscom’s events will include an innovation-focused day April 26 in building 1612 with a “Secure Communications” theme. The MITRE Corp. and MIT Lincoln Laboratory will demonstrate experiments, weapons systems and projects. Experts from those organizations and acquisition directorates will talk about recent advancements in acquiring secure communication systems. 

"This year we're excited to showcase both applied research and project work related to secure communications," said Mike Ripley, MITRE's engineering portfolio manager for the Cyber Resiliency Office for Weapons Systems at Hanscom. "Now more than ever, robust, secure comms are essential to 21st century warfighting, and the Hanscom ecosystem is key to the Air Force. This is a great way to share both technical knowledge and innovative approaches to acquisition among program managers, technical staff and the greater acquisition workforce."

Other Hanscom-specific training events include a series of courses for employees and supervisors on conflict resolution, interpersonal problem solving, and communication and assertiveness that all count as half of a continuous learning point. Acquisition focused courses on strategy, owning the technical baseline and trends in contract building are also available.