Air Force Institute of Technology
Located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, this institution offers ten master’s degree programs in residence including the areas of cost analysis and information resource management. The cost analysis curriculum consists of 16 required courses, two electives and eight quarter hours of thesis preparation. AFIT also has a Distance Learning Center that broadcasts satellite courses.
Defense Financial Management & Comptroller School (DFM&CS)
The DFM&CS offers courses to Financial Managers emphasizing critical thinking, strategic orientation, conflict resolution, and leadership approach skill sets. Students explore concepts regarding key financial management issues, strategic partnerships, building leadership and interpersonal skills, and are provided with a broader knowledge of contingency operations and economics. Two courses are currently offered, the Defense Financial Manager’s Course (DFMC) which is four weeks in length and offered six times per year, and the Reserve Forces Comptroller Course (RFCC) which is two weeks in length and offered each summer.
Defense Resource Management Institute
Located on the Naval Postgraduate School campus in Monterey, California, the school teaches three courses. Defense Resource Management for US personnel (04 – 06 and GS 11 – GS 15) is taught five times a year and lasts four weeks. Foreign military students may attend The International Defense Management course which lasts 11 weeks and is taught twice a year. There is also a Senior International Defense Management Course (for Flag and General Officers) which lasts four weeks and is taught once a year. All courses focus on advanced resource management.
In addition to several Master’s degree programs in systems management, NPS teaches the Navy Practical Comptrollership Course under the heading of executive training. It is a nine day course hosted by the Navy Financial Management Center and concentrates on accounting, budgeting, planning, auditing, evaluation, and performance measurement. NOTE: You can download the text for the Navy Practical Comptrollership Course!
Located at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, the Army Finance School is the Military Occupational Specialty producing institution for the US Army Finance Corps. There are also training opportunities for civilian employees, particularly in the areas of accounting, management accounting, and analysis and the Planning, Programming, Budget and Execution System (PPBES). This site also has lots of down loadable documents relating to courses in travel, PPBES, resource management, and budget training, advanced management accounting and analysis and others.
Defense Comptrollership Program
This program consists of a specially tailored master’s degree in residence at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York. The program is managed by the Army Comptroller Proponency Office, which releases an annual announcement regarding how to apply for consideration for entry into the program.
Defense Acquisition University
The DAU is actually a consortium of 12 DoD institutions that teach 85 courses for the 11 acquisition career fields (including approximately 4,000 financial managers in the Acquisition Corps under the heading of Business, Cost Estimating and Financial Management). In addition to a complete catalog and schedule for all of these courses, DAU has a number of on-line course offerings which can be taken over the internet or on your PC. Examples are: a statistical overview course, on-line and interactive for four acquisition courses to include simplified acquisition procedures, valuable for all financial personnel to understand.
The CFO Academy is currently offering a CFO Leadership Certificate program at the National Defense University’s Information Resources Management
College (iCollege). The CFO Leadership Certificate consists of 8 courses offered at the iCollege located on Fort McNair in Southwest, Washington, DC.
Each of the courses are offered in resident (e-Resident) and on-line (Distributed Learning). This program is free to Defense Department students. (Travel and associated costs are financed by the student’s home unit.)
Students working toward the CFO Leadership Certificate take four courses focusing on building leadership competencies in areas such as budget/congressional relations, the future of financial reporting, and portfolio management. Four remaining courses in strategic leadership deal with areas like leadership in the information age, multi-agency collaboration, and measuring results among others.
Individuals who seek a comprehensive overview of the defense financial management environment. This course is excellent preparation for the Certified Defense Financial Manager (CDFM) exam.
