Photo By Staff Sgt. Jessica Blair | A Wyvern University class listens to a course facilitator teaching a new skill, at...... read more read more
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AVIANO AIR BASE, Italy -- Making personal and professional improvements isn’t always easy, especially when juggling work, school, fitness and families. Finding time in the day and opportunities that line up together can be a challenge. However, one Airman assigned to the 31st Fighter Wing faced those challenges head-on and completed her educational goals.
Tech. Sgt. Miikeda Brackett, 31st Force Support Squadron Manpower noncommissioned officer in charge of mission requirements, is the very first graduate of Wyvern University, completing 31 courses in less than a year.
The WU Council, formerly a Professional Development Organization, is headed by the Career Assistance Advisor and is solely interested in the deliberate development of every Airman, Soldier, and civilian assigned to the 31st FW.
Brackett made the most of her time here taking courses that focused on tangible everyday workplace skills that she personally wanted to focus on.
“WU provided me an opportunity to gain knowledge in a variety of areas and learn from my peers across the 31 FW,” said Brackett. “The information I have gained has allowed me to make improvements in my personal and professional life.”
WU’s mission is to partner with every squadron to Wing level organization to bring valuable course material, altered to suit the facilitator’s experience, temperament, and tone along with the audience’s need.
“Most of the courses are an hour, some run an hour and a half depending on the topic, like computer programming classes last a bit longer,” said Brackett. “There’s a variety of courses that cover lot of different interests and meet multiple times throughout the day. A lot of them are at lunchtime. You can take your lunch hour, sit in class, learn something, and then get back to your day.”
WU also provides different certificate programs. If an individual has an interest in a particular area, they can look at the catalog and focus on specific courses. Although, there are 173 courses offered to choose from attendees only have to take 31 courses to graduate.
Bracket also had the opportunity to facilitate a few courses where she was able to choose a topic she wanted to teach and present.
“Advice I would give to other Airmen would be to just show up,” said Brackett. “It doesn't require any work from you. There's a signup genius where you can sign up in advance, which is recommended. If not, just show up. At the end of the day, no one is going to turn you away from an opportunity to learn.”
Some of the courses WU offers is “Being a Likeable Boss”, “Intro to 3D Printing Level 1”, “Women in Leadership”, “Conflict Resolution”, “Increasing Your Happiness” and much more.
“The good thing about the courses with Wyvern University is there's something for everyone,” said Brackett. “It really speaks to the total force we have.”
Overall, Brackett went into the course program with an open mind and desire to learn and found that she too had some valuable knowledge to pass along too.
“There are no limits in terms of who can facilitate a class and I think the benefit has been the cross talk that's happened,” said Brackett. “When you have someone from security forces, who's talking to somebody who works with the Operations Group, their perspectives in team dynamics, time management, can be very different just because of how they operate. Seeing that collaboration and people being able to go back and say, ‘I can take what's working for you back to my work center, and see if that's going to work for us’ has probably been one of the best aspects of the experience.”
| Date Taken: | 03.08.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 03.16.2022 04:05 |
| Story ID: | 416477 |
| Location: | AVIANO AIR BASE, IT |
| Web Views: | 130 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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