The 2009 Chairman's Strategic Essay Competition

National Defense University (NDU) will host the 28th Annual Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Strategic Essay Competition for Academic Year 2008–2009, culminating in the final round of judging on May 19–20, 2009. Each year, this competition challenges students at the joint professional military education (JPME) institutions to research and write scholarly essays about significant aspects of national security strategy.

               

The purpose of this competition is to stimulate strategic thinking, promote well written research, and contribute to a broader security debate among professionals. NDU Press manages the competition in three phases, with assistance from coordinators and faculty judges representing each participating school. First, the JPME schools conduct internal competitions and submit their best essays to NDU Press. Second, judges evaluate nominated essays from other schools at their home station via the Internet. Third, judges travel to NDU for the final round conference to determine winners in each category.

Last year's contest saw a significant percent increase in the number of essays judged, making this year's event among the most competitive in its history. The nominated essays represented a wide spectrum of security education research topics, and the joint, interagency, and international spread of the authors was tremendous. Our 2008 winners:

1st Place, Strategic Research Paper

LCDR Anthony L. Russell, USCG

Carpe DIEM: Seizing the Opportunity in the Arctic with a Comprehensive U.S. Strategy

(Marine Corps Command and Staff College)

1st Place, Strategy Article

Maj Daniel T. Canfield, USMC

The Russian Chechen Wars: Three Ominous and Exceedingly Relevant Lessons for Contemporary and Future U.S. Defense Planners

(Marine Corps Command and Staff College)

Winning essays will be published by NDU Press in the 4th quarter issue (October 1, 2009) of Joint Force Quarterly, the Chairman’s professional military, interagency, and security studies journal. Authors of winning essays will be recognized by the Chairman and awarded prizes donated by the NDU Foundation. If conditions permit, winners may meet with the Chairman for personal congratulations in an awards ceremony. All papers entered in each category will be evaluated for future publication in JFQ. This is a joint, interagency, and international security strategy writing contest; papers must meet rigorous academic standards.

Senior faculty commitment is imperative for a good competition. Faculty coordinators for each college are requested to inform their student bodies and faculty colleagues early in the academic year and to repeat calls for essays throughout the year. Faculty judges are requested to make a significant investment of time in evaluating essays during the Internet and final phases of the competition. Milestones:

Wednesday, October 15 2008:
Commandants provide names of coordinators to NDU Press

Tuesday, February 17 2009:
Coordinators provide names of judges to NDU Press

Tuesday, April 28 2009:
Cutoff for schools to submit nominated papers to NDU Press

Wednesday, May 13 2009:
NLT 1700, Judges report first-round scores to NDU Press

Tuesday-Wednesday, May 19-20 2009:
Judges attend final round conference at NDU

Competition Rules

1.     ELIGIBILITY: Students enrolled in intermediate through senior-level PME/JPME schools including senior service colleges, service intermediate and advanced schools, senior joint NDU colleges (National War College, the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, Information Resources Management College), and the Joint Forces Staff College; the Naval Postgraduate School.; and service research program fellows via their senior service colleges.

Essays must be original, not previously published, and completed during the given academic year (2008–09). Essays cannot be submitted for publication to any other journal or academic press concurrent with this competition. An individual student may submit more than one entry into a category or into both categories of essays. Two or more students may coauthor an entry. Foreign students, as long as they are enrolled in an eligible college, may compete.

2.     TOPICS: Competitors may write on any aspect of national security strategy—the adroit use of the political, military, economic, and informational instruments of national power to achieve strategic objectives. Essays with a joint, interagency, or integrated emphasis (particularly combating global terrorism, homeland defense, and historical contributions) are encouraged.

3.     CATEGORIES:

    a. Strategic Research Paper: Maximum of 5,000 words. This traditional research essay has been the mainstay of past CJCS competitions and encourages in-depth research, analysis, and critical thinking on strategic security topics.

    b. Strategy Article: Maximum of 1,500 words. Similar in length to many current JPME course papers, the Strategy Article is a scholarly but tightly focused research paper. It is long enough to encourage scholarly research, but short enough to be more appealing to a broader audience.

4.     JUDGING PROCESS: Each participating school is free to establish and execute independent methodologies for selecting essays to nominate for the Essay Competition. Once essays are selected and submitted to NDU Press, no editing or revision of them is allowed. The essays so nominated are designated semifinalists. Two rounds of joint judging then occur:

    a. Semifinalists are evaluated by the judges via the Internet to determine the finalists. NDU Press determines judges’ assignments based on the maximum number of reasonably achievable readings during the limited time period. To ensure fairness and achieve the maximum number of readings per paper, judges will not read papers from their own schools, nor will they read the same papers in the final round.

    b. Finalists are evaluated by the judges during the 2-day conference at Fort McNair, National Defense University headquarters, resulting in winners in each category.

    c. College coordinators should ensure that judges are prepared to evaluate approximately 20–25 essays during the first (Internet) round lasting 1–1/2 to 2 weeks; and then to travel to Fort McNair for the final round of judging (2 days). The same judges should participate in both rounds of judging.

5. FORMAT/WORD COUNTS: An entry will consist of a title page, biography, abstract, and the text proper.

    a. The title page should contain the title only—no name, rank, service, or college affiliation.

    b. The biography immediately follows the title page. It should be no more than 1 page and should include recent assignments, academic credentials, and current and (if known) future contact information. During judging, the biography is removed to make papers completely anonymous.

    c. The abstract page immediately follows the title page and summarizes the essay in a maximum of 200 words.

    d. The essay proper begins after the abstract. The following maximum word counts for each category will be strictly enforced: 5,000-word maximum for Strategic Research Papers; and 1,500-word maximum for Strategy Articles. Entries submitted with word counts determined by NDU Press to be above these maximums will be disqualified.

        -- d1. NDU Press will calculate word count upon receipt of essay entries, using the automatic word count feature provided in MicroSoft Word tools. Entries exceeding the maximum limits will be disqualified; the submitting college will be promptly informed of any disqualifications. If an entry is disqualified on the basis of word count, it may not be re-submitted. However, another entry may be submitted as long as it does not exceed the submitting college’s overall entry quota, meets all other requirements, and is submitted by the deadline.

        -- d2. In calculating word counts, the following elements will be included: the basic text of the essay; epigraphs and any other quotations in the beginning, body, and end of the text; bullet lists, text boxes, and the like; and headings or subheadings within the text.

        -- d3. In calculating word counts, the following elements will not be included: title page, table of contents, abstract, biography, tables, illustrations, endnotes/footnotes, appendices, and bibliographies.

        -- d4. Endnotes are preferred but foonotes are acceptable. Although endnotes/footnotes will not count in the overall word count, discursive or explanatory endnotes/footnotes—as opposed to source endnotes/footnotes—are discouraged. Main points should be made in the text proper. Reliance on discursive or explanatory endnotes/footnotes will be considered bad form and judges will be advised to downgrade essays that make repeated use of such notes.

   e. Appendices and bibliographies are discouraged. In lieu of an appendix, essential supplementary material can be quoted in the text and cited in an endnote/footnote. In evaluating use of sources, judges will focus on endnotes/footnotes, not bibliographies.

   f. The text should follow the format of a scholarly research paper (not a bullet paper, talking paper, PowerPoint briefing, etc.):

      i. If possible, use the Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition) or Turabian, A Manual for Writers (7th edition) for overall style and format including endnotes/footnotes. If these style guides are not available, use your college’s house style; in endnotes/footnotes, include complete facts of publication in a uniform format. In all cases, strive for consistency of style. No essays will be downgraded for style per se, but an inconsistent or unclear style can be distracting and detract from overall quality.

      ii. Papers must be submitted by each school coordinator in electronic form in MS Word format. Files should not contain desktop-publishing embellishments. Please limit formatting to italics, bold, underline, bullet, or numbered lists.

6. SECURITY CLASSIFICATION: Only unclassified essays are eligible. Each college is responsible to ensure that manuscripts do not contain classified information. Winning essays and other papers selected for publication in JFQ will undergo editing, illustration, and OSD security and policy review before publication and release.

7. SUBMISSION OF NOMINATED PAPERS: Each school coordinator submits to NDU Press electronic copies of all nominated essays in each category not later than Tuesday, April 28, 2009. There is no requirement for schools to submit the maximum number of papers in each category.

8. PUBLICATION RIGHTS: NDU Press reserves first publication rights for all essays submitted to the Chairman’s Strategic Essay Competition. Winners will appear in both print and electronic editions of Joint Force Quarterly.

   a. Submission of an essay to this contest will be considered acceptance by the author of this publication policy.

   b. Papers may not be entered in the contest if they have previously been submitted for publication, accepted for publication, or previously published in another journal, book, or monograph. After publication in or rejection by JFQ, essays may be submitted to other journals or reprinted.

   c. JFQ will release rights for essays not published to other official U.S. Government and military journals and presses—after the contest is concluded and certified—when requested by the author or other journal/press director/editor.

9. COORDINATORS AND JUDGES: Each college appoints a senior faculty coordinator and faculty representatives to act as contest judges at NDU. Coordinators may also be judges. NDU Press needs names and contact information for school coordinators not later than October 15 2008 and judges not later than February 17 2009. For the semifinal (Internet) and final (NDU) rounds, the intermediate service and senior-level colleges select/send two judges each. Advanced service schools select/send one representative each. NDU Press will establish contact and a network of POCs/judges to exchange information and answer questions. The panel of judges evaluates semifinalist papers and returns scores via the Internet. At NDU, the judges conduct final rounds for each category of the contest. Winners will be selected based on an algorithm reviewed by NDU Press based on normalized high scores. Senior NDU Press staff will act as tie breakers/arbiters, as required. NDU President certifies winners before official notification. NDU Press will notify college coordinators when the winners are confirmed. College coordinators are responsible for notifying their winners and facilitating the presentation of awards and certificates to winners and finalists.

10. INTELLECTUAL INTEGRITY: To ensure a fair competition, schools are expected to self-police themselves in the following areas:

   a. Papers must be submitted by students. Faculty or staff cannot submit a student paper for the competition without the student’s knowledge.

   b. No editing once competition begins. Students are not permitted to edit their paper once each school begins its own internal judging for semifinalists (i.e., school nominees).

   c. Under no circumstances may a faculty member edit, correct, or change a paper once submitted by the student. However, during the college’s internal evaluation process, faculty may advise a student if an entry exceeds the maximum word count and afford the student the opportunity to reduce the essay to comply with maximum limits. The student—not the faculty—must perform the necessary work to reduce the word count accordingly.

11. JUDGES AND NUMBER OF PAPERS PERMITTED FOR EACH SCHOOL:

Judges        Schools         Strategy Article      Strategic Research Paper

   2                 NWC                       4                                     3

   2                 ICAF                       4                                     3

   1                 JFSC                       2                                     1

   1                 JAWS                     2                                     1

   2                 AWC                       4                                     3

   2                 CGSC                      4                                     3

   1                 SAMS                      2                                     1

   2                 MCWC                     4                                     3

   2                 MCSC                      4                                     3

   1                 SAW                       2                                     1

   2                 AWC                       4                                     3

   2                 ACSC                      4                                     3

   1                 SAASS                   2                                     1

   2                 Naval Senior           4                                     3

   2                 Naval Junior            4                                     3

12. CONTACT:
For further information or an electronic copy of these rules, please consult ndupress.ndu.edu or contact the Essay Contest Project Officers:

COL David H. Gurney (USMC, Ret.), 202-685-4212

Mr. George Maerz, 202-685-4378 maerzg@ndu.edu,

Ms. Lisa Yambrick, 202-685-4376, yambrickl@ndu.edu

LTC Robert Henstrand, USA, 202-685-2263, henstrandr@ndu.edu