Advanced Management Program (AMP) Application Instructions
Advanced Management Program (AMP) Application
- Lead within and across organizational boundaries by leveraging information and information technology for strategic advantage;
- Balance continuity and change in the development, implementation, and evaluation of information resources management strategies and policies while meeting legislative and executive mandates;
- Link critical decisions regarding people, processes, and technologies to performance, results, and information assurance requirements;
- Commit to ongoing leadership development of self and others; and
- Synthesize theory and best practices from government, private sector, and not-for-profits to achieve the organization’s mission.
The AMP has three elements that define its unique educational experience.
- First, the AMP curriculum’s core and elective graduate-level courses provide a foundation in a broad range of information resources management disciplines. Graduates earn a Chief Information Officer (CIO) Certificate and can make progress toward completion of other certificates offered by the IRM College. Information Assurance Scholarship Program students are required to complete all four courses of the IA 4011 Certificate.
- Second, the program’s strategic leader development curriculum provides an integrated set of learning activities that build leadership capacity and the ability to develop other strategic leaders. This curriculum focuses on enhancing leadership competencies in the areas of communication, critical thinking, collaboration, leading change, and leading people. Key components of the curriculum include individual awareness and team problem-solving activities, conversations with exemplary organizational leaders, and study of and visits to a diverse set of public and private sector organizations, including an intensive week-long field study outside of Washington, D.C.
- Third, AMP students form a learning community that exposes them to multiple perspectives on a wide range of issues; this motivates them to share knowledge and best practices, strive to become better leaders and decision makers, and master the tools of lifelong learning. Interaction with fellow students, faculty, guest speakers, and other executives provides AMP participants with a network of peers throughout the public and private sectors.
The AMP core courses are:
- Policy Foundations of Information Resource Management (IRM): Presents an overview of IRM, including its concepts, policies, and their application. Lessons focus on understanding the IRM environment and the dynamic relationships among political, economic, social, fiscal, and technological forces that are changing government.
- Information Management Planning: Presents an approach to planning that integrates agency strategic planning, performance planning, and capital planning and investment. This course examines a comprehensive, mission-driven planning framework that combines explicit and implicit planning requirements of current legislation and regulations.
- Measuring Results of Organizational Performance: Provides strategies and techniques for assessing an organization’s performance results as part of strategic planning or budgeting processes. Leverages lessons learned from inter-agency experience concerning approaches and resources required to establish and validate performance measurement instrumentation, collect and organize performance data, and analyze and report results. Emphasizes mission outcomes in terms of the customer and focuses on information management and technological issues surrounding performance measurement.
- Strategies for Process Improvement: Focuses on strategies, methods, and resources for improving, managing, and controlling processes within and across federal agencies. A senior-level perspective is provided on the tools, techniques, and technologies that enable such strategies. The course emphasizes leadership challenges associated with initiation, collaboration, design, implementation, performance management, and portfolio management of process-centric improvements.
- Information Technology Acquisition: Examines the management issues that arise from policies, best practices, and alignment of an acquisition with organizational goals and objectives, programmatic strategies and planning, and selection of performance metrics. This course explores several approaches for determining a suite of performance measures that will provide insights into acquisition of information technology.
- Information Assurance and Critical Infrastructure Protection: Provides a comprehensive overview of information assurance and critical information infrastructure protection, including information assets and protection of the information component of critical national infrastructures essential to national security. The focus is at the public policy and strategic management level, providing a foundation for analyzing the information security component of information systems and critical infrastructures. Laws, national strategies and public policies, and strengths and weaknesses of various approaches are examined for assuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of critical information assets.
In addition to their core courses, AMP students select two elective courses. These courses enable students to broaden their knowledge or to delve deeper into the areas that are covered in the core program. For example, students can pursue studies in the areas of capital planning, network security, or information operations. The curriculum map illustrates the various elements of the AMP.
AMP Offerings
Academic Year 2009
- AMP 38: January 7 - April 17, 2009
Academic Year 2010
- AMP 39: September 10 – December 17, 2009; applications due June 1, 2009; early applications, May 1, 2009
- AMP 40: January 6 – April 16, 2010; applications due October 1, 2009; early applications, September 1, 2009
AMP APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS
Eligibility Requirements: The eligibility requirements for AMP are different from other IRM College programs. There are no waivers to these requirements. Requirements are as follows:
Federal civilian government employees must be at least GS/GM-13 or equivalent, and military officers must hold at least the grade of O-5. Non-federal students, to include state and local government and private sector employees, must be of an equivalent grade. Private sector employees must be sponsored by a government agency.
Education: All students must possess a bachelor’s degree from a regionally accredited institution.
Application Instructions:
Federal Government: Applications should be submitted through agency channels and received at the IRM College prior to the published deadline. Each application must contain a résumé, a letter of nomination from the supervisor, and a completed AMP application form. Omission of required information may result in rejection of the application. Incomplete applications will be held by the IRM College for 60 days and then destroyed.
- Résumé: The résumé should include a work history that describes the candidate’s position titles, organizations, responsibilities, and accomplishments, and any rewards or recognitions received. If there are gaps in the résumé, a short paragraph is needed to explain them.
- Nomination Letter: The letter of nomination should address the applicant’s ability to complete a challenging graduate-level academic program in information resources management. In addition, the letter must indicate why the applicant is being nominated for the AMP and how this program will benefit the nominating organization. Letters must be on organizational or corporate letterhead and be addressed to the IRM College Registrar. The subject line must indicate the student’s name and the program the student is applying for. For example: “Subj: AMP Letter of Nomination, LTC John Doe.” The final signature on all correspondence must belong to the applicant’s immediate supervisor.
Submit applications to the IRM College Registrar via fax (202-685-4860), e-mail to IRMCRegistrar@ndu.edu, or postal mail to:
IRMC Registrar
300 5th Ave., Bldg. 62
Fort McNair, D.C. 20319-5066
State and Local Government and Private Industry: Applications for AMP must include a résumé, a letter of nomination from a direct supervisor, and a completed copy of the AMP application form.
International Students: Non-U.S. citizens who are members of defense agencies of other countries must apply through their governments. Applications should be in the form of an education and training request for approval and processing through the appropriate Security Assistance Training Field Activity (SATFA) country program manager, who should forward the request to:
Director
Security Assistance Training Field Activity (SATFA)
U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC)
ATTN: SATFA-RQ
173 Bernard Road, Bldg. 139
Fort Monroe, VA 23651-1003
DSN: 680-3255
Commercial: (757) 788-3255
Fax: (757) 788-4142
http://www.tradoc.army.mil/dcsopst/satfa/
International students must demonstrate comprehension through listening, reading, and general grammar structures via the Defense Language Institute’s English Comprehension Level (ECL) Exam with a score of at least 85 prior to acceptance. Students will take the exam in their home country. Because of the seminar-based active-learning model used in this program, oral communication skills are critical. The IRM College reserves the right to administer the ELC exam after the student arrives per AR 12-15, the Joint Security Assistance Training (JSAT) regulation, Section 10, if English comprehension is in question. International students should also possess basic competencies in the use of personal computers.
The Advanced Management Program Director, Dr. Kathleen Schulin, can be contacted at schulink@ndu.edu.