Fayetteville State University has long offered programs for soldiers and military families stationed at its neighbor, Fort Liberty. This week the college and the 18th Airborne Corps signed an agreement to solidify and grow their relationship further.
On Wednesday, Fayetteville State Chancellor Darrell T. Allison and Lt. Gen. Gregory K. Anderson, commanding general of 18th Airborne Corps and Fort Liberty, held a signing ceremony to mark their new education partnership.
Allison highlighted the university’s prior efforts, such as free tuition, to help soldiers and military-connected students. Military-connected students make up 33% of the student body, he said.
“The signing of an agreement of this magnitude with 18th Airborne Corps — and Fort Liberty/Fort Bragg — truly signifies that all of these previous efforts have not only been purposeful and impactful, but FSU now has the potential to be even moreso regionally and nationally, through the power of partnership,” Allison said.
(Fort Liberty is soon to be renamed Fort Roland L. Bragg. That name change has not yet taken effect. Anderson told news reporters on Wednesday the Army is still determining a timetable for the name change, and still calculating an estimated cost. “All that’s being figured out actually as we speak. We’re working on that now,” he said.)
The university and the 18th Airborne Corps aim “to encourage and enhance education, research, and innovation opportunities in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and other disciplines relevant to implementation of XVIII ABN Corps innovation objectives,” the contract says.
Here are some points in the agreement:
- The partnership is to expand the opportunities for collaboration between the university researchers and students and professionals from the 18th Airborne Corps.
- The Army and the university will work on projects and programs that research, design, develop and apply solutions to enhance the nation’s security, economy, and general welfare.
- The partnership is to “enhance knowledge transfer between the national security and academic communities relevant to technology innovation and commercialization.”
- 18th Airborne personnel may teach courses or assist in the development of courses and materials for Fayetteville State.
- Faculty and students will be involved in 18th Airborne Corps projects, including research and technology transfer or transition projects.
- Students may be given academic credit for work on defense laboratory projects.
The partnership is to last three years, and from then on will be renewed annually.
“This partnership is a success for the community, it’s a success for the Army,” Anderson said. It also is a success for the Army’s people, he said, “as we challenge them to grow, think, acquire new skill sets, develop. We owe it to them to develop them and to allow them to achieve their potential.”
Anderson said he expects the partnership will cover topics including data analytics, cloud computing, medicine, logistics and supply chains, and “using computing to help us forecast and see problems coming.
“We see potential for all that, and that’s just starters. This could be pretty big,” Anderson said.
After two decades of war campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq have ended, the Army needs to transform and modernize how it operates to face threats from today’s potential adversaries, Anderson said.
“We have to invest in our people new skill sets, ways to think, tools to use,” he said. “This is a testbed — a laboratory — to do just that. If we don’t, we won’t be relevant.”
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at 910-261-4710 and pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
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