CCAF courses good start

  • Published
  • By Mark H. Kuerth
  • 75th FSS education specialist
HILL AIR FORCE BASE --  Hopefully you saw in the Jan. 24 edition of the Air Force Times the front page article "Get a Degree -- Earn a Stripe."

The article explains how mid-level enlisted personnel will now need to have their Community College of the Air Force degrees completed if they want to be truly competitive for promotion to the senior enlisted ranks. The article ended with this statement from Chief Master Sgt. Eric Jaren, AFMC's Command Chief, "CCAF is not the end. It's the beginning."

Chief Jaren was alluding to the fact that it is important for enlisted members to not stop when they finish their CCAF degree, but continue on and earn their bachelor's degrees as well.

My suggestion is to be really smart ... work on both at the same time! Your CCAF degree requires you to complete five General Education (Gen Ed) courses: Speech, English Composition, Math, a Social Science course, and a Humanities course. You can bounce all over the place and take math here, speech there, social science somewhere else ... or be smarter about it, get yourself enrolled in a good bachelor's degree program; nearly all of which require the same Gen Ed courses; and be knocking out both degrees at the same time!

It's like you're working for a $100 bill (the bachelors) and you pick up a $50 (the CCAF degree) on the way over!

It's an exciting (and very motivating) way to start your bachelor's degree program, knowing that when you front load your course load with the same Gen Eds required by CCAF all of those early classes are "two-fers"; each class counts in two places!

Not sure what bachelor's program to get into, come and see us, and we'll help you pick one.

Another bit of advice I share with young folks working on their degrees is this: once you start your program ... STAY IN YOUR PROGRAM!

Take at least one course every term until you are done. Almost daily I get a senior enlisted member in my office telling me they "need to get going again" on their degree.

They took a "break" and now all of a sudden five, six ... eight years have gone by and no progress has been made. Absolutely to a person every single one of them will express regret that they "wasted all that time" when they could have been done by now.

Don't take a break! If you are here take a course in the classroom, if you are deployed, take a class online. But stay in your program! I promise you that you will be surprised and delighted at how quickly you finish.

The Hill AFB Education Office is located in Building 383, we can be reached at (801) 777-2710.

You can come by Monday-Friday, 7:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. without an appointment and one of our counselors will be glad to sit down with you and help guide you toward completing your CCAF or any other degree goals you have.