Shared Futures

United States Military Academy

Lance A. Betros
Head, Department of History
lance.betros@usma.edu

Lance Betros is a colonel in the U.S. Army and Professor and Head of the Department of History at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. 

A 1977 graduate of West Point, Colonel Betros was commissioned into the infantry and served in a variety of command and staff positions in the United States and Europe.  He spent several months in Somalia during United Nations operations in Somalia (UNOSOM II).  His recent duty assignments include commander of a gender-integrated basic-training battalion at Fort Jackson, SC, and senior aide to the Secretary of the Army in Washington, DC.

Since joining the faculty at West Point, Colonel Betros has been deeply involved in curricular reform.  For the past two years he has chaired the USMA Curriculum Committee, responsible for providing the Dean an independent review of curricular design and proposed changes and for conducting special curricular studies directed by the Dean.  Last year the Curriculum Committee published a major study, “Enhancing Foreign Culture Education at West Point” (7 January 2005).  The study assessed the current state of culture education at the Military Academy and offered recommendations for improvement.  Several of the recommendations either have been implemented already or will be soon. 

In addition to the Curriculum Committee, Colonel Betros also serves on the Dean’s ad hoc committee on foreign languages.  This body is responsible for enhancing the study of global culture through expanded foreign-language instruction.  The recommendations provided by the committee will have a lasting impact on the future capabilities of the US Army officer corps in making the force more culturally aware.

Colonel Betros holds a Ph.D. (history) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Master of Science (national security studies) from the National Defense University.  His research interests and publications are in the fields of civil-military relations and the U.S. Army officer corps.  His most recent publication is an edited volume, West Point: Two Centuries and Beyond (2004).

Bruce Edward Keith
Professor of Sociology
bruce.keith@usma.edu

Bruce Keith is professor of sociology and associate dean for academic affairs at the United States Military Academy.  His primary responsibilities at West Point include curriculum management, program assessment, and accreditation. In this capacity, he has served as a member of the USMA Assessment Steering Committee for ten years and chaired the committee since 2001.  He has served as a member of the USMA Curriculum Committee since 2001.  Moreover, Dr. Keith co-chaired the Military Academy’s recent accreditation executive committee and co-authored the Periodic Review Report that was submitted to the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.  He also served on the ABET steering committee in 2002.

Dr. Keith has presented papers and workshops on the topic of curriculum design and assessment at several association meetings, including the Commission of Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools (MSCHE—2001, 1998), the American Association of Higher Education (2002, 1999), the American Society for Engineering Education (2002), Rose Hulman’s “Best Practices in Engineering Education Symposium” (1998, 1997), the Association for Institutional Research (1999, 1997), the American Sociological Association (2002), and the North Central Sociological Association (2000).  In addition, he has been invited on numerous occasions to lead discussions and facilitate workshops on the subject of curriculum design, assessment, and the management of institutional status at several colleges and universities.  Dr. Keith has twice served as an evaluator for the National Science Foundation’s Combined Research Curriculum Development (NSF-CRCD) grant program in engineering education; on several occasions as an institutional evaluator for the MSCHE; as an MSCHE advisory panel member tasked to write the association’s current guidance on outcomes assessment; and currently as a member of the American Sociological Association's (ASA) Departmental Resource Group.  During the current academic year, he is serving as chairperson of the ASA Task Force on General Education and Sociology and serving as a member of the implementation team in Kabul, Afghanistan at the National Military Academy of Afghanistan where he is addressing issues curriculum management, assessment, and accreditation.

His research, which incorporates program design and assessment as a measure of institutional quality, centers on three distinct but seemingly inter-related areas.  The first of these explores the influence of higher educational contexts on the production and dissemination of knowledge, with a focus on the structure and reproduction of institutional status.  The second examines distinctions between institutional status and quality, focusing on an understanding of the role of purposive action in the management of these two properties.   The third area directs attention toward articulation agreements in state higher educational systems.  His work has appeared in several outlets, perhaps most notably in Social Forces (2002, 1998, 1991), Teaching Sociology (2004, 2003, 2002, 1995), The American Sociologist (2001, 2000, 1994, 1992), Research in Higher Education (2001), the American Educational Research Journal (1999), and the American Journal of Education (1996).

Dr. Keith received a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Nebraska (1990) as well as a Master’s Degree in Sociology (1986) and a baccalaureate degree in Political Science (1984) from Western Washington University.

Frank A. Galgano
Associate Professor and Director of Geography Program
frank.galgano@usma.edu

Francis Galgano (Frank) is a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army.  He is an Associate Professor and Director of the Geography Program at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.

Lieutenant Colonel Galgano is an armor officer and was commissioned in 1980 after graduating from the Virginia Military Institute.  Since that time, he has served in a variety of command and staff position in the United States, Europe, and Saudi Arabia.  His most recent field army assignments include serving as a senior staff officer in the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment, Fort Bliss, Texas and as a senior staff advisor to the Saudi Arabian National Guard in Riyadh.

As a member of the USMA faculty, Lieutenant Colonel Galgano has been intimately involved in curricular development and in assessing cultural instruction at the Academy.  He served as a member of the Academy’s Cultural Perspective Goal Team since 2002 and has chaired the team since 2003.  In that capacity he supervised the analysis of culture-related instruction at the U.S. Military Academy and published a comprehensive report, titled Culture in the USMA Experience, which was used by the Curriculum Committee in their assessment of culture-related and language instruction.  Additionally, his committee developed goal standards and assessment rubrics to support the assessment of culture-related instruction at USMA.

During his tenure at the Academy, LTC Galgano participated in an overhaul of the Geography curriculum in 2001.  As the Geography Program Director, he led the development and re-alignment of the geography programs, as well as the implementation of an honors program during the 2003 academic year.

Lieutenant Colonel Galgano received his Ph.D. (Geography) and Masters (Geography) from the University of Maryland at College Park.  His research interests are divided between coastal geomorphology (examining the effects of sea-level rise) and military geography (the impact of natural and human landscapes on stability and support operations in the developing world).  His most recent publications include two books, Geographical Perspectives: North Korea (2004) and Military Geography, From Peace to War (2005).  He also served on the editorial advisory board of Goode’s World Atlas (2005).