National Guard

Air Guard’s primary learning center transforms through homework

FRIENDSVILLE, Tenn. – The Air National Guard’s primary learning and broadcast center is generating military education solutions for the total U.S. Air Force in immediate and long term challenges, said its Airmen teleworking in East Tennessee this week.

The I.G. Brown Training and Education Center staff are following the guidance and directives of the CDC, the National Guard Bureau, and the Department of Defense concerning COVID-19, which includes personal distancing, teleworking, and other actions to stop the spread.

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Is respect changing?

Editor’s note: Commentary by U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Mike R. Smith. This is the sixth article in an ongoing series in which the I.G. Brown Training and Education Center staff and faculty share their perspectives and spark discussion about the organization’s lines of effort.

There are people in this world that I’ve never met that would stand unfulfilled in an extended handshake to me as well as there are strangers that I would risk my life protecting. In my face-to-face dealings with leaders, coworkers, people, and groups, gaining and giving my respect lies somewhere subjectively between those poles.

I believe that understanding respect is an introspective journey to how and why we value others, organizations, and ourselves. As they say in the office and on the battlefield, leaders cannot demand our respect; they must earn it through repeated actions that support our ideals.

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The value of inclusion

Editor’s note: This is the second article in an ongoing series in which the Air National Guard’s I.G. Brown Training and Education Center staff and faculty share their perspectives and spark discussion about its lines of effort.

I gained a renewed value for a culture of acceptance this summer by joining my unit’s softball team in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Not having played much baseball in my life, I decided to play with the Air National Guard I.G. Brown Training and Education Center’s “Notorious TEC” when the captain, Sergeant Smyser, told me it was just for fun and that the team was not overly serious.

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Campus billeting office construction shows progress

Construction of the I.G. Brown Training and Education Center’s new billeting office continued this week, with visible progress seen in some vertical steel structure raised, some initial concrete block laid, and from other work at the building site located on the eastern edge of the campus on McGhee Tyson Air National Guard Base near Knoxville, Tennessee.

Base Civil Engineer Squadron officials said last fall that an adequately designed billeting office under Air Force standards is required to provide customer service to all personnel attending enlisted professional military education in-residence training programs, professional continuing education, and base unit training assemblies.

Construction cost is about $1.39 million.

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