 Hi, my name is Jerry Perez. I work at ATC's Force Development Credentialing Division in the Developmental Special Experiences Branch. Today I want to talk about the Developmental Special Experiences Catalog. Here's what we're going to be discussing specifically. We're going to go over what DSCs are and why they're important. Then we're going to move on and talk about who the target audience is and how DSCs fit into your career development plans. Next, we'll talk about how the DSC catalog is. You can access that in my vector. Finally, how you can document your accomplishments with the DSCs when you're completed with that. So I'll start with the why. The why is pretty much the same for all the services. We're in place to ensure our nation's defense. For the national defense strategy, we're supposed to build a more lethal force. I mean, without a doubt, our military has the world's most modern cutting edge weapons, right? But our individuals will always be the most important part of any weapon system that we have. So it's going to be important for each service to cultivate its workforce talent. For the Department of the Air Force, that usually means our errors in space professionals have the right skills, the knowledge and competencies to execute their assigned missions. To cultivate the talent, though, there's going to be lots of tools available for force development. But also as important as going to be for the members of this profession of arms that we're all a part of, it's important for us then to continue to learn and grow so we become valuable assets for our services. But like I said, I've mentioned DSCs and how they fit in for the Air Education Training Command. We've got a strategy for developing the airmen that we need. And actually it goes beyond just the airmen that we needed. It also refers to the space professionals we need. But pursuing and completing a DSC is one of those force development tools that are available to everyone. So in the next few slides, slides will be talking about DSCs and how they apply to force development. So I'm mentioning DSCs, what are they? What exactly are we talking about? Because it seems to be a new term. Most of you are already familiar with some of the experiences that are in the blue ovals on the outside of this graphic. Things like joint opportunities, education with industry, internships, those things have been around for quite a while. So DSCs is nothing really new. Those learning opportunities have always been there. But now they're being considered DSCs. So it's not a new concept, but the terminology is new. And folks, it's just something we need to get familiar with. If you look at the definition of a DSC, if you put it simply, there's going to be hands-on experiences that's going to be outside the scope of our formal education and training. So it's going to be something that's going to be usually outside, in many cases, of our career series or AFSCs. But we want to stress that word of experiences. Many of the DSCs actually come with some training and education that's required to prepare you for that experience. But again, it's the actual experience itself that makes it a DSC. The learning opportunity has to be offered more than once. We have several organizations that create special programs or opportunities for their folks, for their airmen. It's got to be repeatable. It cannot be something that's only offered once so that others can participate in that particular DSC over time. And finally, it's got to be a learning opportunity that an individual can gain or enhance their competencies with. And like we said, some of these may or may not be available in terms of the competency development in your primary career field. So a DSC is a good way to expand on that. So now we've talked about what a DSC is. I'd like to walk you through an example of one. And this is a real-life example that I'm talking about. So we've got a dental assistant at Lackland Air Force Base, got detailed as a superintendent for the Gateway Innovation Center. And that detail was 15 months. The Gateway Innovation Center is essentially an effort, a local effort, where they're going to be using continuous process improvement as one of their tools. So as a dental assistant, Mass. Sergeant Smith remains assigned to her career field while she's in this 15-month detail, but she's going to gain a variety of foundational and occupational competencies. She may or may not have had a chance to do as a dental assistant. So in this detail, as a superintendent, she'll be able to use competencies she acquired when she was training and then getting certified as a continuous process improvement black belt. Specifically, she's going to have to teach classes. She's going to mentor green belts and facilitate CPI events. So enhancing these competencies not only benefits her development, but it's critical for the Air Force to cultivate its force. So keep in mind when you're looking at a DSC though, it doesn't have to be within your AFC or series. The catalog contains a lot of DSCs which are open to all AFCs in all series. So take a look at the catalog and you can probably find something that's available for you that you'd be interested in. So now we talked earlier, many of DSCs are existing programs that you're familiar with, but for the first time we've actually co-located them all in one location. We've consolidated them in a single catalog, so it'll provide transparency as a tool for helping shape your individual career going out for the next few years. DSCs enable individuals also to gain valuable experiences and competencies in these knowledge, skills, and abilities that are going to help contribute to your upward mobility and enhance your careers. But by putting them in a single living catalog, it does simplify your research efforts. It's one stop shopping if you will, so you can go to one location and find out about what's available to you outside of probably your primary career field. But if you're only going to rely on the assignment system, the DSC catalog is going to be slightly different. It is not really an assignment system at all, but the key difference here is most assignment systems or application windows are only open or only visible to the applicants when there's a vacancy in the position or when the application window is actually open. The difference between that and the catalog is those opportunities are always advertised in the catalog, and it's a good reason for that is we want to make sure that people are aware of what's required for those particular learning opportunities so that you can look at the prerequisites and make sure you position yourself to be a stronger candidate when that opportunity presents itself. So that's why these entries in the DSC catalog are persistent. We want to keep them there regardless of whether there's a vacancy or the application window is actually open. But there is a difference. The catalog is not an assignment system. You still have to apply for any of the DSCs through the owning organization. They are going to be the ones that determine who's going to get selected for that particular DSC, and they handle all the application processes for it. As we mentioned earlier, the DSC catalog is out there and available to everyone, and it is targeted for the entire force, the total force. So it's open to all officers enlisted and civilians regardless of what your specialty codes or your occupational series are, and regardless of your rank or your grade, you're going to be able to participate in some of the DSCs listed in the catalog. But like I said, this is also a career planning tool. So if you're looking at either an officer career plan, an enlisted airman comprehensive assessment, or a civilian individual development plan, it doesn't matter. A DSC is something that can help you deliberately map out what you're going to want to do in the future. But regardless of which one of these tools you use, DSCs are going to be an important component of any career planning that offers you some unique learning opportunities. So as you're developing your career plans, you may be using one tool like this, which is going to be the pyramids. All officers and enlisted civilians have unique career progressions, obviously, and it all depends on your AFSC or occupational series. But I want to point out that DSCs are actually available throughout the timelines that these pyramids represent. You can pretty much participate during any time, during your development, or as you grow with the air force or the space force. But you need to check with your supervisors and mentors to make sure you've got the right career paths in front of you that you can use as a reference. As an example, I was lucky enough to participate in a DSC in latter part of my officer career when I was in uniform. I became a continuous process improvement black belt. Then later on, as I came on as a civilian, I was able to participate in the federal executive leadership board, which is awesome. So those were great opportunities for me. So again, it didn't really matter where on the pyramid I was, there was an opportunity for me to play in it. So next, I want to take a look at the catalog and run through a live demo of the catalog for you. So I'm going to switch screens now and go to the actual catalog itself. But that address on there is how you get to the catalog if you don't already have that. And I encourage anyone that is interested, and actually everyone should probably have an access or have an account on my vector. And once you log on, you're going to be seeing a screen much like what you have on right now. And it is going to be, the front is just going to take you to where the latest news is in the latest boards. But the my vector is a really important tool for career development. There's things in here like mentoring. If you want to look for a mentor in the Air Force that can help you through and provide some advice and guidance for you, you can do that with my vector. All the way down to tracking your positions, looking at Air Force competencies, the foundational competencies are out there. And then the development plan, which is where the catalog itself is located. So if you're going to go to the DSC catalog, you click on the development plan. Now I'm going to hide the menu on the left. But as you can see here, that takes you to three tabs. And depending on whether you're an officer enlisted or civilian, these tabs, these first two tabs are going to be a little bit different. But these are actually ways for you to communicate with your teams, your assignment teams for your particular career field. But the developmental special experience catalog is right here. And for those that are not unfamiliar or forget what the definition is, the very top of this just talks about what a DSC is. Now, if you've got any questions or comments for us, our organizational inbox is right there. So please feel free to send us an email and we'd be happy to to correspond with you on any questions or concerns you may have. Another important thing I want to point out is there's a there's a lot of reference materials available to you. If you click on that site right there, it will take you to our reference page. On this reference page, you are going to see all kinds of stuff. We actually have briefing slides with the audio recorded on them. So if you wanted to take a look at that, we have a pamphlet, a tri-fold that is just a summary of some of the opportunities in here in terms of how you get to them, information on the catalog itself along with the address that you could use. There's a couple of one-minute videos, one for the user and one for a supervisor. Again, these were intended to be just an awareness tool that you could use in either a commander's call or even in a staff meeting. And then there's other things on here. There's a podcast. We did a couple of podcasts, a how-to when it comes to navigating the catalog, as well as just a discussion on the catalog itself and DSCs. So there's a lot of material out here available to you and it's open to anyone to download and use. So that is clicking on the reference materials in my vector. The next thing I want to talk about is this dark blue rectangle that says, proposing you DSC catalog entry. So I'd like to say that if you've got an idea of what a DSC, if you're working in a particular position that should be probably classified as a DSC, please submit it to us and we'll go ahead and work with you. And once we've got the information updated and annotated, we can go live with that particular DSC in the catalog. So let's take a look at the catalog entries itself. You'll notice that there are several columns and this is the summary table. And so in the summary table, you're going to have the title of the DSC, the airman type, the rank or grade, and the component, whether it's regular air force, active duty or reserve, regular, I'm sorry, guard or reserve. And then, of course, the AFSE or the career fields along with some other things. The thing I want to point out, all of them have this little filter on them, which means that you can actually filter by any information in these columns. So let's say, for example, I wanted to take a look at enlisted opportunities. I'd filter by that. And you will see then that the enlisted opportunities then show up here, everything that's open to enlisted, even if it includes like officers and enlisted or officer civilian and enlisted. So this just gives you an example of what's out there. One other thing I want to point out is if we get a new DSC entry, we will make sure that it's atop of the catalog by putting an asterisk in front of it and we do this for 30 days after which point that particular DSC falls into the alphabetical order inside the catalog. So let's take a quick look at one of these. Let's say it's the Academy Military Trainer, which is something that's relatively new. So if you look at this, this is for enlisted folks. It's a three year tour with an option for an additional year at the Air Force Academy. And there's the POC information and you can see it's open to master sergeants and tech sergeants and pretty much all the career fields. Then next you will get a brief description of that particular DSC and then the prerequisites. And this is where I said it was important to have the catalog. Some of these prerequisites you're going to have to work on. If you don't have your CCAF degree or an associate's degree, you know you're going to have to get that before you try to apply for this opportunity. And it's best to know that in advance rather than having to find out when the window is open there's a vacancy. Unfortunately you're not able to partake in that. And then the application process below. In this case this is a DSD nomination process. So you probably end up talking to some of your senior leadership and letting them know that you're interested in this particular opportunity. So that's the catalog itself. And like I said, if you're interested in any one of these, you can click on the magnifying glass on the left and it takes you straight to that particular entry in the catalog for that DSC. So going back to the briefing, like I said, if you don't already have an account with the My Vector, I highly recommend that you do so. If you've already completed the DSC and you want to make sure that it goes into your records, how do you do that? What's the steps for that? Well, obviously if you're an officer enlisted it's going to probably be just going to report it, self-report it in My Vector. Civilians have other opportunities and that's going through MyBiz, MyPERS, or self-reporting in MyVector as well. We are working right now, we're not quite there yet, but we want to automate this so when you're completed with a DSC it automatically goes into your record. Some positions, for example, when we just looked at that, working at that academy, it's actually a PCS or could be a PCS unless you're in the local area. So that is actually an assignment. So that will show up in your records automatically, but there's some DSCs that normally would or would not. So for example, if the black belt or green belt, that's a certification that can go into your records, but there's other ones. The Federal Executive Board that I was part of is not something that normally gets automatically entered into your records, it's something you'd have to put in yourself. But either way, however you get this done, it's a way to document that you've completed a DSC and have it permanently put in your records. So that's pretty much what I wanted to talk about in terms of the DSC and walk you through the catalog. I want to thank you for your time and hopefully you'll have a chance to go out and take a look at the catalog. So right now, although we have phone numbers on this contact information slide, the best way to get hold of us is through the email because obviously we're many of us are teleworking, so we are checking that inbox frequently. So if you've got a question for us or a concern, please don't hesitate to drop us an email. Again, thank you for your time. Hope you have a safe and great day.