 Thank you so much and good afternoon everyone. My name is Lauren McKenzie and I'll be kicking off this panel. I'll begin with about 10 minutes of some macro level efforts to integrate WPS at the Marine Corps University, and I'll be followed by my colleague Dr. Claire Mattelitz, who will zero into some really interesting, a little bit more micro level initiatives at the command and staff college. But first, just by way of background, Marine Corps University is located in Quantico, Virginia. It's a university comprised of several degree granting schoolhouses at the captain major and Lieutenant Colonel level. We also have an enlisted college, we have a college of distance education, library, etc. So it is a relatively large university, certainly not as large as the war college at least as this one. So we'd like to just talk a little bit about some of our efforts to integrate WPS over the past several years and by no means do we have the answers. But what we'd like to do is share some things that have worked well for us in the hopes of maybe garnering your input in hopes of collaboration, and in hopes if if any of the ideas resonate with you and you'd like to expand upon them in your own context at your own institution. I'd love to help with that. So what can you expect from the next 20 minutes the first half of the panel. So first I'll kick off by talking about a couple of efforts to integrate WPS across the university. So if you're anything like us at your institution we tend to be a little bit siloed so our captain school, our command and staff college our war college, they tend to to be a little bit stove piped at times. So one of the things that I've been working on since about 2015 are some efforts that can help be the connective tissue across the respective schools and centers at Marine Corps University. So I'll talk a little bit about a writing award that we instituted in 2017 open to all students across the university to include our enlisted college to include our distance education college for there will move on to a relatively new program designed to bring together students, faculty and staff from across our schools and centers to gather once a month for a discussion pertaining to WPS broadly to enjoy a free lunch provided by our foundation. And of course to network with each other because it isn't often that our students get to collaborate across the different learning levels. And then I'll conclude with just a few kind of lessons learned from my efforts to offer faculty development again across the university some things that have worked well and, and maybe not so well. And they're on from there and I'll turn it over to Dr. Mattelots to talk about some of the great work that she's done a command and staff college. So first things first, I want to talk a little bit about this idea of grassroots right so as has been alluded to several times already today. When things come down from above and are pushed on us as faculty as staff right. It doesn't tend to go as well as when it comes from the grassroots. Back in 2017 at MCU we invited Dr. Naila Arnaz from NDU who at the time to my knowledge had the only WPS writing award in the PME context. She spoke to us a little bit about that. And one of the EWS our expeditionary warfare schools instructors Blake Jackson said we need to replicate that here. And oh by the way, he said, I happen to be an officer for NNOA the National Naval Officers Association, which is devoted to some promoting and supporting minority officers so he said I think we'll have the money. So we'll have the resources. If you at MCU can provide the judges and things like that so that was how we got our first writing award started from that fact dev. So this is this slide is not meant to be read word for word I know there's a ton of text there, but this is the one pager the call for papers if you will that again I'm happy to share with you I'll have our email addresses at the end I can send you this one page as a word doc or a PDF, but it sort of showcases our attempt to attract and reward solid student research and writing devoted to WPS. And I should say, I mean some of our winners have been papers about masculinity I mean it's not all about gender. Many of our winners over the years have not had the acronym WPS a single place in the entire paper. So we are really we try to be broad and inclusive in the way that we attract student research and writing and reward it. So, this just tells you a little bit about the $600 prize. Again it's a 300 200 100 prize respectively, and I bring that up because I just think the strategic messaging these student award winners get recognized at our commencement. And what a great way to showcase strategic importance of WPS, other than at the commencement when we sometimes will have the command on the Marine Corps will have a lot of general officers. And again all the friends and family and faculty so a great place to say hey MCU recognizes the value of WPS and we put money where our mouth is right we recognize and reward it. This is just a little bit about the selection criteria the judging and notification, and the submission guidelines so I put this up here just because I didn't want to talk in broad generalities I wanted to give you something specific that I'm more than happy to share with you, and I'm so we're no longer the only game in town all the school houses, I think across PME now have some version of this. So it could be a little bit old news but if you are looking to, again, institutionalize a WPS writing award at your school or center, or just to revise or update others, please email me I would love to talk to you about some of the experiences we've had some success. One other thing I will add because my co editor is here Lieutenant Colonel Dana Perkins is a colonel now. Oh, God, sorry you got promoted without me. I mean what we did was we formed a small committee, and we asked all the PME school houses across the US to send us their top WPS writing award papers and then we had a best of the best competition, where we brought together all the papers got a great panel of expert judges, and we picked a top winner, which was I think exciting in and of itself, but also we were able with the support of our Marine Corps University Press, we were able to compile all those award winning papers into a book or an edited volume that came out last year so we're real proud of that and again, just a way to recognize great student work. Alright so that's there at your disposal if you'd like it. Okay. The first thing I wanted to bring up because I think it also emphasizes our desire to collaborate and to focus on not just on the down and in, which is so tempting for us all in our own work to really focus down and in but but to go up and out because we're always trying to balance that. This is the creation of a WPS scholars program. So again, this is not meant to be read word for word this is just a slide that shows you the front page of a publication that came out last month in the Marine Corps Gazette. What I learned about the Marine Corps when I joined the faculty in 2015 and that I truly admire is that they have this publication the Gazette where they can exchange ideas and share, you know, criticisms and they can share new initiatives and respond to each other and it happens in a pretty timely fashion. So this came out last month March of 2023, where Dr. Mattelots and I and our colleague Brad Weinman were able to publish the inaugural year of this WPS scholars program. I would say it's now been renamed the Reynolds scholars program, and that's really important because when General Val Jackson invited us to be part of a series of different scholars programs at MCU we have the gray scholars the crew lack scholars. We didn't have any named after female generals and retired Lieutenant General Lori Reynolds spent most of her career devoted and committed to communicating the idea that diversity is a strength. And we leave, you know, strength and talent on the bench, you know, we're only hurting ourselves. And so with some collaboration across the university we decided to rename the WPS scholars program the Reynolds scholars. I'm going to tell you as a person who whose organization was canceled by the Marine Corps I initially was hired as a part of the Kayakul the Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning our culture center. The Marine Corps divested itself of the culture center culture was no longer relevant to the Marine Corps apparently and so in 2020. We went away. And one of the things that Dr. Mattelots and I wanted to ensure didn't happen is that when WPS. goes away, God forbid, right, that that our efforts don't die with it. And so no one is ever going to cancel in the Marine Corps, General Mattis, General Gray, General crew lack or General Reynolds. And so this just gave us I think some really important staying power. So if you have any interest in sort of what we did in terms of developing this program, delivering it and the future directions of the program. And this article in the Marine Corps Gazette from March 23 chronicles those efforts. And so again, we're proud of it it's a work in progress it's not perfect but every month we get together, and we ask the hard questions, and we connect with each other. All right, my last minute. I just want to say a couple of things that I've learned, as I've tried with the help of my colleagues to offer faculty development opportunities at Marine Corps University. And the first thing is for me like, I have to always keep in mind that the distinction between reaction and response. So the common reactions I would get, since I started doing this sometime ago is, and I quote, I'm so sick of this squishy culture or I'm so sick of this squishy gender should I, or two, I've already taken my sexual harassment training, or three, please don't give me another rock in the pack. My pack is full and heavy and and I'm falling over because of the weight. So I think that that reaction is, it's fair and it's valid. But as I would like to quote our current director or Colonel Brad tippett at command and staff college, and he said that there's one thing that we'd like you to think about this academic year is thinking about the weight of your pack, and what in your pack doesn't serve you anymore. If there is a new idea, you could replace that old rock that's been weighing you down. And think about something in a new way. And I think that's what WPS is about it helps us give us new tools for causal analysis for red teaming for emotional intelligence for critical thinking, all the stuff you've heard already today. So that's been important for us to think about WPS as, you know, another way for Marines and our students to become more resourceful. And that's one thing that we're after with our 10 months that we have for them as we want to help them become more resourceful in their thinking in their analysis. And then finally, and I'll turn it over to Dr. Mattelots. This is a quote from retired General Mike Dana, who said that the way that you see the problem may be the problem. And I've noticed that not only for my students and my faculty with WPS but for myself. I've been working here as I've really had to work hard to try to see it from a different angle from a faculty that does always have a lot being pushed down upon them. And we try to think of creative ways to work in WPS through essay prompts through discussion questions through issues for consideration that aren't just another reading another speaker, or another module, but a way to integrate it seamlessly into the curriculum. I'll stop there. Thanks so much for your attention. I'll turn it now to Dr. Mattelots who will talk about some specific efforts at the Command and Staff College. Okay. My name is Claire Mattelots. I am a faculty member with Dr. McKenzie at Command and Staff College. A lot of the things that were discussed in the previous panel are going to be familiar in this presentation, but I'll just, I'm going to highlight how ours is different. So, at Command and Staff College, as one of the colleges at Marine Corps University, we have, we have about 250 students at Command and Staff. So it's relatively large. So that's every year, including about 40 international officers. And every January, the students have to take some electives. And this is the best part of the year because it's when we get to teach what we like. And what we're good at, supposedly, and the students get to take what they want. So the past three years, my background is, I'm an Africanist, and I study conflict. So gender WPS is something that Lauren introduced me to when I got to Marine Corps University. But for the past three years, I have, I devised an elective. So very much like, like Joan did, I, you know, I have a class. And again, this is small print, I understand that. But I will go over some of the lessons and point out how my class is a bit different because, because all of my students are military, I wanted to make sure that it was highly relevant. So I, but I also love theory. So I wanted my, my own kind of interest in there as well, as we tend to do as academics. So what I did with the gender war and security class, and it's been surprisingly successful, always, always, at least half of the class is always men. And I get everything from infantry to artillery to like medical officers. But one of the things that I did for the elective was I made half of the lessons operational and half of them academic, which so each, you know, there's an A and O by each lesson, you get 10 lessons for the elective. So I do similar things to, to the elective that was discussed in the last panel I do things like, what is WPS I talk about militarized masculinity norms tropes things like that. But I also talk about, I also talk about things like how do you operationalize WPS how do you do it. Right, what does it actually look like. And because I have never been a gender advisor. And the only qualification I have is that I have a uterus, right, that I have. So what I do is I get, I have speakers come in who have either been, you know, gender advisors, I have people from OSD, I have I had Dr. Brown come in and talk about how she implemented WPS in in the college where she is in Canada. So I have speakers come and talk about the stuff that I'm not an expert in. So at least five of the classes right. They do a gender analysis and they do it in class and then they have to do it as a paper, things like that. So this is. I've been surprised that I always have skeptics when I come in. And, you know, even folks are like, I don't know about this gender stuff, right, but they, they always, they always, you know, come out of it. If not having fully bought into it, right. I think that there is so much more to this topic. Okay, so that is an elective. And again, I'm just kind of giving you like the nitty gritty of what, what a lot of us are doing at command and staff college. All right. The last couple of years I, and it's sad to say but I've been able to I've talked people into letting, letting us do WPS in the planning and war fighting exercises. And so it's been a bit of a win. And it gets better every year. But this is actually where, you know, where, at the end of the year and it starts Monday we have this culminating exercise that lasts the entire month and the entire student body are in it. They all have billets. We're fighting some fake country that really is China right. But what I, what we do now is I have gender focal points. And so each, each task force gets a gender focal point and I get to play the gender advisor at the cocom. And what I've done with students in the past couple years is we've come up with like a fact book, like a fake fact book, right, for this fake place, right using very obvious disaggregated data from, from some other place right. And what we do is we, I just work with the students on here's, here's how you do, you know, here's where gender advisors, or a gender analysis comes into it in the JIPO brief, right, or here's how it comes into when you're just doing a PC and that's kind of an easy one. But, and then they go to different task force groups like working groups like the targeting group the strike, you know, strategic ops group, things like that. And they just advise and a lot of them are hesitant to do this right because it's kind of like I don't want to push it and I'm just like just push it, just push it. Challenge. Yes. But a lot of it comes a lot of success comes from having high level support. And once you talk the, you know, the retired generals who come and do their, you know, play commander, which is wonderful. But once you brief them and get them to understand why this is important stuff, then the students buy into it so having having top cover is really, really important. All right, I, I'll, you know, if you have questions about this. I, and we come up with documents, things like that like we've created things not really knowing kind of what, what is supposed to be done. But it's like, it's like, you know, building the airplane as it as it's flying. Okay. And then finally, my last point is that we've also integrated WPS into the civilian like curriculum and very much like, like Susan said in the previous presentation. It's, we do put them in lesson cards right I sort of made it I got, I got folks to be like all right minimum requirement. Five of the lesson cards this year of the, I don't know, 30 some we have should have WPS or some sort of aspect of diversity or intersectionality or. And, and by that, I don't mean just readings, right, you can have readings but to me that's just, you know, like, adding women and stirring, you know the article. It's just, you know, numbers but you can have readings you can have discussion questions. I really agree with, with Joan and the fact that teaching the faculty about this is probably the very first, you know, step, because they're not going to be comfortable. So getting there by and is very important. But, and, you know, really it comes down to as a, as a faculty member as a teacher, understanding how to integrate it, not just as a standalone class, right, but how to just integrate it in your seminar, right, just, you know, throw a question that has to do with it or what would this look like if you were, you know, X population or, you know, how do you think this affects, you know, women in Ukraine, things like that, right so. There's lots of, there's lots of ways to do this. Again, I completely you know I agree with everything that was said in terms of how to kind of. It would be a standalone kind of like now we're going to talk about WPS right I agree with what was said before. In that sense, but there are. I'm also of the of the of the opinion that, you know, sometimes you just, you just got to, you just got to put it in there, and people aren't going to be happy. We've gone for years with not being happy with not having it so. So I think that, you know, this is, this is steps forward. And I'm going to leave it at that so that, so that Dr Brown and my Canadian colleagues can, can go. Yes. Oh, sorry, steps forward. Here is our email address addresses and if you have any questions I'm happy to share my syllabus Lawrence happy to share the writing awards stuff. We also have a WPS Charter framework that we actually borrowed from the Naval War College from Brenda Oberman, who was happy it was nice enough to give it to us. Because we should be sharing this stuff, not kind of like, it's not copy written, right, so anyway, let us know if you need anything. Okay, that was fantastic round of applause. Okay, our next presenters from the Canadian Defense Academy and we have Dr Vanessa Brown, Mr beyond like your love and miss Christine St. Pierre, so you have the stage. Well, thank you very much. And thank you to both of you for the great presentation. Hello and good afternoon. It's our pleasure to be here at the US Naval War College as part of this important symposium on women, peace and security. I'm Christine St. Pierre, and I'm a gender advisor with the Canadian Defense Academy and I'm joined here by my two colleagues doctor Vanessa Brown assistant professor at the Canadian forces college and Bjorn Lagerlof, who is senior advisor to the commander at the Canadian Defense Academy. And our present presentation today will focus on the work that we have been doing at the Canadian Defense Academy to mainstream women, peace and security, as well as gender based analysis plus as part of the work of the Defense Academy and Defense Education. Yeah. So, Canada, as the United States and as many other nation nations around the world have committed to integrate women, peace and security, the women, peace and security agenda or framework is through adopting national action plans and Canada's national action plan was implemented in 2010 and our second one in 2017. And now the national action plan was was really a catalyst in terms of helping or supporting the different departments within Canada to integrate women, peace and security and one of these departments is certainly the Department of Defense and the Canadian Armed Forces. And so in 2016, the Department of National Defense adopted a specific directive for integrating resolution 1325 and the women, peace and security agenda into Canadian Armed Forces planning and operations, as well as across its institutions. So this includes the implementation of gender based analysis, plus as a tool for integrating both women, peace and security and gender perspectives across the department and the armed forces. In addition, Canada's defense policy also includes a clear commitment to advancing diversity, respect and inclusion, including striving for gender equality within the organization and in all of its domestic and international activities and operations. Now, as part of these specific commitments, the Canadian Armed Forces have also specifically committed to increasing the proportion of women in the military by improving recruitment retention train and training of personnel. But certainly what we've, what we've learned over the last, certainly the last decade is that there are important systemic barriers that require our attention. If women are to have influence within the organization and are to be equitably supported for career advancement and for deployment to both in domestic and international operations. And so, turning it now to the Canadian Defense Academy, we view defense education at all levels as playing a critical role in helping to address these systemic barriers in a meaningful and sustainable way. And so I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, Mr. Lagaloff who's going to talk more about the Canadian Defense Academy context. Great, thanks so much. So as Miss St. Pierre pointed out, there are a lot of policy imperatives as well as international agreements to which Canada's party, which give us, you know, I think it's safe to say enough policy cover to proceed with advancing WPS through the department. The reason why CDA or the Canadian Defense Academy is such a pivotal, I think, player in that space is because we're effectively at the center of professional development for the Canadian Armed Forces. We have four core roles within the Canadian Armed Forces and Department of National Defense. And because of those four different roles, we're able to take a more systematic approach to to mainstreaming WPS and applying gender perspectives through the professional development system. And that includes from a policy direction curriculum content delivery perspective so it allows us to be a lot more comprehensive. And the role as you see represented behind me. It's really covering off the CDA formation as an organization itself so my boss major general HSN is the commander of a command so the CDA formation has four colleges within it to pre commissioning academies, one NCO Academy and then a command staff college. And so that is one rule that that person has to carry out. And that is his role as a training authority for all CAF common professional development. Beyond that is his role as the functional authority for professional development so between those two roles. That gives the Academy control over things like requirements. It was an interesting discussion on requirements in the last panel. And how those are set how those are formed and from our perspective now. When we sit a requirements writing board or a qualification standards writing board and Canadian forces language. We bring in a gender advisor or other experts to inform how we are drafting those requirements that then get transmitted down to the schools. And I know that's something my colleague Dr Brown will talk about in her part of this. Well, we're looking at the policies that are around student loading onto courses so what are the student population mixes that we have at each college. What are the barriers that might be in place for students from an access perspective, and so on and so forth we're also looking at some of our programs to look at the way in which they're being delivered. They being delivered equitably are their barriers to success. Those kinds of things are the questions that we're asking ourselves. And so all of those responsibilities added up really provide us with a very, I think, good opportunity to advance WPS especially and to incorporate gender perspectives across all of what we do. I know my colleague, Miss St Pierre can elaborate a bit more on how we do that specifically and some of the frameworks we've put in place to advance that through our gender focal point network. One of the things that we've done in the last two years is kind of really look at the structure within CDA and how we can implement a gender structure in a similar way, or taking from the NATO and the UN experience. So, it's really a way of that we've, we've been able to institutionalize the implementation or the integration of women, peace and security and gender based analysis plus as part of our core governance nodes. So what what my colleague was talking about in terms of policy and training and business planning so the various areas but also in terms of the, the various institutions. And so, in terms of that structure we've had a gender advisor so prior to me, my colleague Dr Brown, and now me acting as gender advisor to the commander but also to the Canadian Defense Academy, and then a series of gender focal points. And so, in terms of the institutionalization of it it's, it's been really building the capacity of the gender focal points themselves to, to carry out that that work or that thinking, and also building, building the cooperation mechanism. So to ensure that there is cooperation and there is sharing among, among the network itself so that we, we are not alone in the work that we do, and that we are also not siloed in in the work that we do because there's there's much overlap. And one thing I'll mention in terms of the, the success or the ability to do this has been driven by the buy-in and the support of the leadership and, and the different directors that are supporting the work of the gender advisor and the GFPs. And I'm going to turn it to Dr Brown who's going to talk about the process for how, how we're doing all of this. Thank you, Miss Christine St. Pierre. As, as Miss Pierre had alluded to, we have been so lucky to have a gender structure now built within the Canadian Defense Academy, and the Canadian Defense Academy has, has some ownership over all of the Canadian military structures and I'm going to speak to the perspective of the college that I work at is the Canadian Forces College noting that there are others. So within the Canadian Forces College, we have 13 gender focal points, and those gender focal points include as a lead gender focal point our deputy commandant. We also have faculty members, both civilian and military. We also have librarian staff, and we have curriculum development officers, and we come together on a regular basis to create professional development opportunities not only for ourselves as gender focal points, as well as the, the opportunities that are established by Miss Christine St. Pierre as a gender advisor for CDA. But we also, we, we also have conversations about how do we really mainstream gender perspectives, and in particular gender based analysis plus, as well as equity diversity inclusion and in the Canadian context indigeneity within what we teach the way in which we teach and the context in which we teach it. So on the screen behind me is our gender based analysis plus lens. So in that lens, we have gender and sex as key components to understand any groups access to or limitations to resources as well as their risk or opportunities within conflict and crisis, as well as peacetime. So for the Canadian government. We have a gender based analysis plus model as well as this lens that's federally mandated across all of our federal departments including the Department of National Defense and Canadian Armed Forces. And the plus is intersectionality. So, because I want to make you active, how many of you here have heard of intersectionality by a raise of hands. Okay, so we're middling. We have a significant contingent who haven't and a significant contingent who have, if you're already familiar with intersectionality, I would commend you to, to look at Canada's interpretation of that and see if that jives with what you know. And if you don't know anything about intersectionality and you'd like to learn more, I would commend you to look up Kimberly Crenshaw. She's been working on intersectionality since she coined the term in 1989, but probably one of her her greatest works on this was mapping the margins in 1991 she also has YouTube videos for free and she's an excellent scholar and practitioner so highly recommend. So in the Canadian context we look at gender perspectives we look at the differential and often disproportionate impact of conflict and crisis for women men, boys girls and gender diverse individuals and we also use this lens to understand what we are and what women by taking a look at all of those other intersecting identity and experiential factors. When we think about conflict, when we think about peace, and when we think about how to mainstream these ideas within our curriculum. So within Canadian Defense Academy, more broadly, and across all of the Canadian military colleges. So this is the same federal mechanism as, as all the other departments to understand how to think about gender based analysis plus in a systematic way. So this is one visual interpretation. This really allows us to challenges are to challenge our biases to understand what our biases are to think about the assumptions that we bring to the table and we're thinking about peace and security to think about who we are we are collaborating with and who we are sharing the space with. So a lot of the, the, the conversation is about having a seat at the table. This is more about ownership of that table with diverse groups. This is one visible visual representation. This is another, but really it's about change management within our organizations and mainstreaming women, peace and security, as well as gender and intersectional perspectives and the work that we do. So at the Canadian forces college, I've been privileged to work there since 2015 as a sectional instructor and now I'm an assistant professor so I'll work there until I die. So, along the way, we, we tried to figure out how we were doing this right and how we were doing this wrong. So in 2017 I was contracted by the college to do a large report on how we were mainstreaming gender and cultural perspectives within the joint command and staff program so at the major to left hand at Colonel level. So I did an interview program that we offer at Canadian forces college. And I did interviews with staff with students, and I did focus groups with different communities within the college to understand what were the impacts of delivering this learning. Where are we doing it well, and what were the gaps. And so from this I had several recommendations, which are now areas that are gender focal point network are working on. So really about how do we understand what to include across all of our key components of our programming. Where does women, peace and security fit. How do we mainstream gender based analysis plus. How do we consider diverse perspectives about women, peace and security about security about peace about human security. How do we ultimately come together as a community to work on this together, because there are a lot of people who have never considered women, peace and security before. As part of their curriculum, there are others who have been considering this for a really long time. So we've been having conversations. So I realized that I'm a minute over. Some of the things that we've been able to do is have professional development opportunities where colleagues will come in and present what they know. We also have had asked for a survey of like awkward moments within classroom dynamics that had a gender component or an intersectional component where we as faculty members were unsure about how to respond in a way that was inclusive. And so we've had these professional development conversations about not only what we include in curriculum, but the dynamics that are going on in the larger learning environment, both within the classroom and beyond it. So if you'd like to hear more about the report that I did, I parlayed that into my, my PhD, so it is available online, and it's completely shareable. We mistakes were made but also also successes were made as well. So I think I'll, I'll end it there.