We also think it is important to connect the Army Corps to the communities where we live and work through the local grassroots advisory working groups, which link us with the local governments, academia, private sector, and community leaders.

We are committed to attracting the highly qualified individuals, but diversity is equally important. We have more than 100 formal partnerships with engineer-producing universities and colleges, including historically black colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions. Diversifying our organization is important – not just in gender and ethnicity, but in educational background, technical expertise, and personal experience as well. Varied backgrounds and experiences bring different perspectives and outlooks, which are vital to achieving innovative and enduring solutions to complex problems.

STEM occupations play a critical role in maintaining a strong economy and providing national security. The U.S. expects 2.4 million STEM job openings by 2018 based on growth and retirements. This is the fastest-growing occupational cluster in the U.S., next only to the health care industry. The nation will need to increase the number of college graduates by approximately 1 million more STEM professionals to fulfill this requirement.

The Army Corps of Engineers, like many federal agencies, is facing the challenge of an aging workforce. How are you working to address the gaps in knowledge and experience that may arise with the retirement of senior employees?

Some 18 percent of our workforce is eligible for retirement, and another 21 percent is eligible for early retirement. Additionally, we are challenged by what we term the “bathtub effect,” that is, the greater number of employees have either 20-plus years of service, or less than nine years. The smallest percentage of USACE employees are at the mid-level, 10 to 19 years of service. We must find a way to capture and share the explicit and tacit knowledge held by our long-time employees, and transfer it throughout the organization.

That’s one reason I am so focused on knowledge management [KM]. Knowledge management is a systematic and formalized management approach that gives action to information so it can “grow, flow and create value.” We want to ensure that all USACE authoritative information is easily accessible for our entire global workforce, and to support sharing, eliminate unnecessary work and rework, enhance collaboration, inspire innovation, and create value.

KM is about connecting people to people and people to content in order to truly prepare USACE for the future. We have several ongoing pilot efforts, including one in my own office, and we’ve recently brought our first knowledge management officer on board. USACE is also working with leading industry experts to learn from their best practices and find ways to improve our KM strategy.

Throughout your tenure, you’ve discussed the importance of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education and USACE is investing a great deal of time and effort in helping to address the nation’s STEM challenge. Why is STEM so important?

STEM occupations play a critical role in maintaining a strong economy and providing national security. The U.S. expects 2.4 million STEM job openings by 2018 based on growth and retirements. This is the fastest-growing occupational cluster in the U.S., next only to the health care industry. The nation will need to increase the number of college graduates by approximately 1 million more STEM professionals to fulfill this requirement.

These occupations are also critical to the success of our organization. Nearly 50 percent of our civilian workforce and 98 percent of our military workforce are in STEM fields. Our mission requires us to actively search for the best and the brightest to fill our mission-critical occupations, including civil, mechanical, and electrical engineers, as well as positions in the natural resource management/biological sciences field.

As the largest federal engineering organization, we have an obligation to build a diverse STEM talent pool and inspire the next-generation workforce to consider the Army as an employer based on the challenging and rewarding work we do. The nation struggles with getting young people interested in these technical careers while they are in primary school, and with maintaining their interest in college. Therefore, we volunteer our time and work with students early on as we realize children must preserve the option to pursue a career in STEM by the eighth grade, because of the hierarchical learning of mathematics. This commitment will prove positive results for the Corps, the Army, and the nation.