DETROIT ARSENAL, Mich. – Members from several U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command organizations headquartered at Detroit Arsenal participated in the command’s first ever Talent Development Program seminar June 8.Program coordinators partnered with Wayne State University Law School’s Arthur Neef Law Library for the half-day seminar lead by historians from the TACOM History Office and law librarians from WSU. Topics presented included “History of the Army’s Organic Industrial Base: Using Legislative History Research Techniques to Understand the Mission”, and “A (Brief) Introduction to Federal Legislative History Research”.
“This is our inaugural event, and it went incredibly well,” stated Nikki Karanec, the Talent Development Program manager for TACOM. She added that Dr. Rachel Johnstone and Dr. Camillia Rodgers with the History Office “did a great job of presenting background for the Organic Industrial Base and the librarians at Wayne State were able to tie-in their ‘how to’ information and apply it to our group. This gave (our class) a great opportunity to expand their knowledge base and learn how to apply this knowledge to the workplace.”
“We have a duty to understand, not to just perform our mission,” added Johnstone, noting that the seminar fostered better understanding of the overall task of supporting the Army, which should naturally lead to the ability to suggest improvements and generally better performance.
“A greater understanding of your work, how things work together, makes work more fulfilling for individuals,” she added.
The Talent Development Program developed as a result of recognizing the need to search out innovative ways of developing the current and future TACOM team.
Developing the workforce, stated seminar participant Maj. Gen. Darren Werner, TACOM commanding general, dovetails completely with the Army’s number one priority: people.
“If we do not take the time to apply resources to our people in the form of education and development and opportunities to learn, we're going to have an organization that is stagnant,” Werner said. “For us to grow as an organization, look into the future and really modernize what we do, we need to build upon and grow a solid foundation of learning.”
“That,” the general added, “begins with training and investment in the intellectual side of what we do.”
“In the Detroit region, in Southeast Michigan, we have an immense amount of industrial knowledge, an immense amount of history and a huge industrial focus on future technologies. We can leverage what we have in this community to help our organization grow. Partnering with Wayne State University, for example, is a great way to infuse knowledge into our organization and become better at what we do, so that when the nation calls our Army, we’re contributing in the best way we possibly can.”
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