AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. (KOAA) — The Air Force Academy may pare back the number of distinguished visiting professors it hires next school year as a cost-saving measure, a step that worries professors with knowledge of the proposed cuts.
According to our news partners at The Gazette, those who are concerned say the number of highly qualified instructors has already been reduced.
The visiting professor program began in 1975 with two participants, and through the years, the Air Force Academy’s 20 departments have had the opportunity to host outside experts, many with prior military experience. Although not every department hosts a visitor each year.
This year, the Academy is hosting 11 distinguished visiting professors and one visiting scholar from another federal organization, the academy said, in response to questions.
Next academic year, faculty say they expect the number of visiting professor slots will be limited to four, one for each academic division.
The Air Force Academy said in an official statement the school is still evaluating different options to reduce the civilian pay deficit for the next academic year.
“No decision has been made to reduce funding for the Distinguished Visiting Professor Program,” the Academy said in its statement.
To recruit professors into the program, the school needs to advertise well in advance of the school year starting in the fall to give professors and their home institutions, including large research universities, time to prepare.
During their time at the Academy, professors remain on the payroll of their original employer, while the Academy reimburses those institutions.
The reduction to the Distinguished Visiting Professor Program would follow cuts in faculty and staff across the Air Force Academy.
The school cut 140 positions during the 2025 fiscal year. Most of those jobs were vacant or expected to be vacated through the federal government’s Deferred Resignation Program.
The school eliminated 36 filled positions and said it worked with those employees to find them other jobs. A small portion of the 140 jobs were faculty.
The cuts were required because the school was facing a $10 million shortfall for civilian pay.
They also followed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s statements, during his confirmation hearing, calling for a reduction in the number of civilians working at the nation’s service academies.
“We need more uniformed members going back into West Point, the Air Force Academy, the Naval Academy — as a tour to teach with their wisdom of what they’ve learned in uniform. Instead of just more civilian professors that came from the same left-wing, woke universities that they left, and then try to push that into service academies,” Hegseth said.
However, the high number of doctorate-level professors departing the academy has resulted in the Higher Learning Commission investigating a complaint that the school may not have sufficient numbers and quality of faculty to maintain its academic programs.
The school had 30 days to respond in writing to the commission, a timeline ending in the middle of this month.
A loss in accreditation would mean the school’s credits would not transfer to other institutions, such as graduate programs.
If the school lost its accreditation, it could also lose its membership in the NCAA and ability to compete in Division I sports. But few schools reach the point of losing accreditation, and if they do, the institutions generally close.
Those critical of cuts and the Air Force Academy administration tally the cuts to faculty differently.
This year, 25 faculty members have departed and 19 Air Force officers joined the staff to help fill positions, the school said on its website.
A professor who spoke with The Gazette on condition of anonymity said this statement presents only a portion of the picture.
If the distinguished visiting professor slots are cut down to four, the school would be on track to lose about 90 Ph.D positions, counting all those who left during the summer of 2024 through next year.
While visiting professors are supplemental to the full-time faculty, a 2009 Air Force Academy article said the school’s accrediting body viewed the program as a “vital contribution” to the school’s educational mission.
Professors who have visited the school and those who have worked alongside the visitors also said the program brings value that far exceeds the cost.
“You can get the key contributions that a lot of different people have to offer in a short, focused period of time, and then incorporate that into your larger program,” said Tom Bewley, a mechanical engineering professor from the University of California, San Diego.
While working as a visiting professor last year, Bewley said he brought expertise in autonomous systems, a key topic as the Air Force prepares to pair more planes with unmanned aircraft.
“Warfare is different now than it was just 10 years ago, and those changes are accelerating as we move into air-to-air combat done more and more autonomously,” he said.
A current visiting professor, who couldn’t share his name because he was not authorized to speak to the press, said that while uniformed faculty have had assignments, they don’t have decades of experience that visiting professors bring
It will also be impossible to bring in a professor with expertise that can cover all the departments in an academic division, he said. For example, no single professor can assist the civil, mechanical, astronautical, and aeronautical engineering departments.
While working with students last year, Distinguished Visiting Professor Charles Sherwin brought in a Joint Direct Attack Munition Tail Kit, a system that converts free-fall bombs into “smart” munitions, for students to get hands-on experience.
He could not speak to the possible cuts to the program, only its value.
The students took the JDAM tail kit apart and built a digital model of it and designed a new battery kit for it, and recommended a new guidance system for it, he said.
The solutions would allow the tail kits to be repaired in the field if needed, Sherwin said. Returning more maintenance tasks to airmen helps remove a reliance on vendors generally.
Sherwin was impressed by the program and by the two weeks of orientation provided by the Academy to prepare new instructors and integrate them into the school.
“It was an absolute great experience,” he said.
Sherwin, who holds a Ph.D. in program management and systems engineering, brought 40 years of experience to academy classrooms last year.
He capped off his military career as the B-1 system program manager over the Air Force’s bomber fleet. As a civilian, he went on to work as a senior program manager and lead systems engineer for hypersonic weapons programs at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.
Sherwin is now volunteering his time at the Air Force Academy, helping with student projects and said he wants to help introduce an integrated digital environment to cadets, similar to what engineers use to digitally model and redesign Formula One cars to ensure cars perform well on each and every track.
“The cadets need to understand that when you’re an engineer in the Air Force and leading engineering teams, you’ve got to be able to push that leading edge, and have industry and the laboratories themselves engineer systems in a time lapse quicker than our adversaries can,” Sherwin said.
He said he wants to continue mentoring students, to help ensure America’s superiority on the battlefield, and protect the nation’s values, including freedom of speech.
He noted that he has a personal interest in success because his children and children by marriage are serving in the Air Force. His children are also counted among Air Force Academy graduates and students.
“If we have to go to war, we’re going to win it. I want to make sure that that happens,” Sherwin said.
The Gazette's Mary Shinn contributed to this web story.
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