Professional Development

ASMC Annual Achievement Awards (Updated for 2024)

It’s time to nominate outstanding individuals and teams for American Society of Military Comptrollers (ASMC) Aviation Chapter Calendar Year 2023 Achievement Awards! Please see the forms linked below and submit all award nominations to Sheena Fast (email in the GAL) by 26 January 2024. She will respond to all submissions to verify receipt, so if you don’t hear back within 1-2 business days, please follow-up.

Please encourage your leadership teams to prepare and submit deserving individuals for one or more of the award categories (see “Achievement Awards 2024” attachment). Nominees do NOT need to be ASMC members. All nominees will be reviewed by a panel for our local awards and will also be submitted for the ASMC National Achievement Awards competition.

* Please note 2 changes this year:

  1. There is a separate nomination form for the intern/trainee category this year, due to new evaluation criteria.
  2. There is a separate nomination form for the NEW category (team/individual) for Financial Systems/Digital Transformation

ASMC MEMBERS – Additional opportunities below!

Here are the forms and documents:


ASMC National Essay Contest (Updated for 2024)

ASMC holds an essay contest each year. Up to three winners are selected each year. The winners of the contest may have their essays published in the Armed Forces Comptroller magazine or on the ASMC website, be awarded a cash prize, and receive a plaque.

See the PDF linked below for full rules and details. Essay submissions must be original, of a single author, and must not exceed 1,500 words. Submissions must be received by ASMC National by February 28, 2024. You may submit your essay directly on National’s web site, or you may provide your essay in a Word document to Sheena Fast by February 22, 2024 for submission.

Authors may choose to write on any one of three current topics:

  1. The Growth of Artificial Intelligence: We are currently witnessing the expansion of artificial intelligence (AI), defined as “systems with intellectual processes characteristic of humans, such as the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalize, or learn from past experience.” While we have long embraced related capabilities like robotic process automation, AI represents a distinct paradigm shift. What roles should artificial intelligence play in the future of financial management? Please provide examples of potential applications and their potential impacts.
  2. Centralization in Decision Making within Defense Financial Management: Budget execution may seem relatively straightforward in times of financial abundance; however, when budgets become constrained, organizations tend to gravitate toward centralizing resource decision making. As a general premise, should decision making within defense financial management be more centralized or less? Please provide examples to substantiate your viewpoint.
  3. Accelerating DoD’s Path to Financial Auditability: The Department of Defense (DoD) is on a path towards achieving financial auditability, but this journey is lengthy and challenging. What improvements should be prioritized now, such as policy guidance, systems integration, training/education, etc., to expedite audit readiness within the DoD?

For more information and details about the contest, please see the following linked PDF:


Elsie Steffany Memorial Scholarship Award

This ASMC scholarship award covers the costs for winners to study for and take the CDFM exams. The award includes enrollment for two years in the CDFM program, the CDFM textbook, one EDFMT course, the CDFM Modules 1-3 exams, and registration for the National PDI. Award self-nominations must be submitted to Ms. Sheena Fast by January 15, 2023.

Please see the linked PDF for more details and information:


Development Opportunities: Coaching

March is Coaching month on the Supervisors and Leaders We Need site. The site is run by the Civilian Leadership Development School, and the school’s coaching team is hosting this month’s activities and info. Each of the four weeks of the month, the site will have a different reading or live event covering the month’s topic.

The Supervisors and Leaders We Need site contains the weekly readings and the ZoomGov meeting links (CAC required for both). The planned webinars are:

  • Thursday, 10 March @ 11:00am EST
    Coaching Skills and Principles for the Non-Coach
  • Thursday, 24 March @ 11:00am EDT
    Live Demo: Coaching in Real Time

FERS Retirement Planning Tool Template

This is a tool built in Excel that is designed to help FERS employees determine the best age at which to retire. The 2nd tab of the workbook contains an embedded Word document that describes the purpose of the tool and some basic instructions on how to use it. The 3rd tab of the workbook (titled Inputs) is where ALL of the data is input into the tool. The 4th tab (titled Income Stream) is self-explanatory. The tabs labeled by age portray the details that are fed into the Income Stream tab. Once you gather the necessary information you’ll need to input your data into the template, it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to actually enter the data.

Note: This is an updated version of the tool from what was previously posted here. This is the version that contains all of the latest factors and bells and whistles from the recommendations of everyone who beta tested it. If you copy and paste your inputs from a previous version into the attachment, please use the Paste Values option. Also note that you must enable the Printer Friendly LES in myPay if you enter your latest LES inputs into the tool directly from the myPay website.

FERS Retirement Planning Tool (Master blank template) v20200717.xlsx


Dashboarding Basics

Are you interested in learning about creating dashboards in Excel? In this free virtual training, Mr. Ed Fritts of TekSouth presented some basic dashboarding tools in June 2020’s Tips & Tricks. Mr. Fritts covered:

  • Intro Pivot Enhancements
  • Format Data & Creating Pivot Table
  • Adding Fields Names
  • Creating Customized Design Subtotals
  • Creating Customize Design & Value Columns
  • Creating Slicers Timeline
  • Generate Reports
  • Slicers Multiple View

If you would like to view the presentation and download the materials, please click the following link. Thanks to Mr. Fritts and TekSouth for providing this training!
https://www.teksouth.com/2020/06/25/june-tips-and-tricks-dashboards/


Managing Job Stress

Wouldn’t it be nice to have some tips for managing your job stress? It’s something we all have, to varying degrees. Our local Employee Assistance Program (EAP) office provided this article, which will be printed in part in the March 2020 edition of the Wright Flyer newsletter. The full text of the article is in the file linked below.

Managing Job Stress.docx


About CDFM

The American Society of Military Comptrollers offers the Certified Defense Financial Manager (CDFM) program to those persons desiring to demonstrate proficiency in the core aspects of defense financial management.

More on the CDFM and CDFM Training

PRACTICE CDFM QUESTIONS 


Professional Development Institute (PDI)

ASMC offers annual training events which provide attendees opportunities to earn continuous education points and further their professional development. These events are called PDIs.

At the national level, ASMC hosts a National PDI each year, usually the week of Memorial Day. At the local/regional level, many local ASMC chapters host Mini-PDIs, which take different forms across the country. For the Aviation Chapter, the Mini-PDI is usually a one-day conference event held in the spring.

For those who would like to participate in training at their leisure, the National ASMC provides a Virtual PDI. This consists of online access to recorded material (workshops and mini-courses) from the year’s National PDI.

Many PDI events, including the Virtual PDI and the Aviation Chapter Mini-PDI, provide continuing professional education (CPE) or continuing education and training (CET) credits.


DOD FM Certification

ASMC FM Certification Briefing