Professional Development

SDFM Annual Achievement Awards (Updated for 2025)

It’s time to nominate outstanding individuals and teams for the Society of Defense Financial Management’s (SDFM) Aviation Chapter Calendar Year 2024 Achievement Awards! Please see the attached forms and submit all award nominations to Sheena Fast (email in the GAL) by 24 January 2025. 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 “CY2024 Awards – Info” attachment). Nominees do NOT need to be SDFM members. All nominees will be reviewed by a panel for our local awards and will also be submitted for the SDFM National Achievement Awards competition.

SDFM MEMBERS – Additional opportunities below!

Here are the forms and documents:

SDFM National Essay Contest (Updated for 2025)

SDFM 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 SDFM 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. The use of AI tools is prohibited. Submissions must be received by SDFM National by February 28, 2025. 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, 2025 for submission.

The 2025 essay topic is:

SDFM’s Certified Defense Financial Manager (CDFM) program is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2025, with more than 14,000 defense financial management personnel having achieved certification. In addition to the basic certification, there is also the CDFM-A, an advanced level of certification for acquisition professionals, and SDFM will soon roll out the CDFM-H certification for the defense healthcare community. Choose one of the following questions on which to write:

  1. Transport yourself to 2050 and describe the state of the CDFM program. At minimum, identify and describe the changes to testing, training and specialty areas (beyond CDFM-A and -H) the SDFM implemented in the intervening 25 years.
  2. Fast forward your career to 2050 and describe how the CDFM program and other career development initiatives supported you in obtaining your career goals.

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