PME Digital Badge Program

This Professional Military Education (PME) Digital Badge Program can be adapted to any institution-specific program and is intended as a template. Text in brackets and italics marks items each adopting institution should replace with its own policies, offices, course numbers, contacts, and pricing.

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The [Institution Name] Professional Military Education Digital Badge Program is a comprehensive digital credentialing model through which a university recognizes and validates professional military education (PME) completed by Service members. Service members receive university-issued digital badges that translate their PME into academic recognition, creating pathways between military service and civilian education and careers.

PME Digital Badges acknowledge leadership and strategic education obtained through enlisted and officer professional military education courses. For example, primary and intermediate NCO/enlisted leadership academies, command and staff colleges, and senior service (war) colleges, or the equivalent professional development courses of the partnering service branch. Each badge stacks into one or more certificates awarded by the institution.

In this model, badges stack into two illustrative certificate tiers:

• A foundational-level certificate (referred to below as the “Strategic Leadership Certificate”)
• An advanced-level certificate (referred to below as the “Executive Leadership Certificate”)

Institutions may rename these certificates, add or remove tiers, and adjust the required badge combinations to fit their own academic programs and the PME structure of the service branch(es) they partner with.

Certificates are awarded upon “stacking” the required badges and successful completion of the associated academic coursework. This model assumes 3-credit-hour, 8-week online courses as an illustrative example; institutions should substitute their own credit-hour and term structures.

Certificate 1: Strategic Leadership Certificate (Example)

Enlisted Track – Option A (Junior/Mid-Level Enlisted Leaders)

• Primary Leadership Development Badge (for example, Airman Leadership School equivalent)
• Intermediate Leadership Development Badge (for example, NCO Academy equivalent)
• Course 1: Analysis and Decision Models for Leaders
• Course 2: Strategic Leadership

Enlisted Track – Option B (Senior Enlisted Leaders)

• Intermediate Leadership Development Badge (for example, NCO Academy equivalent)
• Senior Enlisted Leadership Badge (for example, Senior NCO Academy equivalent)
• Course 2: Strategic Leadership

Officer Track

• Company/Field-Grade Officer Development Badge (for example, Squadron Officer School equivalent)
• Course 2: Strategic Leadership

Certificate 2: Executive Leadership Certificate (Example)

Enlisted Track – Option A (Senior Enlisted Leaders)

• Intermediate Leadership Development Badge
• Senior Enlisted Leadership Badge
• Course 2: Strategic Leadership
• Course 3: Design Thinking for Organizations

Enlisted Track – Option B (Senior Enlisted Executive Leaders)

• Intermediate Leadership Development Badge
• Senior Enlisted Leadership Badge
• Senior Enlisted Executive Leadership Badge (for example, Chief-level academy equivalent)
• Course 3: Design Thinking for Organizations

Officer Track – Option A

• Company/Field-Grade Officer Development Badge
• Intermediate Officer Development Badge (for example, Command and Staff College equivalent)
• Course 2: Strategic Leadership
• Course 3: Design Thinking for Organizations

Officer Track – Option B

• Company/Field-Grade Officer Development Badge
• Intermediate Officer Development Badge
• Senior Officer Development Badge (for example, Senior Service/War College equivalent)
• Course 3: Design Thinking for Organizations

Badge names above are generic placeholders describing the type and level of PME they represent. Each institution should map these to the specific PME courses of the service branch(es) it partners with (for example, Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Space Force, or Coast Guard equivalents).

Illustrative Credit Course Descriptions

The course titles and descriptions below are illustrative examples of the type of leadership coursework that can anchor a PME Digital Badge Program. Institutions should substitute their own course numbers, prerequisites, delivery formats, and learning platforms.

Course 1: Analysis and Decision Models for Leaders

This course introduces analysis and decision models for leaders. After taking this course, the student will be able to:

• Analyze their personal decision-making style and evaluate its impact within their organization.
• Identify and assess various decision-making styles, key competencies, and strengths.
• Evaluate an organization's culture, power dynamics, and leadership effectiveness.
• Utilize analysis tools, decision models, and techniques for problem-solving and strategic decision-making.
• Integrate course learnings into their professional roles and decision-making processes.
• Develop a comprehensive implementation plan demonstrating the application of analysis and decision-making models.

Course 2: Strategic Leadership

Strategic Leadership is focused on achieving enduring performance potential. After taking this course, students will be able to:

• Describe the boundaries, challenges, and changing nature of strategic leadership.
• Identify factors in the internal, external, and global business environment, and analyze how they impact leadership in organizations.
• Apply tactics and practices that demonstrate core strategic leadership competencies of strategic thinking, strategic acting, and strategic influence.
• 1Assess present and future resource needs, identify gaps, and develop plans to meet future needs.
• Use a strategic leadership model to analyze a leader's role in organizational effectiveness and develop a strategic leadership plan.

Course 3: Design Thinking for Organizations

This course reviews models and methods in creative and design thinking from an entrepreneurial perspective, a current business perspective, an organizational design perspective, and a personal life progress perspective. After taking this course, students will be able to:

• Define the different types and value of thinking strategies used for problem solving in a professional environment: creative, opportunistic/entrepreneurial, decision, futures, and design.
• Apply examples of creativity and creative thinking in business, in organizations, in society, in professional problem solving, and in daily life.
• Demonstrate application of design thinking and how it can result in creative solutions to solve complex business or organizational problems.
• Develop a list of sources for tracking trends as part of the problem-solving process.
• 1Prepare a final project using concepts, principles, definitions, and applications of the multiple modes of thinking learned in the course.