Matthew Weinberg

I will be taking the second module

Title: ALLIES: A Decade of Building the Next Generation of Civil-Military Leaders

Project Proposal

Background

In 2016, ALLIES will mark its ten-year anniversary as a student-led initiative at Tufts University and multiple US service academies.  ALLIES, which stands for Alliance Linking Leaders in Education and the Services, seeks to create a bridge for shared understanding between future civilian and military leaders at the undergraduate and graduate levels. 

In 2006, three Tufts students founded ALLIES on the idea that there is a fundamental disconnect between US civilians and their military. ALLIES recognizes that this disconnect begins in the formative years of both civilians and military service members. The legacy of this disconnect has been an increasing level of misunderstanding of how best to utilize civilian and military resources to achieve America’s foreign policy objectives.

Over the years, ALLIES has established programs and expanded partnerships between the US service academies, US and foreign governments, and other institutes of higher education in order to tackle a range of civil-military issues. Over a decade of ALLIES participants have seen the tremendous value in personal interactions with cadets and midshipmen of their own age and have carried on these relationships throughout their careers.

In May 2016, Tufts University's Institute for Global Leadership (IGL) will celebrate its 30^th Anniversary and is currently in the process of searching for a new executive leader to direct the institute.  Ahead of that change, IGL leadership and ALLIES stakeholders would like to share with Tufts University leadership, external supporters (e.g. Carnegie Foundation, IGL Executive Board, US service academies) and the rest of the university community, how ALLIES has progressed in building the next generation of interagency leaders. Current staff would also like to share with the incoming director, whoever that may be, a look into what the ALLIES program has accomplished during its first decade and the plan for where the program intends to go next. The results of this project will likely receive high visibility at a pivotal moment in the history of the IGL and ALLIES.

Focus

This project seeks to use social network analysis to answer for IGL and ALLIES stakeholders the question of has ALLIES been effective in broadening the horizons and shaping the direction of ALLIES participants?

In its mission to develop a civil-military educational program that will produce the “Diplomat-Scholar-Humanitarian-Warrior” there are three lines of effort that ALLIES focuses on:

• Optimizing educational linkages: Ensuring that the existing civil-military educational expertise and resources on Tufts University campus are fully utilized
• Civil military engagements: Providing opportunities for undergraduates in civilian and military academic institutions to cross-pollinate ideas
• Developing citizen soldiers: Resurrect the concept of the citizen-soldier.  The genesis of ALLIES is the belief that there exists a growing divide between those who study and those who fight.

In each of the lines of effort above, social network analysis can answer and show the program’s impact. For instance, a major part of developing the next generation of citizen-soldiers is placing them in professional opportunities where they would be exposed to civil-military issues.  Before conducting our social network analysis, we will ask ALLIES participants how the program has helped them with career opportunity connections and then display what the resulting professional network ties looks like. This view would also provide IGL leadership and ALLIES stakeholders a visual representation of the extent of the ALLIES professional network across the the public, non-profit and private sectors, as well as potential strong or weak ties that could be plugged into for future program support or internship arrangements for current and future ALLIES participants. 

We can also take a look at the historical power and nature of the ALLIES network by looking at relationships between ALLIES participants during and after their education (i.e. by asking who they keep up with from the program). Through survey questions asking for a participant’s top connections (i.e. asking who have they kept up with from the program), we will likely be able to uncover cliques within the ALLIES network organized around by common interest, background, program involvement of participants.  Since ten years of ALLIES participation will be gathered, we will also be able to see how the ALLIES network has evolved over time and look at the rise/fall of issues of concern, changing participant backgrounds, program activity/engagement levels and change in the nature of internship/employment paths of ALLIES participants.

Similarly, in assessing how ALLIES is capitalizing on the resources and expertise at Tufts and other institutions, we would ask ALLIES participants about their exposure or utilization of other resources or organizations during their time in ALLIES.  Through their connections, we could gain a powerful visual representation of how far-reaching or strong ALLIES ties are not only within the Tufts community, but also across broader public, non-profit and private sectors. This representation could also reveal where ALLIES ties are lacking, or need improvement.

Approach

Data: In order to conduct a social network analysis of the ALLIES network, a survey of ALLIES current participants, alumni and active participants from other organizations will be conducted. In lieu of an ALLIES 10^th anniversary conference in March 2016 and the IGL’s 30^th anniversary gala in May 2016, a contact list of all ALLIES alumni and current participants has already been created in the past few months and will be utilized to distribute the survey.

There also exists an ALLIES Facebook group of 272 members which contains data on academic or professional affiliation, as well as other meta-data that can potentially supplement gaps in survey findings or a shortcoming in survey response rate.  Publicly available data from LinkedIn can also corroborate or supplement data gathered from the ALLIES Facebook group and the survey.

Network Measures: The network measures that may be most applicable in judging the effectiveness of the ALLIES program from a social network analysis perspective at this early stage include the following:

• Density: Judging how closely knit the ALLIES professional and support network is, particularly between/amongst year cohorts, personal background, sectors and interests
• Cliques/Clusters: Have cliques or clusters formed within the ALLIES network? If so, what shared attributes/connections characterize these cliques (e.g. year cohort, activity involvement, topic interest, shared experience, etc.)?
• Centrality: Are there figures who are central in the ALLIES network? What are the common attributes about these central figures? Are there any explanations/attributes that account for their centrality (e.g. leadership roles, professional path, etc.)? Could they possibly serve as alumni board members?
• Ego Network: Amongst these figures, what quantitative and qualitative factors can we draw from their network of ties? For instance, we are looking at the coherency, directionality and other attributes characterizing the ties of particularly central figures to draw inferences on qualities we may want to engender in future participants through programming.
• Average path: What is the state of the connective tissue of the ALLIES network? How does information or influence flow through the ALLIES network?
• Eigenvector: What are the strength of connections to others and their connections, cliques (based on year or other attribute) within the ALLIES network?

Conclusion

Overall, a social network analysis approach will uncover findings and supporting recommendations that will help the IGL and ALLIES improve how it allocates limited time and financial resources to ALLIES initiatives and make necessary adjustments to the program. Until today, data on ALLIES activities only exists across documents, spreadsheets and rudimentary line and block charts.  Through social network analysis, we will for the first time be able to visually display the ALLIES network in a variety of ways and draw lessons from how a one-of-a-kind civil-military education program has evolved over its first decade. Ultimately, we seek to share findings in a transparent and visually-appealing way to the IGL and broader ALLIES community during a momentous time for each program.