Athena Has Arrived

Col. Everett S.P.

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The mythical Greek goddess Athena was renowned for her ferocity … and her wisdom. Deeply valuing this military and intellectual excellence, many years ago West Point assumed Athena’s helmet as one of its primary institutional symbols. Today, it still adorns many cadet uniforms, academic buildings, sports fields, special equipment and more.

Yet, symbols are only meaningful if they inspire future positive human behavior. If you’re looking for the virtues of Athena in a senior military officer, what knowledge, skills and behaviors would one look for?

Regarding Athena’s military excellence, the U.S. Army has established formal processes such as command selection boards and command assessment programs to select its best leaders and warriors to lead its battalions. Due to both voluntary officer attrition and the Army’s centralized selection process, fewer than one out of every 10 active-duty second lieutenants will ever command an Army battalion. Indeed, the Army’s battalion commanders are among our nation’s finest warriors.

Considering Athena’s academic excellence, Army officers who earn a doctoral degree (typically Ph.D.’s) are even rarer than those who command battalions. Whereas graduation from most undergraduate and master’s degree programs is guaranteed if one adequately completes a specified set of courses, earning a Ph.D. entails the rigors and unknowns of researching a new human, social or scientific phenomenon, and sharing that knowledge with the world through a published dissertation. The Ph.D. graduate is a producer of knowledge versus just a consumer of it. Indeed, the Army’s Ph.D. is among our nation’s finest scholars.

Though Athena’s integration of military and intellectual excellence represents West Point’s broader faculty, staff, cadets and alumni, its symbolism may be even more powerful for West Pointers who are women. Indeed, women currently represent only 24% of the cadet population and 15% of the senior military faculty. Yet, for the first time in the history of West Point, four current female members of the West Point faculty -- Cols. Kate Conkey, Julia Coxen, Katie Matthew and Julia Wilson -- have both commanded an Army battalion and earned a Ph.D. Athena has arrived.

Conkey is an academy professor and director of the PL300: Military Leadership program in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership. Commissioned into the Military Police Corps from Furman University ROTC, she earned a master’s degree from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in industrial-organizational psychology from Auburn. She commanded a unit with the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq that was recognized as the best military police company in the Army, and the Criminal Investigative Command (CID) battalion where she served as an executive officer was selected as the finest in the Army. She then led the University of Hawaii’s Army ROTC program and later took the reins from Matthew as commander of the Special Troops Battalion and Camp Buehring, Kuwait.

David Frye, one of Conkey’s Hawaii ROTC subordinates, shared stories of her spirit of “encouragement, guidance and challenge” that motivated him and others to achieve bucket-list goals, such as running marathons. A peer from Kuwait, Lt. Col. John Bagaglio, remembered Conkey’s “always present” leadership style and her officer development program focused on building commitment as opposed to compliance. “(Conkey) had lieutenants do PT in an EOD bomb suit … helping them develop some emotional (intelligence) for our (diverse) team. She gave each lieutenant a copy of ‘The Way of the Shepherd: Seven Secrets to Managing Productive People’ with a personalized note in each of them. One of my lieutenants ... still has that book on his desk daily.”

Coxen is a USMA professor (select) and the deputy head of the Department of Systems Engineering. Commissioned as a signal officer and distinguished military graduate through University of Pennsylvania Army ROTC, she earned a master’s degree from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Operations Research from the University of Michigan. She deployed to Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne Division and was selected for the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, where she served at home and abroad with distinction in leadership roles at the intersection of special operations and intelligence.

Coxen is an exemplar of leading and developing officers. John Miranda, her former command sergeant major, shared, “her unique ability to establish a vision, create teams and drive change is unmatched. When often approached by junior officers … I would undoubtedly tell them, ‘Don’t worry about (U.S. Army Human Resource Command), nobody will pay more attention to your career and development than Lt. Col. Coxen.” Miranda also shared that, “However, it is her spirit that ultimately makes her the best officer I have worked for. Julia was the smartest person in the room, had the heart of a true warrior, there was no one more patriotic and can motivate a room of steely-eyed Soldiers to follow her anywhere.”

Matthew is an academy professor and director of the Sociology Program in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership. Commissioned as a logistician as member of USMA’s Class of 2000, Matthew later earned a master’s degree from Kansas State University and a Ph.D. in sociology from George Mason University. She deployed to Iraq with both the 1st Infantry Division and the 82nd Airborne Division, and she deployed again as part of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the fight against ISIS. Most recently, she commanded the Special Troops Battalion of the U.S. Army Garrison Camp Buehring, Kuwait.

A junior officer who served with Matthew in the 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division noted that, “In high stress situations where people are tired, and conflict almost always arises, I quickly learned to bring Katie into engagements with high tension to leverage her uncanny ability to re-focus people on the real problems facing the team, unit or organization.”

Her peers from Fort Riley, Kansas, noted Matthew was one of the few who always built everyone else up, and her peers from JSOC noted that even though her Syria logistics portfolio keep growing to the point that would make most great officers overwhelmed, Matthew just kept “so cool” and level-headed. When the division commander asked for Matthew to be his aide, her brigade commander pleaded, “You can’t take Katie. If you take Katie, everything falls apart.”

Wilson is an academy professor and deputy director of the Department of Physical Education. Commissioned as a finance officer through Texas A&M-Corpus Christi ROTC, she earned her master’s degree in health education and Ph.D. in human behavior from the University of Florida. She served in the 25th Infantry Division, 18th Airborne Corps, and U.S. Army Special Operations Command, including the 5th Special Forces Group (A) in Iraq and commanding the Special Troops Battalion of the 1st Infantry Division’s Sustainment Brigade at Fort Riley and in Afghanistan.

Her former command sergeant major, Mike McCabe, shared how Wilson was “my absolute favorite commander of my career. She IS the epitome of THE Leader that everyone should follow. She possesses a clear vision … never micromanages … is extremely courageous; I’ve never seen her afraid of anything, and we deployed together. She has the best candidness and integrity and makes you feel that you must be that way as well, without saying you should. She has this ability to make you want to do well for her and the team. All of this comes from her caring for everyone without any biases or judgments. (During) all the Article 15 readings I sat on with her, she never dismissed anyone without them knowing we were there to help. She let them know what they did was wrong, but they were not bad people. We very rarely had any repeat offenders. As a matter of fact, during our time together, we had the best retention rate in the whole division. She was never afraid to get her hands dirty. Whether it came to PT, training, field time, driving, cleaning/improvements, etc. … she was right there, alongside any Soldier lending a hand. She earned the respect of everyone.”

Beyond West Point, there are probably few other major Army commands with four current or former battalion commanders who have earned Ph.D.’s, and certainly none with four female officers who have done so. Therefore, the next time we see Athena’s helmet at West Point or beyond, let it remind us that the Army’s Athenas -- including Col. Conkey, Coxen, Matthew and Wilson -- have indeed arrived at West Point and are providing wonderful examples of the warrior-scholar leaders our nation and Army need to defend freedom around world.