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Presentation

The Graduate School of the Colombian Air Force, formerly Aeronautics Military Institute, during fifty four years of educational tradition history, has had an unappealable evolution without historical precedent, not only because of its new name, obtained by Resolution No 8632 of November 7th, 2013 of the Ministry of Defense and communication No. 2014EE4752 of the Ministry of Education, but also because it drives us to the consolidation of a Higher Education Institution with Quality, Relevance and Aeronautical Impact. This has been the stamp that carries as a name the Development Plan 2015-2019, which seeks the empowerment of the main functions of higher education under national and international standards, a duty with our country, with its governmental policy 2014-2018, a mission of the Military Forces, and a commitment with our praiseworthy institution.

The slogan of our development plan has the spirit of an Air Force that during its 95 years of history has searched for keeping up to the dynamic challenges of a pushing country that despite of different and multiple threats has not given up upon its dream to be a better country: ‘’An Education of Quality, Relevance, and Aeronautical Impact’’. There are three big challenges, Quality the first, where there should be a correspondent alignment of the Quality Management System of the Colombian Air Force with the requirements given by the Ministry of Education about quality of academic programs, its organization, functioning, and accomplishment of its social purpose. Second, Relevance, higher education is relevant as long as it is focused in solving problems felt by humanity; in our case we have the wish that research, product of the programs, generates improvement to our managerial, missionary, and support processes of the Air Force, before challenges of development, research and innovation of the sector. The third challenge is to achieve Aeronautical Impact, which we will face in two scenes: The first scene is the internal armed conflict, where we will educate masters of military tactics, knowledgeable women and men of history, the institution and the sector, capable of understanding the air power as a distinctive and decisive factor on the solution of an armed conflict; aware of their role in the constitutional mission, respectful with human rights, capable of generating doctrine from expertise and guarantor of National Defense and Security, and in a second scene; the peace, with women and men decided to contribute with knowledge to consolidate the Colombian Aeronautics Industry from a scientific and technological perspective.

Hence, the Development Plan of the Graduate School of the Colombian Air Force is conceived under four fundamental foundations: teaching, research, relation with external sector, and internationalization; to build a path for accreditation on high quality of the Mater’s programs, and in a long term, institutional accreditation. Within the results so far obtained with the programs, objectives, goals, and indicators of the Plan mentioned before, among others it stand out the renewal of registration for the Specialization in Aeronautics Logistics (Resolution 8614 of July 9th, 2013), and for the Specialization in Management of Air Safety (Resolution 11217 of August 26th, 2013).

The beginning of the THOT project, which looks for creation and development of the Master’s programs in the Colombian Air Force, made it possible to obtain the registration for the new Master’s program in Aeronautics Logistics (Resolution 8573 of July 8th, 2013), Master’s program in Military and Aeronautical Sciences (Resolution 12382 of September 12th, 2013) and the Master’s program in Operational Safety (Resolution 17699 of December 6th, 2013).

The Educational projects would not have a greater impact if they would not have responded to the challenges given by the sector, the organizations and society in general. Scientific research is the pushing element for new knowledge generation, technological development and innovation, and social knowledge appropriation, and human resource education on Science, Technology and Innovation CTeI. Thus, the Graduate Scholl of the Colombian Air Force, by the Research Department, and according to the criteria defined by Colciencias (call of September 2013), has obtained the recognition and categorization ‘’C’’ for the Science and Air Power Research Group (CIPAER) (April 2014), currently named after ‘’Research Group on Operational Safety’’ which areas of research support the Master’s program in Operational Safety.

Without being the last achievement but a great milestone during the path of scientific and technological dissemination of our Institution, The Science and Air Power Scientific Journal of the Graduate School of the Colombian Air Force got its indexation for “C” Category (2013-II) presenting the previous work, Edition (8) to Publindex, satisfying scientific and editorial criteria. While this achievement was taking shape, the journal was being projected for its electronic format, reason for which on September 26th of 2014 the electronic ISSN 2389-9468 was obtained. This adds to the implementation of the Open Journal System (OJS), fundamental tool for editorial management of electronic journals, where world top universities and their publications are measured. We are part of a prestigious community that provides open access, allowing us to have a greater visibility and recognition international and national wise as a response to the labor that we continue to perform.

The effort to increase quality standards of the journal editorial process, have contaminated the homologous process that involves books product of research of the Science and Air Power Collection, that year by year introduces a new edition shared on the scientific and academic environment.