Permanent Professor Traditions

The Permanent Professors embrace a few unique traditions that have arisen over the years. These begin with the investiture and continue through the retirement and beyond.

Investiture Ceremony

An investiture ceremony is the formal occasion for conferring the authority and symbol of a high office. For the office of Permanent Professor, the ceremony consists of the reading of the appointment order, often including a promotion to the grade of colonel, the oath of office, and the presentation of the Permanent Professor badge.

In this photo (left) from 1967, the 21st Permanent Professor, Colonel Mark Kinevan, is presented his badge by Brigadier General McDermott. This photograph (right) shows new Permanent Professors Orwyn Sampson (right, the 37^th) and Harvey Schiller (the 38^th) receiving congratulations from the Dean, Brigadier General Orth, at their investiture ceremony in 1980. It is interesting to see that the newbies had not yet pinned on the eagles of their new rank but were already wearing their new Permanent Professor badges.


At the Air Force Academy this is a very public ceremony, involving the participation of the Superintendent, the Dean of the Faculty, the Commandant of Cadets, and the Director of Athletics. The ceremony is much unchanged from the onset.

The most recent investiture ceremony was held on April 4, 2018 in honor of Permanent Professors no. 99 (Maiya Anderson) and no. 100 (Dave Caswell). The ceremony was presided over by the Superintendent, Lt Gen Jay Silveria, shown at left presenting Colonel Caswell with the traditional wall-size replica of the Permanent Professor badge. At right is Colonel Anderson during her remarks to the audience. Both the Dean of the Faculty and Director of Athletics also spoke at this ceremony, which was held in the Press Box of Falcon Stadium to recognize Maiya’s appointment as Permanent Professor and Head of the Department of Physical Education. Dave is the new Permanent Professor for the Department of Computer and Cyber Sciences.



The appointment to the office of Permanent Professor is finalized with the oath of office. It is the standard oath officers take when commissioned and for every promotion. Some years ago, Colonel Orwyn Sampson wrote a commentary to help explain the meaning of the oath and the commitment to duty it underscores. His reflections are both profound and moving.

Heritage Room

The Heritage Room is a small multipurpose room located on the sixth floor of Fairchild Hall, part of the Dean’s office complex. Its walls are decorated with large paintings depicting early aviation history, and there are two display cases of early Academy memorabilia. The cases feature uniforms of the Academy’s first Superintendent, Lieutenant General Harmon, and the first permanent Dean, Brigadier General McDermott. Fittingly, the Heritage Room overlooks the terrazzo with a fine view of the Cadet Chapel, the new Polaris Hall, and the mountains beyond.

For many years The Heritage Room also served the Permanent Professors as a private luncheon facility. It was managed from the Dean’s office as a non-appropriated fund activity, with a single employee, the cook. Professors paid a flat monthly fee sufficient for the cook to provide a simple cooked meal, served on a come-as-one-can basis five days a week for the Professors, senior faculty and staff, and their guests. Unfortunately, the economics of the small operation eventually didn’t work out. Perhaps it was the emphasis on physical fitness that pulled the members away from a sit-down lunch, but by the early 1990s, the number of regular participants declined to a level that didn’t support the operation. The Heritage Room closed as an organized lunch facility, but it does continue as a rather special venue for meetings or ceremonies.

It was actually an amazing concept, that Professors from vastly different departments should eat together. To paraphrase a colleague, “It helped build a cohesiveness that colleagues across the country envy. I mean, it’s unheard of for a Head of an English Department at Princeton to have lunch regularly with the Professor of Engineering Mechanics or the Professor of Physics. They just don’t have anything in common to talk about often unless they’re very exceptional and very fortunate people. Here, it was quite common … and it affected the way the institution functioned in a positive way.” (Brigadier General Jack Shuttleworth, oral history interview, 2000)

Permanent Professors Art Gallery

The Permanent Professors Art Gallery was opened in 1983 to display both aviation art and contemporary art forms for the benefit of Academy cadets and staff. The Dean of the Faculty, Brigadier General Orth initiated the formal design of the Gallery in 1980 following a suggestion by Lieutenant Colonel Carlin Kielcheski, a Tenured Professor of Art. Funds for the Gallery were donated by Mr. Jasper Ackerman to honor the Permanent Professors, past, present, and future. The Gallery was constructed on Fairchild Hall’s third floor, near the south elevators, and was dedicated in September 1983, shortly after General Orth’s retirement. The wording on the plaque at the entrance of the Gallery was as follows:

This Gallery stands as a tribute to the Permanent Professors of the United States Air Force Academy, through the generosity of Mr. J.D. Ackerman, Chairman of the Board, Air Academy National Bank.

The Gallery was updated in 2009 as a prominent feature of the Hall of Exemplars. For more than 35 years the Gallery has offered a wide variety of exhibits to broaden cadets’ appreciation for heritage, cultural traditions, and the arts as an enduring part of the values of our country.

Retirement Ceremony

The retirement ceremony for a Permanent Professor is more or less the same as the ceremony for any other senior officer, with one possible significant exception, namely, the ceremony often includes the retiree’s promotion to the rank of brigadier general. In those instances, the promotion portion of the ceremony comes first, then the retirement. The other traditional elements are always there, including the presentation of a decoration, the career recap by the general officer who is the retirement official, remarks by the retiree, and a reception. With the promotion and retirement elements combined into a single ceremony, the event really can be a grand occasion.

One other presentation is often made: the designation of the retiree as a Professor Emeritus. Emeritus is an adjective to describe a person of distinction in a profession who retires or hands over the position to a successor. At the Air Force Academy, the Professor Emeritus designation is not automatic, but may be awarded by the Dean to any retiring full professor with ten years or more in office or to a retiring Dean regardless of time in office. It comes with small but tangible benefits: a designated common office space in the McDermott Library and a lifetime faculty library card.

Retirement Dinner

It is a custom for the Permanent Professors, both active and retired, to fete the retiring Professor and spouse to a dinner at the Academy Club or another good restaurant. This is an occasion for the active Professors to present several traditional gifts. These include:

Scroll—a framed document extending the sincere good wishes of the Permanent Professors to the retiree and recapping his or her contributions to the Academy over the years since first assigned. The scroll is signed by each of the active Permanent Professors.

Chair with Engraved Permanent Professor Badge—When Mark Kinevan retired in 1988, he was given an elegant handcrafted wooden chair as a retirement gift. It is now presented either as the captain’s arm chair shown here or as a rocker, the retiree’s choice. Black with cherry stain arms and top panel, it is engraved with the Permanent Professor badge, name, and dates of service. The chair soon replaced the hinged plaque as the traditional retirement gift.

Hinged Plaque—When Jim Wilson retired in 1965 (he was the first Permanent Professor to retire) the Dean presented him with a hinged plaque (photo). The plaque was a hollow walnut box which opened to reveal two engraved metal plaques. On one side was a presentation-style commemoration of the event and on the other a few memorable photographs. This plaque was a traditional retirement gift for nearly four decades. It was phased out after 2000 as the engraved chairs became the norm.

Gold Prop and Wings—a traditional retirement gift to the retiree’s spouse. It is given as a necklace to women and a lapel pin to men. The prop and wings is the iconic symbol of the Air Force Academy. The prop and wings insignia originated with the Army Air Service in the 1920s, but now is most closely associated with the Air Force Academy. The pin is traditionally awarded to Academy cadets at the end of their fourth class training, signifying their “recognition.”

Cherries Jubilee—the Professors’ Desert. For many years, the featured dessert at the dinners for retiring Permanent Professors was Cherries Jubilee, a dish with sweet cherries and liqueur (typically Kirschwasser or sometimes rum), which is subsequently flambéed, and served as a sauce over vanilla ice cream. However, most restaurants no longer serve this kind of flaming dish due to the fear of fire. Sadly, we almost never see Cherries Jubilee anymore.

Jesse Gatlin’s Doggerels

Retirement dinners from the 1980s for 30 years or so were marked by Jesse Gatlin’s poems. Jesse had the most amazing ability to sit during the dinner and jot notes, then stand up at the end and read a poem he had scratched on the back of an envelope. These are doggerels, which dictionaries define as a kind of poetry that is irregular in rhythm and in rhyme, often deliberately for burlesque or comic effect. Here are two short examples:

Past Permanent Professors Events

In 2007 the Dean of the Faculty, Brigadier General Born, organized a conference of retired Permanent Professors, dubbed “Heritage to Horizons.” Brigadier General Phil Erdle generously sponsored it with funds from the Academy Research and Development Institute. The purpose was to inform the retirees of current Academy initiatives and provide a forum for feedback based on the experience of the retired Permanent Professors. The two-day schedule also encouraged the retirees to visit their former departments for the same purpose. Based on the attendance and enthusiasm for the first Heritage to Horizons, the event has been repeated every couple of years, most recently in April 2018.

The retired Permanent Professors in the Colorado Springs area gather for a dinner two to three times a year. The gatherings are always at a restaurant; the two wives that suggested this tradition in the early 1990s, Doris Caine and Jan Royer, insisted on dinners out “because wives never get to retire.” These are good opportunities to catch up on old friendships, learn what’s new at the Academy, and swap memories. Jesse Gatlin’s last doggerel was written for one such occasion in 2016. This poem is different from the others, as it reflects on the entire Permanent Professor experience. Jesse’s last doggerel is included as the Afterword to this volume.