BIOGRAPHY

Mr. Polster has been affiliated with the U. S. Army as a civil servant and soldier since 1969. Of his twenty-five plus years of civil service, he has spent the last four years serving as Director of the Army Training Information Directorate, responsible for the management and development of training software systems that develop, store/deliver, and manage Army training in both its institution and units. His primary focus is the reengineering of Army training information systems and its ability to support advance distributed learning in a network web centric manner, which are standards based and interoperable with the Army's C4ISR systems.

He previously served from 1992-99 as the Deputy Assistant to the Deputy Chief of Staff for Training, TRADOC. His primary efforts were in both the current operation and future design of the training development and training support system for institutional and unit training.

Mr. Polster returned to the United States in January 1987 where he was assigned to the Devices Management Directorate (DMD), USATSC. He served as an action officer for Infantry and Armor devices and the SIMNET Program. Projects that he headed were the Training Implications of the Anti-Armor, Armor Net Assessment (A3NA), Device Based Training Strategy to the CSA and the establishment of the Training Mission Area for training aids, devices, simulators and simulations. Mr. Polster was one of the primary architects of the Combined Arms Training Strategy.

Previous to TRADOC, he spent twelve years with the Seventh Army Training Command at Grafenwoehr, Germany. He served in a wide variety of duty positions gaining broad and extensive experiences on the operational side of training (reorganization of the Training Support Activity Europe in 1980; formation of the Directorate of Training Support at 7th ATC; extensive participation in the Range Modernization Program for USAREUR MTAs; initiation and formation of the joint Army/Air Force simulation center Warrior Preparation Center, and initiation of the CMTC combat training center at Hohenfels Germany.

ABSTRACT

Games & The Military

Dr. Robert Wisher, Director of the Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative, will chair the panel. Military participants will share their experiences with using or managing the games or gaming technology for military training. They will explore the use of standards, specific projects and lessons learned.