Military Technical Officer College, established on July 9th, 2009 under Decision No.2165/QĐ-BQP of the Minister of National Defence, is tasked with training technical officers and staff for units in the whole Army, training cadets from the Lao People's Army and the Royal Cambodian Army, conducting scientific research, and performing national defence and security education for local students.

During the process of construction, development, and growth, under the leadership and direction of the Central Military Commission, the Ministry of National Defence; General Department of Technology’s Party Committee and commanders, and superior agencies, the College Party Committee, Leadership, cadres, lecturers, staff, cadets, non-commissioned officers, and soldiers have always strived to, overcome difficulties to fulfill the tasks of education and training. Currently, the College is actively participating in the development of military science and technology and deeper integration and wider into the higher education system of the State and the Army to contribute to building the “revolutionary, regular, elite, and gradually modern” Army. 

For nearly 50 years, the College has trained more than 16,000 technical cadres, officers, professionals, and staff and more than 1,000 technical professional staff for the Lao People's Army and the Royal Cambodian Army. Many scientific research projects at the ministerial, branch, and grassroots levels successfully implemented by the officials, lecturers, and cadets have directly served the educational and training tasks of the College as well as contributed to solving technical problems in the units. Recently, over 88% of its cadets have graduated with good or excellent grades. All the College’s graduates have completed well their first tasks at units, with over 65% of good and excellent achievements.

To achieve the above results, the College Party Committee and Leadership have comprehensively implemented all aspects of work to improve the quality of education and training and build the typical, clean, and strong Party Committee and comprehensively strong, “exemplary and typical” College. Particularly, improving the quality of teaching contingent is the most important measure with multiple synchronous and effective solutions.

First of all, strengthening the leadership and direction of the Party committees and commanders at all levels and educating to improve the political bravery, awareness, sense of responsibility, and determination of the teaching contingent. The practice of education and training in the College has confirmed that the effective leadership and direction of the Party committees, Party organisations, leaders, and commanders at all levels are of great significance to the construction of the teaching contingent. Therefore, the College Party Committee, Leadership, Party committees, and commanders of agencies, faculties, and units have always thoroughly grasped the superiors’ resolutions and directives on education and training. Accordingly, the College Party Committee issued a Resolution on “Continuing innovating to improve the quality of education and training in the 2014 - 2020 period and beyond” with synchronous guidelines and solutions. This is the basis for the College Leadership, agencies, faculties, and units to compile plans and schemes to develop a comprehensive teaching contingent through specific steps and roadmaps that suit the characteristics of tasks. At the same time, the education work has been strengthened to raise the awareness of the teaching contingent about Marxism - Leninism, Ho Chi Minh thoughts, the Party's lines and viewpoints on national defence in the new situation, tasks of the Army, the  General Department of Technology, and the College, plots and tricks of hostile forces, and advantages and disadvantages of the work. To be effective, the College has combined general education with private education and integrated it with the annual thematic education of the objects. It has also promoted learning and following Ho Chi Minh's thoughts, ethics, and style in association with the effective implementation of the Drive entitled “Promoting tradition, dedicating talents, and being worthy of the title of “Uncle Ho's Soldiers” in the new period, etc. As a result, the College’s teaching contingent always has a strong political spirit, dedication to their work, exemplary moral qualities and lifestyle, promoted didactic characters of lecturers in a military establishment, democratic, scientific, and profound style, and high sense of responsibility to constantly overcome difficulties, pioneer, fulfill all assigned tasks.

Besides, focusing on building a teaching contingent with quantity and structure suitable to training objectives and requirements. The College Party Committee has closely led the review and assessment of the actual situation of the teaching contingent, gradually consolidated towards “standardisation”, streamlining, and compactness with sufficient quantity, quality, and appropriate structure, and built the successive generations of lecturers to ensure the inheritance and solid development. Regarding the quantity, as the number of the College’s lecturers is lower than the payroll, the College has actively selected qualified staff to supplement lecturers for faculties in line with the needs of the training majors. On the other hand, it has proactively proposed the superiors to apply for enrollment quotas for training in academies and schools inside and outside the Army, at home and abroad; selected the graduates with excellent grades, pedagogical aptitude, and enthusiasm to create a source of lecturers; regularly, proactively contacted, grasped, and recommended the superiors to supplement cadres graduating from academies and schools inside and outside the Army, especially overseas graduates and post-graduates; and propagated and created favourable conditions to attract and recruit local lecturers with academic titles, degrees, and experience in teaching and educational management and staff with practical experience in command and management from units to create a source of lecturers. In addition, for specific topics or faculties with a shortage of key lecturers, the College has invited experts from academies, schools, and teaching research institutions to promptly meet the requirements of improving the quality of education and training. Regarding the structure, the College Party Committee and Leadership have requested the departments, faculties, and branches to gradually adjust to ensure the balance in terms of ages, majors, types of officers, military ranks, etc. and suit the teaching tasks according to training levels towards fulfilling the tasks of education and training.

Training, fostering, and “standardising” the teaching contingent in terms of academic qualifications, pedagogical capacity, and practical experience have been paid attention to leading and directing and considered an important step in determining the quality of lecturers by the College Party Committee and Leadership. Based on the master planning and plans for developing the teaching contingent, the College has required departments and faculties to regularly review and properly assess the status of the contingent to formulate plans for training and retraining and send the planned candidates to other establishments for training and fostering, visit posting, or participating in general drills to accumulate practical experience. The College has also combined different types of training and retraining at other academies and schools with in-place training courses and practical fostering. Regarding young cadres, basic and concentrated training is essential; meanwhile, self-study, self-improvement, and knowledge updating are the main measures for cadres with post-graduate degrees and lecturers who do not have conditions for concentrated training to improve their qualifications. To promptly supplement and improve the quality of the teaching contingent, the College has focused on training and fostering young and promising cadres and lecturers, continuing to rotate cadres, sending cadres and lecturers for visit posting at grassroots units, and promoting the building of a contingent of leading lecturers, especially those of specialised faculties. In addition, the College has required the faculties to actively develop plans to assign experienced lecturers to directly foster young cadres to improve professional quality. To accelerate the access to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the College has regularly held fostering courses on informatics knowledge and foreign languages ​​for e-lecture preparation and scientific research and selected qualified cadres and lecturers for foreign language training abroad; strengthened fostering pedagogical methods, developed plans, and arranged time and places for young lecturers and teaching assistants to practice; organised groups and clubs to train pedagogical skills and professions for lecturers; and actively organised seminars, scientific reports, thematic information exchange, and visit to exchange experiences and academics with academies and schools inside and outside the Army. Besides, the College has prepared plans and encouraged lecturers to participate in scientific research and put this activity into a routine and on a par with the task. Thanks to the above synchronous solutions, so far, the percentage of lecturers with university degrees or higher has reached 98.73%, including 83.53% of post-graduates (64.42% masters and 19.11% doctors).

In order to make the teaching contingent enthusiastic and dedicated to their work, the College has paid much attention to their material and spiritual life and regimes and policies. The College Party Committee and Leadership have often paid attention to and taken care of the military rear, especially when the Covid-19 pandemic is complicated and prolonged. Along with making full use of the superiors’ budgets, the College has mobilised self-balancing funds, retraining funds, etc. to support lecturers pursuing post-graduate programs or foreign language training. In addition, it has timely honoured lecturers with high qualifications, rich practical experience, and many contributions to the education and training work of the College and the Army and well implemented the remuneration policies and regimes to assure working and living conditions, especially housing for the College’s lecturers so that they can work with peace of mind.

These achievements, along with appropriate and effective solutions over the past time, are an important premise for Tran Dai Nghia University - Technical Officers College, to continue to improve the quality of the teaching contingent to contribute to building a regular, exemplary, smart, and modern college with constantly improved quality of education and training.

Senior Colonel, Dr., Elite Lecturer NGUYEN CHIEN HAM, Commissar of the College