Deron Jackson is the Executive Director of the National Security Strategic Studies Partnership, a project which brings the U.S. Air Force Academy together with other Colorado universities to promote the study of national security.  He has taught in the Department of Political Science for 25 years on active duty and as a civilian, serving for three years as Deputy Department Head. He previously served as Deputy Director and later Director of the Eisenhower Center for Space and Defense Studies.  Along with Ambassador Roger Harrison and Dr.Collins Shackelford, he wrote the Eisenhower Center’s 2009 study of space deterrence which was incorporated into the National Security Space Strategy in 2011. His 2008 article on remotely piloted vehicles in combat, “Learning from Lei Feng,” was awarded the Department of Political Science’s Coble Award for outstanding research. Jackson has been recognized twice as the Academy’s Geopolitics Instructor of the Year, Academy Reserve Officer of the Year, and the Department of Political Science Company Grade Officer of the Year. While on active duty he also served as a Range Safety Officer and firearms instructor for the Air Force Academy Cadet Combat Pistol Team and as an augmentee for the10^th Security Forces Squadron.

Jackson was commissioned through Air Force ROTC Detachment 190 at the University of Illinois after earning a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and a B.A. in Political Science.  While studying at Illinois he earned an international engineering minor in Germany and was an undergraduate research associate of the university’s program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security (ACDIS).  Between graduation and entering active duty, he became the Air Force’s first recipient of the German Federal Chancellor’s Scholarship, Germany’s equivalent to the British Rhodes Scholarship.  His scholarship year was spent as a guest researcher at the Stiftung Wissenschaft and Politik in Ebenhausen, Germany, a German think-tank counterpart to America’s RAND and France’s IFRI.  His research paper on trans-Atlantic security relations following the Cold War was published by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 1992.