Richard Garrison

VA Acquisition Academy

Richard Garrison is Vice-Chancellor of the VA Acquisition Academy Program Management School, where he oversees the training of VA program managers.  The Program Management curriculum ensures that VA has the most qualified program managers and includes competency
assessment, classroom and online learning, coaching and mentoring, on-the-job qualification development, assignment-specific courses, training toward FAC-P/PM certification, and continuing education.

Prior to his position with VA, Mr. Garrison worked as a program management and systems engineering consultant for Strategic Systems Programs (SSP) and the Department of the Navy’s Integrated Learning Environment for five years.

Mr. Garrison began his career as a submarine officer in the U.S. Navy, where his duties included division officer for Auxiliary Division, Chemical & Radiological Controls Officer, Communications Officer and Tactical Weapons Officer. 

After completing his junior officer tour, Mr. Garrison was assigned as an Assistant Professor at Rice University where he taught Naval Engineering, Weapons Systems and Navigation for three years.  He was then stationed aboard the USS Tennessee as the Engineering Department Head.  There, Mr. Garrison managed several major ships repair periods responsible for over 300,000 man-hours of effort in each.

Mr. Garrison later was assigned to Strategic Systems Programs (SSP) where he was a Deputy Program Manager, and served as Life Cycle Manager for several hardware, software and simulator developments.  Additionally, as the Deputy for Training, he was responsible for re-designing the SSP training program to meet the Chief of Naval Operation’s “Revolution-in-Training” goals.  In that capacity, Mr. Garrison managed the transformation from 26 weeks of instructor based training to a distributed continuum model blending computer and instructor based training.  He also managed the contracting strategy change that integrated training and tactical design functions to reduce overall cost and training unique footprint requirements.

Mr. Garrison received his bachelors from Auburn University and his masters from the University of Houston.