Foundation Trustee to present at Park University Black History Month observance

Col. (Ret.) Dwayne Wagner

CGSC Foundation Trustee Col. (Ret.) Dwayne Wagner will present during Park University’s month-long celebration of Black History Month on Feb. 28 at 10 a.m., at the Jenkin and Barbara David Theater inside Alumni Hall on the Park University Campus.

Wagner’s presentation “We have come a long ways…We have a ways to go” will also be live-streamed via Park University’s video portal at https://parkumedia.com/parkumedia.

Wagner has conducted numerous presentations as a speaker, lecturer and panel participant on issues of leadership, mentorship and diversity and inclusion at local and national levels. He has been a keynote speaker for Black History Month events on numerous occasions and has been interviewed and published on the subject. But Wagner takes a bit of a different angle.

“I look forward to the day when we do not celebrate a Black History Month,” Wagner said in a keynote speech at Fort Leavenworth in 2021. “I look forward to the day when we recognize that Black History is American history…”

Always sharing his own experiences and that of his father and grandfather and others before him, Wagner is widely considered both a very thought-provoking and a very thoughtful expert on the subjects of leadership and diversity and inclusion. His article “We have come a long ways…We have a ways to go” was published as an online exclusive article in Military Review in June 2021.

Wagner served on active duty from 1978-2008 as a U.S. Army military police officer and is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Joint, Interagency and Multinational Operations at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. While on active duty as a lieutenant colonel, he commanded the military police battalion that provides security to the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks, the Department of Defense’s largest penitentiary. As a colonel, he handled counter-narcotics policy issues with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Drug Enforcement Administration. While at DEA, Wagner was intimately involved in DEA operations in Afghanistan and made seven visits over a four-year period to work with the U.S. Embassy, DEA Country Office, military commands, and non-governmental organizations to implement and evaluate U.S government counterdrug support. He joined the CGSC faculty after retirement and was selected as the 2018 CGSC Civilian Educator of the Year. Wagner received his bachelor’s from Bishop College in Dallas, Texas, and his master’s in criminal justice and corrections from Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. He also graduated from the Advanced Operational Art Studies Fellowship program at the School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth.