The School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) is one of four United States Army schools that make up the United States Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. This "enormously rigorous" graduate school comprises three programs: the larger Advanced Military Studies Program (AMSP); the Advanced Strategic Leadership Studies Program (ASLSP), a Joint Military Professional Education II (JPME II) certified senior service college program for senior field-grade officers, and the Advanced Strategic Planning and Policy Program (ASP3), which supports officers in obtaining doctorates from civilian schools. The school educates future leaders of the United States Armed Forces, its allies, and the Interagency at the graduate level to be agile and adaptive leaders who think critically at the strategic and operational levels to solve complex ambiguous problems. The student body is small but diverse and comprises members of each of the US armed forces, various US government agencies, and allied military forces. Graduates of AMSP are colloquially known as "Jedi Knights". The school issues a master's degree in Military Art and Science, and provides its graduates with the skills to deal with the disparate challenges encountered in contemporary military and government operations. The modern course produces "leaders with the flexibility of mind to solve complex operational and strategic problems in peace, conflict, and war". Various senior military leaders have recognized the contributions of SAMS graduates in supporting global contingency operations. The first class began at the school in mid-1983 and 13 students graduated the following year. Due to increasing requirements for SAMS graduates in the US military, the army expanded the school in the 1990s, and in 2010 over 120 students graduated. Since the school's inception, SAMS planners have supported every major US military campaign, providing the army "with many of its top campaign planners for the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries". History The SAMS course was designed to fill a gap in US military education between the CGSC's focus on tactics and the War College's focus on grand strategy and national security policy. In 1981, Colonel Huba Wass de Czege convinced Lieutenant General William R. Richardson, who was serving as Commander of the Combined Arms Center and Commandant of the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth from 1979 to 1981, that a second year of military education was needed for select officers. After receiving final approval, Wass de Czege helped plan and develop the