TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Oklahoma -- An AFSO 21 project prompted by Col. Jeffery Glass, 507th Air Refueling Wing commander, has resulted in a payload of Air Force awards for wing members. 

"I have known for a long time how some Airman may go 15 to 20 years without receiving an Air Force award," Colonel Glass said. "It's appalling how some people have slipped through the system without receiving a nod for their hard work. When I became commander of this wing in 2006, I asked our personnel flight to prepare a listing of when members received their last award." 

What the commander learned was some wing Airman had not received official recognition since 1983. To correct this problem, Colonel Glass directed an AFSO 21 process team to look into the situation and come up with solutions. 

But simply generating awareness to the problem wasn't yielding the results desired. The answer to the wing's problems came in part in 2007 from the new award preparation processes established by Air Reserve Personnel Center officials at the virtual Personnel Center - Guard and Reserve (vPC-GR) website. Dubbed "Dashboard" the new layer to vPC-GR established a streamlined on-line process that greatly simplified and reduced award preparation times. 

Even so, sometimes having a better way to do things sometimes isn't enough. It takes showing people how easy it is. Enter Lt. Col. Bonnie Tremblett and her AFSO 21 team. 

"I've had to prepare awards 'the old fashioned way'," Colonel Tremblett said. "It was a lot of hard work and the simplest mistakes required a lot of work to correct. We quickly recognized that vPC-GR's Dashboard program gave us everything we could have wanted to simplify the award preparation process. 

Colonel Tremblett and her team learned the new process inside out and then set out to train others throughout the wing. She even travelled to the 931st Air Refueling Group at McConnell Air Force Base, Kansas, and trained their senior staff. As a result of that, she began local formal training, and then, informal training. 

"At lot of times during the past year, I'd see someone walking by in the hallway and ask them, 'Have you got a minute?'," Tremblett said. "I'm sure initially people all thought 'What now--more work?' But, 15 minutes later, after showing them how simple this program really is, every one of the people I've trained has thanked me for taking the time to demonstrate it." 

The results of this concentrated wing wide effort will be self evident during the wing Commander's Call set for the January drill weekend. More than 39 Meritorious Service Awards will be presented. 

"We're not looking to establish a give-away program for awards. Every one of these MSMs are well deserved and some are long overdue," Colonel Glass said. "I'm very happy to present them and proud to see our people are getting the recognition they deserve."