On 3 March 2008, they started arriving at Reno, Nevada. Their objective was not to put coins in slot machines or chips on the roulette table, but to spend a week learning how to do their Air Force duties yet protect their health and the environment. These were the students who were selected by their major commands to attend the Air Force Environmental, Safety, and Occupational Health Training Symposium, where 1,500 installation-level Air Force military and civilian students attended 22,680 student-hours of instruction in 108 course topics. Of the course topics, 12 were taught by AFIT instructors—10 faculty members from the Civil Engineer and Services School and 2 faculty members from the AFIT Graduate School of Engineering and Management. Numerous other classes were taught by former CESS faculty or adjunct faculty. The AFIT instructors taught courses from shop level training, such as how to read a hazardous material safety data sheet, to advanced courses covering environmental statistics and pollutant chemistry, fate, and transport. The AFIT instructors individually taught up to 22 hours of instruction in the week of the Symposium where they were sometimes in front of a class for 8 hours a day. The instructors also submitted a paper on their lessons, which was published in a textbook for the students.

The Symposium is sponsored by Air Combat Command, AF Space Command, and Air Education and Training Command, Air Mobility Command, and the Air Force Reserve Command. In addition to AFIT, government instructors were present from the AF School of Aerospace Medicine, the Air Force Center for Engineering and the Environment, Air Force Legal Operations Agency, U.S. Department of Labor OSHA Training Institute, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Department of Transportation. Other courses were taught by industry experts on a volunteer basis.

The sponsoring commands have found the Symposium to be a cost effective means of providing necessary environmental, safety and occupational health training to personnel. By consolidating the training to one location and one week, students’ time away from their duty stations is greatly reduced. The students are required to attend 26 hours of classroom training in the week, some of which are considered core courses where students must pass an exam at the end of the week.