Rita Jordan
Rita A. Jordan, Ph.D., is permanent professor and head of the department of management at the U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Born in Stirling West, South Australia, of Latvian immigrant parents, Jordan and her family immigrated to the United States and settled in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1960.
She entered the Air Force in 1974 through the ROTC program. During the first 10 years of her Air Force career, Jordan was assigned to the munitions and aircraft maintenance career fields, affording her opportunity to supervise some of the Air Force’s largest maintenance organizations in terms of personnel assigned, diversity of functional background and owned assets. She joined the Academy faculty as an instructor in 1985. After departing for a three-year doctoral program assignment in 1987, she returned to the management faculty as an assistant professor in 1990.
Jordan deployed and served as advisor to the Attaché, U.S. Embassy Latvia, specifically advising on curriculum, leadership and university governance in the newly reopened Latvian Defense Academy. In April 1998, she was selected permanent professor and head of the department of management, USAF Academy. As her immediate goal, she provides the vision and guidance during the Academy’s pursuit of initial AACSB accreditation. While on sabbatical from 2002-04, she served as associate dean of the Graduate School of Engineering and Management at the AF Institute of Technology in Dayton, Ohio.
Jordan received her undergraduate degree from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio; her master’s from Louisiana Tech University-Ruston; and her doctorate from the University of Colorado-Boulder.