COL Victor M. Deekens

COL Victor M. Deekens serves as the Dean of the United States Military Academy Preparatory School. He was commissioned as an officer in the Signal Corps in 1999 with a Bachelor of Science in civil engineering from the University of Virginia. COL Deekens earned both a Master of Arts (educational psychology, measurement, and evaluation) and Ph.D. (learning sciences and psychological studies) in education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also holds a Master of Science in information technology management from the University of Maryland Global Campus. 

COL Deekens has served in a variety of leadership positions beginning as a platoon leader and then, serving as an assistant battalion operations officer, 57th Signal Battalion, Fort Cavazos (formerly Fort Hood), TX. Next, he served in a combined joint task force headquarters in Afghanistan before commanding three units at the Detachment/Company level in the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii and deployed to Iraq. Following command and graduate school, he was assigned as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at West Point before moving to serve as a Battalion Operations Officer and, subsequently, Executive Officer in the 72nd Expeditionary Signal Battalion, Schweinfurt, Germany. He was then selected to serve as the Communications Advisor (G6), for the 8th Theater Sustainment Command, Fort Shafter, Hawaii, before returning to serve as the director of the psychology program in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at USMA. 

COL Deekens' research focuses on self-regulated learning, epistemic cognition, digital literacy, and the intersections of these three areas.