Dr. Colonel (Ret) Joseph Dwayne Blanding is an Assistant Professor at the Command and General Staff College with the Department of Command and Leadership, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He was born and raised in Pineville, SC. Dr. Blanding graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Morris College in May 1994 as a Distinguished Military Student and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army's Transportation Corps. Dr. Blanding retired from active duty in September 2020, culminating as the ARCENT G4 from 2019 -2020. He is a former battalion and brigade-level commander and is a combat veteran of three foreign wars: Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation New Dawn, and Operation Enduring Freedom.
 

He holds the following degrees: Doctor of Education from the University of Missouri at Kansas City (UMKC); Master of Strategic Studies, Air University; Master of Science in Human Relations, The University of Oklahoma; Master of Science in Education Old Dominion University; and Master of Science in Human Resource Management, Troy University. His military education includes the Air War College, Intermediate Level Education (ILE) Course, Combined Arms and Services Staff School (CAS3), the Combined Logistics Officer Advance Course (CLOAC), and the Transportation Officer Basic Course (TOBC).

Dr. Blanding is the first author of two published articles: "The Movement Control Battalion in Theater" and "Getting Back to the Basics." His dissertation is a qualitative descriptive instrumental study entitled: A Phenomenological Case Study of African American Students Who Achieved Success Despite Scoring Low on Standardized Tests" (2010). Dr. Blanding recently researched, wrote, and presented a chapter on leadership, "An Analysis of the United States Military Leadership Concept," representing the United States to eleven different countries at the request of the Military Academy (MILAC) at ETH Zurich in September 2022. MILAC is a public research university in Zurich, Switzerland, founded by the Swiss Federal Government. It is the leading institution in Switzerland for research to promote scientific knowledge and excellence in teaching. The chapter will be included in a book published by the Springer series later in 2023. 
 

He is married to Grindle Welteener 'Tina" Brown and has two sons, Quentin, and Christopher. Quentin is a Green Beret (18E) assigned to the 3rd Special Forces Group, Fort Liberty, North Carolina. Christopher is a graduate of West Point (2020) and is currently a sapper platoon leader assigned to the 1st Brigade Combat Team (BCT) "Bastogne", 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, Kentucky.