Lt. Col. Joel C. Christenson is Associate Professor and Director of the John A. Adams ’71 Center for Military History and Strategic Analysis. Prior to joining the VMI faculty he served as Senior Historian in the Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), where he worked on the Secretaries of Defense Historical Series and coordinated long-term historical research and publishing. Before joining OSD he worked in the Policy Studies Division of the Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State. He holds a Ph.D. in American history from West Virginia University, where his research examined the origins of U.S. naval and military advising in Latin America. Prior to his doctoral work, Joel worked as a Senior Defense Analyst for the U.S. Government Accountability Office, and as a Research Assistant at the Institute for Defense Analyses. He is a distinguished graduate of VMI (Class of 1999) and holds master’s degrees from the University of Kentucky and George Mason University, as well as a Command and Staff Diploma from the U.S. Naval War College. 

Jochen S. Arndt is an Associate Professor who teaches advanced courses in African history and a two-semester freshmen course in World history. His research is geographically anchored in Africa, particularly Southern Africa, and explores global themes such as the encounters between Africans and non-Africans through colonialism and armed conflict.

With support from the Social Sciences Research Council and the American Historical Association, Arndt published his first book, Divided by the Word: Colonial Encounters and the Remaking of Zulu and Xhosa Identities (University of Virginia Press 2022; Wits University Press 2022). He has also published award-winning articles on topics including the Cape frontier wars, Zulu history, and the Mexican-American War in the Journal of Southern African Studies, the Journal of the Middle East and Africa, and the Journal of Military History. One of these publications received the Distinguished Writing Award from the Army Historical Foundation (2012). Most recently, he conducted research in the Military, Diplomatic, and Stasi archives in Germany for a project on the Cold War in Angola.

His research has led to invited talks at institutions such as the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (Wits University), the African Historical & African Languages Seminar (University of Cape Town), the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Hosei University), and the Japan Association for African Studies (Konan University). Arndt is also an Honorary Research Scholar at the Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

Arndt joined VMI in 2016 after receiving degrees from Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas and the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Virginia Military Institute has recognized his teaching with the Thomas Jefferson Teaching Award and the Wilbur S. Hinman Jr. ’26 Award (both in 2020), and his scholarship with the Jackson-Hope Prize for Excellence in Published Scholarly Work and the Dr. D. Rae Carpenter Award (2023, 2017).

In addition to his teaching and research, Arndt serves as Senior Program Director for the VMI Olmsted Study Abroad Program, Deputy Director of the John A. Adams ’71 Center for Military History & Strategic Analysis, and Faculty Advisor to the Class of 2026.