Air Force Academy's first female superintendent takes command

The first woman to lead the U.S. Air Force Academy, Lt. Gen. Michelle Johnson, formally took command on Monday, ushering in a new era for the 59-year-old military school in Colorado. Johnson was named a decade after a sexual assault scandal rocked the academy and comes amid a more recent and wider series of cases involving sexual misconduct by senior Air Force leaders and commanders at the service's boot camp in Texas.

The Air Force's decision to appoint a woman to lead its premiere training ground for its future leaders -- only the second time a woman has been named to lead a service academy -- may signal a new era not only at the Colorado campus but perhaps within the troubled air service itself.

Johnson, a former professor at the academy, replaces Lt. Gen. Michael Gould, a 1976 graduate who had held the post for the last four years. Gould is set to retire in October.

She called her appointment an example of America’s willingness to give everyone a chance.

"I was very blessed to be born where I was and when I was," Johnson told 4,000 assembled cadets at a handover ceremony Monday, The Associated Press reported.

A 1981 graduate of the academy and its first female Rhodes Scholar, Johnson is the second woman appointed to command a U.S. service academy, after Coast Guard Rear Adm. Sandra Stosz, who became superintendent of the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., in 2011.

Johnson was also the academy's first female cadet wing commander. She was most recently NATO's deputy chief of staff for operations and intelligence. She became an Air Force pilot in 1984.

She takes the helm at an institute marred by sexual scandals, including the recent dismissal of one cadet and the court martial last week of an airman at the academy on charges of sexual misconduct.

A court martial sentenced airman Aaron C. Stubbs to 15 months of confinement and dishonorable discharge for aggravated sexual contact against a female enlisted airman, the Air Force announced Monday.

Stubbs was assigned to a security squadron at the academy outside Colorado Springs. He was not a student at the school.

And in April, the academy dismissed cadet Jamil Cooks after his conviction on abusive sexual conduct charges after he pleaded guilty to the unlawful entry into the rooms of two female cadets.

In 2003, Congress held hearings after reports that dozens of female academy cadets had been sexually assaulted by fellow cadets in incidents covering a decade, and that academy officials ignored or downplayed their complaints.

"We can find meaning in adversity, and there are lessons from overcoming negative experiences and to grow stronger through them," Johnson told the cadets.

Al Jazeera and wire services