September 3, 2009

From Emmett Street you can see the long driveway leading up to the Federal Executive Institute (FEI). It's behind hedges, a large fence and a security post. There's been plenty of speculation about what goes on there.

"That we have secret bunkers in the basement, and that we do top secret things here," said FEI director Kevin Marshall on some of the speculations.

But on the other side of the fence, past security, it doesn't feel like a federal facility at all. It's more like a serene campus, with bedrooms, a pool, a gym, and classrooms.

Institute staff say that's because even though it's a federal facility, it's a place of learning.

"Once you roll into the campus...you are in a learning mode, and everything around here is to facilitate the learning," said Marshall.

The facility trains government workers who aren't elected from 6 a.m. in the morning past 8 p.m. at night. President Lyndon Johnson started the institute about forty years ago as a place to teach high-level public servants how to think outside the box, and stay physically fit.

"The people who are designing spacecraft and the Mars lander and those kinds of things, those are federal execs, the people looking for the cures for cancer, those are federal execs," said Marshall.

Marshall says it's the federal executives who are on the front lines trying to solve the problems no one sees coming.

"The executives that come through here now are handling problems that two years ago we didn't even imagine," said Marshall.

He says the institute is happy to help those who help the run the country.