West Point Magazine Summer 2013

Come Back Home to West Point

As graduates and former leaders of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, we intimately understand the need to bring more visitors to West Point. Increasing tourism to West Point is in the best interests of the U.S. Military Academy, the U.S. Army and the nation.

Reaching out to the public and gaining exposure to our Alma Mater will help increase applications from the best and the brightest, and help bring potential financial contributors to West Point to help maintain our margin of excellence in academics, physical training and the moral development of tomorrow’s leaders of character.

Making a meaningful impact on guests begins with their stay at The Historic Thayer Hotel at West Point. To achieve this, the Hotel has recently undergone a multi-million dollar renovation including the addition of 23 new executive suites and is show casing some of our most inspirational graduates through a room dedication program in which each guest room is named after a graduate. Learn more about the room dedication program at rdp.thethayerhotel.com

Yet, most important is the founding of the Thayer Leader Development Group at West Point (TLDG). TLDG has hosted corporate conferences and leadership training for hundreds of companies at The Historic Thayer Hotel at West Point. Most executives attending these programs have never had any military experience or

exposure to West Point. These executives are walking away from their experience at TLDG with a new found love and respect for the Armed Forces of the United States and the great work being done here at West Point. Many senior management teams in the Fortune 500 have now visited West Point to either host their own corporate conference at The Hotel or to attend leadership training at TLDG. The average rating from C-Suite executives from these great corporations is 9.5 out of 10 in terms of content, faculty, facilities and overall atmosphere of the program.

We are confident that TLDG will add value to your team and will also significantly contribute to enhancing West Point’s image throughout this great country. Contact Rick Minicozzi, ‘86, Managing General Partner, rick. minicozzi@thayerleaderdevelopment. com or Bill Murdy, ‘64, Chairman of the Board, wfmurdy@ thayerleaderdevelopment.com to discuss how TLDG can tailor a program that suits your organization’s needs.

The seven of us encourage all graduates to bring your friends, family and business teams to West Point for either corporate conferences or tourism, to ensure that USMA’s reputation continues to be lauded throughout the United States. These are the ideas and the results that we, as former leaders of West Point, envisioned when The Historic Thayer Hotel was privatized.

GO ARMY!

RESPECTFULLY,

Former Chairman of the Board, Association of Graduates

Former Chairman of the Board, Association of Graduates

LTG (ret) Dan Christman

Former Superintendent of West Point

LTG (ret) Buster Hagenbeck Former Superintendent of West Point

LTG (ret) Bill Lennox Former Superintendent of West Point

LTG (ret) John Moellering Former Commandant of Cadets at West Point

BG (ret) Fletcher Lamkin

Former Dean of Academic Board at West Point

Mr. Tom Dyer

Mr. Jack Hammack

We encourage all graduates to bring your friends, family and business teams to West Point for either corporate conferences or tourism...

The mission of West Point magazine is to tell the West Point story and strengthen the grip of the Long Gray Line.

PUBLISHER

West Point Association of Graduates

Robert L. McClure ’76, President & CEO

EDITOR IN CHIEF

Norma Heim editor@wpaog.org

EDITORIAL ADVISORY GROUP

John Calabro ’68 Kim McDermott ’87

Jim Johnston ’73 Samantha Soper

ADVERTISING

Amelia Velez 845.446.1577 ads@wpaog.org

ADDRESS UPDATES

Tammy Flint West Point Association of Graduates

698 Mills Road, West Point, NY 10996-1607 845.446.1642 address@wpaog.org

MEMORIAL ARTICLE COORDINATOR

Marilee Meyer

845.446.1545 memorials@wpaog.org

CONTENT

Marissa Carl

Keith Hamel

Kim McDermott ’87

DESIGN

Marguerite Smith

Opinions expressed in this magazine are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, policy, or attitude of the U.S. Army, United States Military Academy, West Point Association of Graduates, its officers, or the editorial staff. The appearance of advertisements in this publication does not necessarily constitute an endorsement by the U.S. Army, United States Military Academy, West Point Association of Graduates, its officers, or the editorial staff for the products or services advertised.

POSTMASTER

WestPointis published quarterly in Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall by the West Point Association of Graduates, 698 Mills Road, West Point, NY 10996-1607

WestPointis printed by Dartmouth Printing Company.

SUBSCRIPTIONS

Subscriptions may be ordered for $35 (domestic mail) online at WestPointAOG.org; by calling 800.BE.A.GRAD; or by sending a check to WPAOG, West Point magazine, 698 Mills Road, West Point, NY 10996-1607. (International shipping incurs additional fees: please inquire.)

Dear Fellow Graduates and Friends:

White hats flew high into the air over Michie Stadium on May 25, as the Class of 2013 celebrated together and officially joined the Long Gray Line. Congratulations to the graduates, parents, and everyone who made the day possible and special. We welcome you all to YOUR Association of Graduates, which has existed to serve West Point and its graduates since its founding in 1869. As you receive this latest edition of West Point magazine, another special day will soon be occurring. R-Day for the Class of 2017 takes place on July 1, and its members will begin their own 47-month journey toward graduation. We eagerly look forward to witnessing their accomplishments and achievements in the years ahead.

One of the most significant ways graduates serve West Point is through WPAOG’s philanthropic efforts to provide today’s cadets the Margin of Excellence that helps the Academy produce Leaders of Character for our Nation. For only the second time in our 144-year history, WPAOG has undertaken a comprehensive campaign. Titled ForUsAll:TheCampaignforWestPoint, this multi-year effort publicly launched in April with the goal of raising $350M by the end of 2015. Thus far we’ve brought in 83 percent of that number for a wide array of needs at West Point. This success is tremendous, but now we’re asking ALL graduates to become aware of and give to West Point during this campaign. Every gift counts! Please contact me or anyone at WPAOG if you have questions. We need your help to reach our goal—For Us All!

I also encourage each graduate to become involved in WPAOG governance by seeking to become a candidate on our Board of Directors or Advisory Council. This year we will elect a new Chairman, Vice Chairman, and six Directors to serve on the Board. We will also elect six Advisors-at-Large for the Council. Service on either governing body not only allows graduates to give of their time and talent to our alma mater, but also offers a very rewarding experience working with others who share a passion for the national treasure we are fortunate to call our alma mater—West Point. Again, contact me if you have questions or want to learn how to become more involved in helping the Long Gray Line serve West Point and its members.

Finally, this summer marks the transition of the Military Academy’s leadership from LTG David Huntoon ’73 to LTG Bob Caslen ’75. The Huntoons have been passionate supporters of West Point. We thank them for their leadership and wish them exceptional happiness in their welldeserved retirement. At the same time we welcome back a former Commandant (2006–08) and personal friend, LTG Caslen, and his wife, Shelly, to West Point and pledge our continued full support of the Military Academy’s mission and programs.

West Point, for Thee!

Bob McClure ’76 President & CEO West Point AOG

Cover Photo: Marissa Carl/WPAOG

videos, scan the codes at right with your phoneʼs camera using a QR code reader app.

6 Shaping the

8 Gloom & Gray: Depression Research on Projects Day

With Department of Defense leaders continually calling PTSD the Army’s most pressing health concern, three interrelated departments presented potentially groundbreaking research during this year’s Projects Day.

28 COVER STORY | Interdisciplinary Curriculum = Intellectual Capital

The United States Military Academy has been producing intellectual capital for the Army for decades, but with an ever-increasing interdisciplinary curriculum and with its Centers of Excellence crossing discipline boundaries, West Point’s contributions to the Army have become even more impressive.

40 Influencing Future Leaders: CTLT from the Army’s Perspective

44 Lessons From Down Range

“You never remember bullet points, but you’ll remember stories forever,” says LTC Pete Kilner ’90, one of many on West Point’s faculty to bring deployment experiences back to the classrooms.

A Letter from the Superintendent

USMA does this in several ways, all of which speak to the rich and innovative learning and research environment of West Point. This element of our Vision is predicated on a continuous connection to the national purpose and the ever-changing operational requirements of our armed forces.

Our staff and faculty are a world-class team defined by academic excellence and professionalism. This exceptional combination of Soldiers and scholars, all with first-tier graduate education credentials, makes teaching cadets their number one priority. Our faculty is also involved in remarkable, often groundbreaking research which directly supports the field Army and a host of other government agencies. Faculty projects range from pioneering work in cyber, civil and mechanical engineering, robotics, behavioral psychology and negotiation techniques, to advanced terrain mapping and kinesiology. Our Centers of Excellence are a key part of this outstanding research as well, from advanced work in the Center for Photonics to timely and relevant open-source studies at the Combating Terrorism Center.

Our cadets are also a part of this generous and focused sharing of intellectual capital with our Army. The most visible examples of cadet contributions are the brilliant senior class presentations on Projects Day in May. After months of hard work and research, cadets demonstrate a high level of disciplined academic effort and scholarship, in large measure providing functional utility for the U.S. military. Topics range from the Exoskeleton to continuing work on a prosthetic, Bionic Foot, from cognitive functions associated with traumatic brain injury to analysis of the U.S. Army’s future role in the Pacific. Many of these projects compare to graduate-level work at other U.S. institutions.

All of this research is in direct support of one of our most important priorities—our connection to the U.S. Army. The rich collective intellect of USMA has substantively served the priorities of the U.S. military for many years, and that unique collaboration is a source of great pride to both the Academy and to our Army. For staff and faculty, it reinforces a link to the Army they have served with and will return to; for cadets, it strengthens their future service as junior officers.

Everything we do here begins and ends with our mission to develop leaders of character committed to the values of Duty, Honor, Country. This is reinforced in the Vision of the Academy, which addresses leader development excellence, our role as the bedrock for professional military ethic, and the provision of intellectual capital for the Army and the Nation. As you read this edition of West Point magazine, the Class of 2013 will have graduated, on their way to bringing that mission and Vision to the next full step. They are well prepared to do so and clearly have the same dedication to the values of the United States Military Academy and our Army as all members of the Long Gray Line have. Sustaining that unbroken line of the Corps, the Class of 2017 arrives on July 1, 2013, prepared to begin their own historic journey. From Reception Day to Graduation Day, we are all committed to an enduring continuum of values-based leader development excellence, which has been the hallmark of this Academy, in service to the Army and the Nation, for over two centuries. That remains our inviolable, steadfast mission.

Army Strong!

David H. Huntoon Jr. ’73

Lieutenant General, U.S. Army

58th Superintendent, U.S. Military Academy

A key part of the United States Military Academy’s Vision Statement speaks to providing intellectual capital for the Army and the Nation.

Shaping the Army of 2020

By Marissa Carl, WPAOG staff

A small, antiquated building sits in Central Area, surrounded by the hustle and bustle of cadet life. Built in 1882, this is the only remaining structure from the old Central Barracks. Traditionally it was home to the highest ranking cadet; today it’s where the leader development framework for the officer corps of 2020 is being strategized.

Participating Agencies

Headquarters

Doctrine Command

Army

In October 2011, the Simon Center for Professional Military Ethic (SCPME) was tasked to study officer leader development. Captain Mark Adamshick, U.S. Navy (Ret), Ph.D., the center’s Class of 1969 endowed Chair for Officership, was assigned as the lead researcher, and he assembled a team that included professors from multiple West Point departments as well as representatives from across the Army. The team spent 17 months figuring out how the Army should move forward after more than a decade of war. They worked under three guiding principles created by Army Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno ’76:

1. Assess what the last 11 years of war have done in terms of advancing leader development.

2. Evaluate what has eroded.

3. Make bold recommendations as to how we can transform officer leader development to shape the Army of 2020.

To kick off the research, nearly 50 company-, battalion-, and brigade-level commanders traveled to West Point for Commanders Forums, where they answered the three prompts above and asked themselves, “How do we transform leader development?” To

broaden the reach, Adamshick and his team then traveled to eight installations, meeting with active duty, reserve, and National Guard Soldiers. All in all, more than 550 officers participated in the in-person surveys and focus groups. The final (and broadest) form of outreach was an Army-wide survey consisting of more than 100 questions related to leader development. More than 12,000 officers responded.

Based on the feedback, Adamshick and his team presented three broad recommendations focusing on mission command, officer career management, and officer developmental domains—both personal and institutional. The findings were briefed to Odierno and about 40 other key Army leaders in February, at which point implementation was immediately discussed. “SCPME is not only shaping the leadership and character of the Corps of Cadets but is also contributing to how the Army moves forward in leader development,” Adamshick says. He anticipates transformational change in how the Army develops its intellectual capital. “If we’re not careful, if we’re not wise, we’re going to lose the talents and the experiences that have been developed over the last 11 years,” he says. “General Odierno is looking for ways to make sure that the force that has returned with all of this experience maintains it, distributes it, and shares it with the next generation.”

The study’s findings and recommendations were evaluated at the Army Leader Development Forum in May. Senior leaders and subject matter experts from across the Army reviewed the Training and Doctrine Command’s leader development strategy and discussed implementation plans on several initiatives involving leadership and professional military education. Expect to see implementation measures that strengthen leader development soon.

Photo: Courtesy of the Simon Center

for Manpower & Reserve Affairs

COL Jeff Peterson ’87, Director of the Center for the Army Profession and Ethic; GEN (Ret) Fred Franks ’59, Class of 1966 endowed Chair in the Professional Military Ethic (who, along with LTG David Huntoon ’73, Superintendent of West Point, was appointed by GEN Ray Odierno ’76 to head this leader development initiative); and COL Scott Lofreddo, Chief of Staff of the Army Sustainment Command, at West Point.

Gloom Gray: Depression Research on Projects Day

By Keith J. Hamel, WPAOG staff

Photos: Marissa Carl/WPAOG staff, Anthony Battista/USMA

In recent years, some notable projects have been touted for the potential value they bring to the Army, including the Generator Waste-Heat Take-Off System in 2012, the STITCH (Supplying Technical Imagery to Command Headquarters) backpack in 2011, and the Bionic Foot in 2010. Army Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno ’76 is likely to be proud of a new project in this year’s batch of entries that combines the research of three departments to investigate whether West Point’s annual “gloom period,” with its gray days and numerous stressors (lack of sleep, meals, and strenuous exercise), is causing depression among the cadets. After all, he put out a call last fall for West Point leaders to support this combined effort, recognizing its immediate relevancy to the Army.

Background: Last July, the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command at Fort Detrick approached Colonel James Ness, Program Director of Engineering Psychology with the Department of Behavioral Sciences & Leadership, who once performed research on laser biophysics at Fort Detrick, and asked him to put together a workshop on enhancing the cognitive performance of the warfighter. In doing so, Ness invited Dr. Paul Greengard, a world-renowned neuroscientist and winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine who discovered a cell protein in the brain that he labeled P11. “This protein moves receptors from the interior of the brain cell to its surface so that they can be seen by serotonin, demonstrating that P11 levels appear to be a predictor of whether or not an individual is depressed,” Greengard remarked in a September 2006 interview with The New York Times. Over the course of Detrick ’s two-day workshop, Greengard proposed that he and Ness should collaborate on a project. Ness agreed with two stipulations: “First, cadets have to be involved; second, the study needs to be correlational.” The correlation at West Point, as explained by Ness, refers to the potential ways that spring semester environmental conditions (such as light levels) and life events (such as Thayer Week), affect P11 cycles.

Interdisciplinary in scope, three academic programs were involved in

this study. Engineering psychology (EPysch) was responsible for administering and evaluating a Department of Defense health questionnaire similar to a Bech depression inventory or a Zung mood scale. The Department of Chemistry & Life Science’s Center for Molecular Science, led by Dr. J. Ken Wickiser ’92, was responsible for processing the biological samples by extracting the cells or molecules of interest for subsequent analysis via established methods by Greengard’s lab at Rockefeller University and at the lab of his partner, Dr. Per Svenningsson, at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. Finally, cadets from the Photonics Research Center, under the direction of Colonel James Raftery, placed spectral photometers around post and were responsible for measuring the dosimetry of natural light in the visible spectrum, from ultraviolet to infrared.

With cooperation from the Corps of Cadets, Ness and his EPsych team recruited 40 cadets last fall and obtained their informed consent to participate as subjects in this study. By the time the study

Photo: Marissa Carl/WPAOG staff

No singular event says “intellectual capital” at West Point better than Projects Day. West Point’s annual near-May Day event has been getting bigger and better each year since its debut in 2000, showcasing hundreds of cadet capstone projects, senior theses, and research activities.

Left: CDT Janelle Runion ʼ13 sets up one of the outdoor units on the roof of Jefferson Hall to record unobstructed natural light levels at the Academy.

got underway in January, 30 cadets remained, a mix of all class years with a 70-percent-male to 30-percentfemale ratio. Then, every two weeks during the Dean’s hour, EPsych transported the subjects to Keller Army Community Hospital to fill out questionnaires and get their blood drawn. The results of these selfreports, along with P11 levels in the subject’s blood, were tracked longitudinally with data from the spectrometers, which took light measurements every half hour from January through May.

Waiting on a snappy title, the project is currently known by the phenomenon it investigated— Accessing the Relationship between P11 and Light Levels and Life Events.

“Our objective was to inform the dose response relationship between P11 in the blood and mood,” said Ness. At present, the relationship between the P11 biomarker and depression—or more aptly named Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)—remains undetermined. By substituting SAD with PTSD,

or post-traumatic stress disorder, it is easy to see why this project has broad possibilities. Both SAD and PTSD are difficult to diagnose. As Colonel David Benedek, M.D., Associate Director and Senior Scientist with the Uniformed Service University’s Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress, told Christine Creenan-Jones of Military Medical News, “If biomarkers are identified, physicians will be able to diagnose PTSD through blood and saliva.” Benedek also notes, “Biomarkers will help the Army detect PTSD earlier so treatment can begin sooner and troops may begin to heal faster.” With Department of Defense leaders continually calling PTSD the Army’s most pressing health concern, and with Odierno calling for more research on depression in response to the Army-wide suicide stand-down last fall, any project that might help the Army better understand psychological issues and help alleviate the impact of SAD or PTSD-related depression on Soldiers and their families is extremely important. This research project is proving once again that West Point’s Projects Day and intellectual capital for the Army go hand in hand.

West Point ASSOCIATION OF GRADUATES

Reunions… R-Day… A-Day… Tailgates…

Photos: courtesy of BS&L, Marissa Carl/WPAOG

Above: CDT John Marinelli ʼ15 with the Jaz spectrometer, which collects levels of artificial and natural light.

Joint Missions Ahead

By Keith J. Hamel, WPAOG staff

Photo: WPAOG archives

In 2003, while serving as a Civil Affairs Officer in Iraq, John P. DeBlasio ’89 witnessed something that deeply troubled him. “The Army was not prepared to engage with local populations and achieve military objectives in a non-kinetic fashion,” he says. Years later, Class of 2013 Vice President Tommy Daniel reached a similar conclusion after his first two-and-a-half years of education and training at the United States Military Academy. “The current operating tempo in the world says cadets are going to need to know information related to working with international populations and civilian counterparts,” Daniel says, “but there was a vacuum at West Point.” That is, however, until March 2012, when DeBlasio pledged a gift to the West Point Association of Graduates that formally established the Center for the Study of Civil-Military Operations (CSCMO), which explicitly addresses the changing role of junior officers in its mission statement: “To develop all West Point leaders so that they are prepared to employ an understanding of Civil-Military Operations (CMO) within the framework of the broad spectrum of challenges they will face in military service.”

In fulfilling its mission, CSCMO supports five essential domains at West Point: service outreach, scholarship, teaching, faculty development, and cadet development. Prior to CSCMO, West Point was incorporating civil-military lessons in bricolage fashion: CMO components in academic departments (e.g., SS472: American CivilMilitary Operations), ethics training, and interactions with tactical officers. Now, the center is designed to be the central hub of CMO education at West Point, providing an integrated and robust approach to civil-military education and offering cadets an assortment of learning opportunities, from lectures by CMO scholars to in-the-field service learning within a host country.

“The biggest thing about this center is truly cadet learning,” says John Melkon, the outreach coordinator for CSCMO since its founding, who has had multiple tours in Afghanistan as both a commissioned officer and as a Department of Defense civilian. Just months into its existence, the center had already co-sponsored (along with the West Point Minerva Research Institute) an internship opportunity at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) for one cadet. Astrid Colon-Moreno ’15 completed her Academic Individual Advanced Development (AIAD) last summer working closely with ambassadors and senior administrators at the Department of Defense to explore patterns of interagency cooperation between military and civilian organizations. CSCMO also hosted or sponsored numerous course lectures last fall. In one, RS103: Information Literacy and Critical Thinking, Colonel Bill Martinez ’74, deputy director of the Center for Civil-Military Relations at the Naval Postgraduate School, told the cadets: “When you graduate here as second lieutenants, you will work with civilian populations. I guarantee it.” Colonel Hans Juergen Kasselmann, the director of NATO’s CivilMilitary Cooperation Center of Excellence, Karen Walsh,

CEO of Blue Glass Development, and Colonel (Ret) Michael Hess ’71, former assistant administrator at the United States Agency for International Development are among the nearly dozen guest lecturers brought to the Academy by CSCMO. The center also supports a student organization called the Cadet Community on Civil & Military Operations, a proposed club that is similar to the Domestic Affairs Forum and the Model UN (waiting for final approval from the Directorate of Cadet Activities). Recently, the Dean asked Daniel, its cadet commander, why he wanted to start this club, and Daniel told him that in his four years he has heard all these experiences from the field about rather nuanced activities, but it has all been just bits and pieces: “Now, thanks to the formation of the center,” Daniel told the Dean, “I have a better understanding of how they all interact with one another and want to do something proactive with this knowledge.”

Photo: courtesy of John Melkon/CSCMO

Right: COL Hans Juergen Kasselman, Director of NATO’s Civil-Military Cooperation Center of Excellence, speaks to a cadet after his lecture, “Train as You (Inter) Act.”

The center also supports the development of the Academy’s rotating faculty by sending them to CSCMO-sponsored seminars and CMOrelated conferences. “Already this year,” Melkon states, “I’ve sent four faculty members down to USIP’s Table-Top Exercise to discuss relationship building and conflict resolution via partnerships with U.S. armed forces and non-government humanitarian organizations, I’ve sent a number down to the Peace and Stability Operations Training and Education four-day workshop at George Mason University, and I’ve created the CSCMO Scholar’s Program, which allocates financial resources for individual research among the faculty.” Melkon is also hoping to start a semi-annual journal as a forum for faculty to publish their work, and he himself remains current in the field by participating in CMO research. Last October, he and Kristine Ringler of Minerva met with Ph.D. candidate Lisa Karlborg from the University of Upsalla in Sweden to evaluate the effectiveness of various CMO methods used by international troops in Afghanistan (how well they acheive support and acceptance).

Figuratively speaking, Melkon sees all of CSCMO’s operations as existing in a vertical stratum with outreach at the top (in terms of professional military education and the field at large) and cadet learning at the base. “It all distills down to a lesson that a cadet can learn,” Melkon says. One project that hits on all levels (bringing intellectual capital to the Army at large, contributing a scholarly focus to the development of doctrine, and positioning West Point as the fountain of thought on CMO issues) is the Pikine research project, staffed by four cadets. Last summer, Major Tom Hanlon, assistant professor with the Department of Geography & Environmental Engineering, responded to a research solicitation from United States Army Africa Command. It was seeking a study on the effects of security in sprawling megacities in Africa, namely Pikine, which is an informal municipality adjacent to and sharply contrasted with the more developed city of Dakar, Senegal. Melkon helped Hanlon develop the civil-military concept for the project and used his network connections to pair Hanlon with an international non-government organization called Partners for Democratic Change (PDC). One of PDC’s branch outfits is Partners Senegal, which helped Hanlon and the cadets conduct interviews with neighborhood chiefs, social organization leaders, ordinary citizens, and even a Grand Imam during a two-week period from December 30 to January 13. After analyzing the data they collected, the research team put together a paper on the effects of sprawling megacities and

Graphic: courtesy of John Melkon/CSCMO

CSCMO’s hierarchical structure for cadet learning through outreach.

“When you graduate here as a second lieutenant, you will work with civilian populations. I guarantee it.”

–Colonel Bill Martinez ’74

debriefed the commanding general of USAFRICOM. Reflecting on the scope of the Pikine project as it relates to CSCMO, Melkon says, “Here you have a problem; you have the intellectual capacity and a pedagogical mission here at West Point informing the research; you have service in the field that exposes cadets to working in an austere environment with a host country team requiring them to perform intercultural exchange; you have applied learning within the existing curriculum and independent research; finally, you have the experience of presenting a product that can be given back to the Army for use toward future planning.”

If the last decade is any indicator, West Point graduates will be facing many more “Pikine projects” in the future. “More and more company-grade officers are finding themselves engaged with civilian populations, local leaders, and nongovernment agencies,” Melkon claims, “but the Army doesn’t often teach them how to handle these issues and situations until the field-grade level.” Given this new reality, the need for CSCMO is obvious. “Cadets are hungry for information that is going to make them better leaders,” Daniel says, “and CSCMO is filling the vacuum.”

ACRONYM GUIDE

CSCMO – Center for the Study of Civil-Military Operations

CMO – Civil-Military Operations

USIP – United States Institute of Peace

AIAD – Academic Individual Advanced Development

PDC – Partners for Democratic Change

USAFRICOM – United States Africa Command

Photo: Joseph C. Shelzi

Members of the team (left to right) CDT Mike Zweifel ’13, MAJ Tom Hanlon (D/GEnE), CDT Charles Susong ’14, and Dr. Garth Myers (Trinity College) learn how informal traditions originating in rural areas blend with formal functions of governance in the city of Pikine.

Read more about the Center for the Study of Civil-Military Operations.

ARMY TRACK & FIELD

At its core, track and field is a series of individual competitions (relay notwithstanding) comprised of running, jumping, and throwing events. But focusing on the individual in sports typically has a negative connotation: Athletes are taught from a young age about the value of teamwork.

One Team, One Goal

By Pamela Flenke,

Writer

Photo: Mike Strasser/USMA PAO

Guest

Above: Lindsey Danilack ’14 competed in the women’s pentathlon on Feb. 15 at the 2013 Patriot League Indoor Track and Field Championships held at Gillis Field House.

Can a team really succeed when its members are focusing on individual goals? According to current members of the Army Track & Field squad, as well as notable alumni of the team, the answer is unequivocally “yes.” History also answers positively: The men’s team has won 14 of 19 Patriot League Indoor Championships (first held in 1994) and 17 of 21 Patriot League Outdoor Championships (first held in 1992), while the women’s team has an overall winning record against Navy (including a 17-meet winning streak from 1987 to 1995).

As with any track and field team, Army’s team is divided into traditional factions. There are the sprinters and hurdlers, mid and distance runners, throwers, and jumpers. But despite their individual nature, athletes within each group are rather uniform about their own role on the team and how their individual goals coincide with the greater goals of the team—namely beating Navy.

SPRINTERS AND HURDLERS

Whether at the World Championships or a high school meet, the sprinters are always the ones who get bulbs flashing. Running the 60meter dash indoors, the 100-meter dash outdoors, or the 4x400meter relay in both, sprinters get all the attention at meets despite competing for the least amount of time. Even a novice track fan can name a famous runner: Usain Bolt—sprinter, Michael Johnson (the one with gold shoes)—sprinter, Florence Griffith Joyner aka “Flo-Jo”—sprinter. Such glory for performing on the track for 10 seconds or less!

Given his success on the track, Army’s famed sprinter—AllAmerican Domonick Sylve ’11—was likewise regularly pursued for interviews; yet, whenever he was asked to do a piece for Army Athletics Communication’s multimedia department, Sylve always said, “What about [so-and-so]? He would be great at that too.” The embodiment of “team,” Sylve never wanted attention, despite truly deserving it.

Sylve was a quiet and respectful walk-on who was always one of the first to practice, where he simply put his head down and got to work. As a member of the Track & Field Team, Sylve led with his actions, which just so happened to include individual titles and Academy records: he claimed second-team All-American honors in the 110meter outdoor hurdles, and he holds Army records in both indoor and outdoor hurdling events. He was also a standout in Star Meets, once winning an unreal four events against Navy at an outdoor meet and winning 12 of the 14 Star Meet events in which he competed while at West Point (he was runner-up to an Army teammate in the two races he didn’t win). He led the Black Knights to six consecutive wins against the Midshipmen (2009-11), Army’s longest streak of Star Meet wins since 1997.

At the 2011 season banquet, Troy Engle, Army’s head coach for the past five seasons, described Sylve as one of the finest individuals to come through the program and said that he hopes his daughter “marries someone just like Dom one day.”

Photo: Tom Connelly

Domonick Sylve ’11

MID AND DISTANCE RUNNERS

In these events (800-meter races to 10,000-meter, or 6-mile races) the men wear shorts that are skimpy even by women’s standards, and the women wear, well…, think bikini bottoms. But before getting too wrapped up in this picture, these are also the athletes who are more often than not bent over a garbage can or crumbled in a pile at the side of the track at the end of their races, as the events are extremely grueling. While the sprinters dash to the finish line, the mid and distance runners strategize their race, continually analyzing when it’s best to conserve energy and when it’s best to make a move.

The 3,000-meter race on the final day of the 2013 Patriot League Indoor Championships epitomized this cerebral game play. Lisa Junta ’15 was running stride-for-stride with Navy’s Brigid Byrne. The two academy foes, who had faced each other before at various cross country meets and track competitions, were shoulder to shoulder for three-quarters of the race. Nearing the finish, a rumble started in the Army section: “Just wait… this is when Lisa kicks it in.” As if on cue, Junta picked up her stride and broke free, winning the event by more than 10 seconds and snapping a 27-year Academy record in the process. This faction of Army Track & Field is full of thinkers and scholars. Most of these runners also compete as members of Army’s Cross Country Team, a unit that is recognized year-in and year-out as having one of the best grade point averages among corps squads. In February, Junta herself was recognized as the Patriot League Indoor Track ScholarAthlete of the Year for having a GPA higher than 4.0 and winning a pair of events at the conference meet (Ricardo Galindo ’14, a distance runner for the men’s squad, also earned this honor).

THROWERS

They’re big, they’re brawny, and they grunt a lot. They epitomize the brute strength and power of Army’s team, and, if they wanted to, they could fold a distance runner and stuff him or her in

Major Mike Mai ’00, a two-time Team USA weight thrower at the World Championships, was completely unfamiliar with the event before coming to the Academy, having only thrown the discus prior to entering West Point. “I had never even seen the hammer throw,” Mai says, “and hadn’t thought of throwing it until Jerry Ingalls ’96 came back to train for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia.” Mai jokes that he first picked up the weight throw just so he could make the traveling team for the indoor season, but as he developed, his goal became more than just having a spot on the bus. “Throwing the hammer was almost an afterthought until I broke 200 feet at the ArmyNavy Star Meet,” Mai states; “At that time, I really had never dreamed of making the NCAA Championships during the indoor season or accomplishing all that I have during my career.”

But even with his individual goal of qualifying for the post season, the main goal for him and his fellow throwers on the team was to beat Navy. When asked what he looked forward to most during the season, Mai would state very matter-of-factly: “First and foremost, beating Navy.” When pressed further on the subject, he says, “My senior year, I really wanted Brian Gebhardt ’00 and me to finish first and second in the hammer throw and beat the guy from Navy, who was pretty good, and we were able to accomplish this.” Mai and Gebhardt also helped Army capture three Patriot League outdoor titles and two indoor crowns during their tenure on the team.

Photos: Tom Connelly, Mike Strasser/USMA PAO

Above: Lisa Junta ’15 earned the 5,000-meter run title Feb. 16 at the 2013 Patriot League Indoor Championships at Gillis Field House. Left: Jason Wilkes ’14, sprinter. Right: Scott Geary ’13, thrower.

Support athletic team endowments, such as the Track & Field team.

JUMPERS

They wear high socks, and they slow clap—a lot. They are lanky in stature, and even in head-to-head meets they still seem to cheer each other on (except maybe for Navy meets), but then again, jumpers are never on the competition surface at the same time as their opposition. Ernest Holland ’15, who competes in the high jump for Army, says jumpers are a unique breed because they are “calm and effective.” Anyone watching is likely to agree. When it isn’t their turn, jumpers will typically be found sitting by themselves in what could be described as a state of Zen, concentrating exclusively on their next jump.

Holland admits that this level of focus helped him achieve his career highlight on the team thus far—clearing 6'6" at Shea Stadium during the 2012 Outdoor Star Meet against Navy. The height was good enough for second place and still stands as his career best, marking the first time that he scored in an Army-Navy competition. This individual highlight was bittersweet, however, as Army came up short that day, forcing Holland to wait for another chance to attach a Gold Star to his jacket. Ask him his goal for this season and Holland will emphatically say, “Avenge the loss to Navy;” not jump seven feet or qualify for NCAAs, but to get a team victory over Navy. And track and field is supposedly all about the individual competition?

At its essence, track is an individual sport just as a Soldier is an individual in the Army. At the end of the day, however, Army’s athletes are competing toward a team victory, whether that is on the small-scale level of winning a single category (i.e., winning sprints at the Patriot League Championships) or on a broader scale (i.e., winning dual meets over Navy).

Track is one of the few sports where individual goals don’t conflict with team goals. A basketball player who wants to score 50 points in a game might be counterproductive toward a team victory; however, if a shot putter wants to throw 17 meters, a sprinter wants to break 11 seconds on the 100-meter dash, a high jumper wants to exceed seven feet, or a mile runner wants to come in under four minutes, then it can only help the team. “When you compete in track, there’s an individual effort toward the aggregate of a team effort,” notes Forsythe. This increases the pressure on the individual athlete. It is similar to leading an Army unit, and it is the reason why intercollegiate athletics, when it is done right, like at West Point, can be a wonderful laboratory for developing character and leadership.

Editor’s note: Army Track & Field sent five qualifiers—three runners and two throwers—to the First Round of the NCAA Track & Field Championships.

Pamela Flenke is in her third year as a Communications Assistant for Army Athletics. She serves as the primary contact for several Black Knights' teams: women's basketball, men's tennis, sprint football, cross country, and track & field.

Photo: Tom Connelly

Ernest Holland ’15

for Tomorrow

By Marissa Carl, WPAOG staff

In an effort to prepare cadets for an evolving Army, West Point’s facilities are adapting—and growing.

A new 11-acre urban assault course, which will be ready for cadets this summer, is used to train individual Soldiers, squads, and platoons on tasks necessary to operate within an urban area. The new course is made up of five uniquely designed stations that allow for progression-style training, focusing on the three-dimensional contemporary operating environment. “This urban assault course will help ensure that cadets at West Point are ready for the everchanging tactics of modern warfare,” says Colonel John Boulé ’86,

Commander of the New York District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Addressing the new stations, including a Grenadier Gunnery Trainer, Boulé continues, “These new facilities, combined with the other top-of-the-line facilities at West Point, are key to providing the best training and education possible for the Army’s future leaders.”

Soldiers in the region—as well as numerous law enforcement agencies—have found value in West Point’s training facilities, particularly the Indoor Shoot House. Four-person teams first breach the entryway, triggering a unique virtual scenario that projects

Photo: Marissa Carl/WPAOG staff

Solar panels power the automated targets at Range 3, a Combat Pistol Qualification Course.

lifelike images onto the surrounding walls. The scenarios feature actual-size enemies (ranging from one to dozens), and the trainees use real bullets, making this one of the most realistic urban training centers in the Nation. When a bullet passes through the screen, a thermal camera precisely tracks each round, providing lifelike battlefield effects as the virtual enemy responds. At the conclusion of the conflict, the team can replay their engagement to evaluate their performance.

Technology is not only being integrated into the new training sites at West Point, but tried-and-true facilities have gotten upgrades over the years. Ranges 3 and 5, small-arms qualification courses, are powered by computerized solar panels that sit directly in front of the automated targets and, for a majority of the courses, unit leadership can request and design unique scenarios—Want this target to come back up 10 seconds after it’s been hit? Want that target to require three hits before going down? It can all be customized to ensure the difficulty level is appropriate for the group training.

To augment the ranges and specialty courses, cadets train year-round in the West Point Simulation Center. From the sixth floor of Washington Hall they can be transported into infantry scenarios around the world. Using military science tactical decision-making games, cadets get hands-on experience creating—and testing— operations plans. Over the course of the spring semester, cadets in Engineering Psychology built an entire game, thinking through every detail of the design. On Projects Day, other cadets and community members then attempted to both attack and defend the virtual forward operating base (FOB), find a weapons cache, and engage with “local leaders” (real-life negotiations that were scored; based on this score, the teams ran into different levels of an ambush on the way back to the FOB).

The Sim Center staff, pros at creating simulation training programs, has supported cadets and instructors in nearly all West Point departments, including Behavioral Sciences & Leadership, Geography & Environmental Engineering, and Foreign Languages. Access to this center (during class or on their own time) gives cadets a chance to rehearse a variety of training scenarios before hitting the live courses. For the cost of a computer and in a significantly reduced amount of time, cadets can, for instance, sharpen their land navigation skills, making them more efficient during the real thing without incurring the costs of equipment, transportation, food, and other resources necessary to safely practice land navigation. The Sim Center also gives cadets the opportunity to practice training elements they sparsely encounter before graduation, like negotiations, and scenarios they would never get to practice otherwise, via historical vignettes.

Many elements in the virtual scenarios are based on firsthand accounts from West Point faculty and staff who have recently returned from Afghanistan. The Sim Center staff collects details from their deployments to capture subtle things that would not have been considered otherwise, for example, how difficult it is to just drive out of the FOB. Cadet Jon Goodin ’13, who spent weeks creating the virtual FOB for the Engineering Psychology course, says he has a new appreciation for all of the details that make FOB layouts user-friendly for Soldiers.

The system with which the cadets are familiarizing themselves (Virtual Battle Space 2) is the same system they will encounter in the Army. “We’re keeping our finger on the pulse of Army simulations so that everything we’re doing mirrors what’s available to them later in the Army,” Major Daniel Kidd, Director of the West Point Simulation Center, says. As lieutenants, and possibly platoon leaders, they’ll not only be aware of this evolving training opportunity but will know how to utilize it from the get-go.

Though the facility at West Point is similar to what exists at other Army posts, the Academy’s center is also utilized for research efforts in addition to training. Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, one of many organizations that has reached out to the Academy to initiate projects, is interested in hearing thresholds. If Soldiers get injured and hearing is affected, to what scale is it affected? Are the Soldiers still combat effective? Can they still hear necessary commands? Cadets are using the Engagement Skills Trainer 2000 (within the Sim Center) and pattern analysis tests to conduct this research, which will help Walter Reed better understand incoming aural injuries.

Photo: Marissa Carl/WPAOG staff

The new urban assault course (under construction in this photo) will improve Soldiers’ training and survivability, says Alec Lazore, Range Operations Officer, because Soldiers are increasingly required to conduct missions in and around complicated terrain in built-up areas (towns, villages, and cities).

The next step for the Sim Center is to make simulation software available on cadet laptops so cadets can access it on their own schedules. “Every barracks room then becomes a Sim Lab,” says Kidd, who emphasizes that although simulations make cadets more efficient, live training is still best. The Thayer Method makes sense, he adds, but it’s just as important to leverage technology at this point

in time. “Army leadership has identified that we need to sustain the level of training that we’re at now, after more than 11 years of war,” he says. “If we don’t figure out how to capture it and sustain it, then we’ll lose it. Soldiers will come back to a garrison Army, get bored, and leave, and with them we’ll lose all of that knowledge. Technology is the easiest way to sustain it.”

Above: For thousands of years Soldiers have used graphic representations to depict operation plans. These graphics originally took the form of sticks and stones and eventually morphed into paper drawings. For most West Point graduates, that’s where the planning ended. Today’s cadets, however, get to see their plans in action. The image on the right is a virtual representation of the landscape from the above drawing. Cadets can now “fight” their plans in a simulated environment to see how well their pen-andpaper strategy actually works. “It’s hard to sketch action, reaction, counteraction,” MAJ Daniel Kidd, Director of the West Point Simulation Center says. “Show me.” Kidd and other instructors can now watch the interactions and provide better feedback.

Below: COL James Ness, Director of the Engineering Psychology Program (at right), advises cadets as they prepare their simulation training program for Projects Day.

Photos: Marissa Carl/WPAOG staff

“The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history.”

—Carl T. Rowan

Photo: John Pellino/USMA

Interdisciplinary Curriculum = Intellectual Capital

By Keith J. Hamel, WPAOG staff

Photos: WPAOG archive, screen graphic courtsy Core Interdisciplinary Team.

Recently, two Old Grads were engaging in a “the Corps has” conversation on one of the West Point Association of Graduates’ social media sites.

“What is it with these mixed courses?” one said. “Like that’s going to help close with and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver, huh?”

“Yeah,” said the other, “I doubt that ‘trendy’ academics will be of benefit to anyone.”

These grads likely love and support West Point, but their criticisms, which are prevalent among those who graduated and were commissioned 15 years or so ago, miss the point of today’s curriculum. The Academy has introduced new subject areas and has become more interdisciplinary to keep up with the modern military profession. At a recent faculty workshop, Brigadier General Tim Trainor ’83, Dean of the Academic Board at the United States Military Academy, noted that West Point must continually work to get cadets to make connections in areas beyond branch or function expertise. He then explained, “This is important because later on, when they are faced with unscripted scenarios, they’ll be able to pull together ideas, knowledge, and experiences from several courses or discipline perspectives in order to deal with whatever complex issue is before them.” Trainor’s remarks echo those of the Army Chief of Staff, General Ray Odierno ’76, who said the following in his February 4, 2013, memorandum, The Force of Tomorrow : “Changes in the character of modern conflict demand that we continue to evolve… This demands foresight and innovation, as well as bottom-up engagement by our most valuable asset—our Soldiers and leaders.”

West Point has been providing this “foresight and innovation” in numerous ways for over a decade: through the work of its cadets, through the research of its permanent and rotating faculty members, and through the missions of its Centers of Excellence. Not surprisingly, given popular conceptions of Army initiatives, most people see West Point’s intellectual capital as belonging to four categories: science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). The connection is fostered by statistical evidence: the Academy produces 19 percent of the Army’s officers each year, but they account for 75 percent of those with STEM degrees. Yet, despite the success of research projects like the bionic foot and the Black Knight I space satellite, West Point’s intellectual capital goes far beyond STEM.

Missile Defense

The Department of Foreign Languages (DFL) is home to one such project. Only two years old, this project began when DFL solicited the Department of Defense for a grand challenge for its graduating seniors. DFL was then contacted by representatives at the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) who wanted to figure out why Russian and U.S. officials were always talking past each other when it came to the United States’ Missile Defense Shield. Colonel John Baskerville ’90, Academy Professor of Arabic and Director for DFL’s capstone integrative experience, maintains that the cadets’ research complements MDA’s technical knowledge and expertise by providing insight into the human element of negotiations. “The cadets’ knowledge of language, culture, and regional dynamics helps

bring fresh perspectives to identifying and understanding key issues, as well as an interdisciplinary approach to problem solving,” Baskerville says. Over the 2011-12 academic year, Major Michael Tobias ’01, DFL’s Executive Officer and an Instructor of Russian, mentored a group of five double-majoring cadets on the project. Each of the cadets involved either majored in Russian or had lived extensively in Russia. Pairing this background with that of their combined second majors (economics, international relations, geography, and Defense and Strategic Studies), they brought a multitude of perspectives and backgrounds to the problem. Cadets used their cultural experiences and linguistic abilities to research Russian-language source documents to better understand the Russian position. The cadets also traveled to the MDA offices in Washington, DC, and spoke to members of the U.S. negotiation team, and they went to the Pentagon to meet those who form policy. After analyzing all of their data, the cadets developed a tactic designed to make each party feel as if it were leaving the table with a victory. “The approach they put together was unique,” Tobias says; “Lieutenant General Patrick O’Reilly ’78 remarked that it was one of the most comprehensive descriptions of the problem he has ever heard—and the solution allows Russian President Vladimir Putin to save face in front of his country.” Aside from producing knowledge for the Army in the form of a better understanding of a decades-old

Photos: Dr. Olga Dobrunoff, Department of Foreign Languages

COL Gregory Wright ’86, chief of the START/Nuclear Division, Onsite Inspector for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, discusses missile defense with then-CDT Rudy Weisz ’12 after his group’s presentation on Projects Day 2012.

issue, the MDA project also exposed the cadets to the military decision-making process and working with a bureaucracy long before they would get this experience in their Army careers. Second Lieutenant Rudy Weisz ’12, a primary member of this inaugural group, says, “Working on the project was challenging, but it gave us insight on how to better manage working with a bureaucracy and how to craft proposals so that they would be well received.” Even though their proposal was not used, MDA was so impressed with the cadets’ work that it renewed its partnership with DFL for 2012-13 and asked the department to help it analyze the various aspects of missile defense with Gulf Cooperation Council countries (GCC or Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia). In 2012-13, three Arabic-major cadets, led by Lieutenant Colonel Jennifer Griffin, Instructor of Arabic, are investigated the cultural, historical, political, and even economic factors involved in reaching an agreement on a comprehensive, integrated, regional defense shield. Baskerville explains that understanding the nuances in these complex issues is essential. “Once you grasp these,” he says, “you can then begin to mitigate challenges and develop solutions.”

Data and Analysis

The Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis (OEMA) within the Department of Social Sciences (SOSH) is another source of intellectual capital that West Point provides the Army. Created in 1983 by Lieutenant General Maxwell Thurman, at a time when the Army was transitioning from conscription to an all-volunteer force, OEMA’s founding mission was “to help senior leaders create the Army of tomorrow.” Thirty years later, OEMA is still providing data (seven terabytes and growing), theory, and analysis to Army leaders so that they have a sound basis for creating policy. It is also now supporting the research of about 50 cadets and a dozen or so doctoral candidates on their way to future West Point teaching assignments. OEMA has made many significant contributions of intellectual capital during its time. For example, in 1986 OEMA assisted in an Armed Forces & Society publication, “Smarter Tankers are Better Tankers,” which linked Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) scores with military productivity and paved the way for improving quality in the enlisted ranks. In the late 1990s, OEMA developed America’s Army Game Project, which Colonel Casey Wardynski ’80,

Photo: Courtesy of the C enter for the Rule of Law

Law majors CDT Margaret Budke ’13 and CDT Catherine Steele ’13, and CPT Charles Bronowski, Assistant Professor with the Department of Law, pose with Liberian children near West Point, Liberia.

the former Director of OEMA, described as “using computer game technology to provide the public with a virtual Soldier experience that was engaging, informative, and entertaining” (and which is credited with tripling the number of Army recruits). OEMA is currently helping the Army to better manage its human resources by leading the charge to move the Army from personnel management to talent management. Lieutenant Colonel David Lyle ’94, the current Director of OEMA, credits OEMA’s West Point home as a major factor in its ability to provide such strategic support. “We are not pulled into the day-to-day, short-suspense requirements of the Pentagon,” Lyle says. Furthermore, being embedded in a community of practice at West Point, OEMA has access to the resources required to make an impact on any Army research project. OEMA routinely reaches out to various departments at West Point and across academia (at institutions such as Harvard or M.I.T.) in order to leverage interdisciplinary expertise and peer review. “OEMA serves as a natural conduit between academia and the Army,” Lyle explains, “and our role includes both translating the unique military culture to study and validating academic study for military leaders.” Year after year, OEMA adds to the intellectual capital it generates by “graduating” members of its faculty to the Pentagon. “We teach them the theory, data, and analysis behind policy formation, so they are able to provide first-rate expertise to the Pentagon,” Lyle says. But before the faculty “graduates,” it is all about teaching the cadets, as helping to shape the senior leaders of tomorrow’s Army remains OEMA’s primary mission. “Our instructors share real-world lessons from the Army’s highest program and policy levels with the cadets in the classroom every day,” says Lyle. Through both its teachers and those taught, OEMA is able to promulgate its intellectual capital throughout the Army.

First Line of Law Enforcement

A third non-STEM source of intellectual capital is West Point’s Center for the Rule of Law (CRL). Now in its fourth year of existence, this center was formed to enrich cadets on rule-of-law issues because, as Dr. Robert Goldstein, the CRL’s Director, points out, “Once commissioned, they are the Army’s front line of law enforcement.” In doing so, CRL has held conferences on several timely topics, including one titled “Islam and the Rule of Law,” which sought to answer whether or not sharia law is compatible with democracy. From work at local district attorney’s or judges’ offices to posts at federal law agencies (FBI, Congress, Supreme Court), the Center also sponsors several cadet Academic Individual Advanced Development, or AIAD, projects. CRL offers staff-ride AIADs, such as one on war crimes and one that is being offered this summer on civil rights (in conjunction with the Department of History). Perhaps the Center’s most notable AIAD is “Point-to-Point.” According to CRL’s website, this project is the result of a comment from former President of Ireland Mary Robinson, who participated in the Center’s inaugural conference in 2009, mentioned that she had just been to West Point, Liberia (a slum in the capital city of Monrovia), and mused how wonderful it would be if West Point cadets could help its residents. The Head of the Department of Law, Colonel Maritza Ryan ’82, then established this five-year program that annually sends

three cadets to the African country to collect data and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of a specific area of Liberia’s legal system (which is lacking in rule of law due to a long-standing civil war). “Point-to-Point has been a sort of laboratory for us to think about rule-of-law issues—such as violence against women and property law—and how we can impact those issues on the ground,” Goldstein says. If asked about how all of these initiatives contribute intellectual capital to the Army, Goldstein will be direct: “Everything we are at CRL is applicable to what we are doing as an Army in the world, given that every officer is responsible for the military justice system and that, at the conclusion of a conflict, the rule of law, or what’s left in place to establish order, ultimately determines victory.”

Energy Security

Even traditional STEM programs are joining with humanities and social science programs to answer the Dean’s call to bring in different perspectives to solve complex and ambiguous problems while providing intellectual capital for the Army in the process. Plebe courses in chemistry, math, information technology, general psychology, and English are all part of the two-year-old CIT, or Core Interdisciplinary Team (physics, economics, and geography are also participating as yearling courses). “To have a good interdisciplinary program, you need to have a good theme that can galvanize the effort across the curriculum,” notes Colonel Joe Shannon, Academy Professor in the Department of Chemistry & Life Science. The CIT proposed “energy security,” which was voted on by the USMA Faculty Council and presented to the General Committee in 2011. “We needed an inspirational hook that would get the cadets’ attention but also help develop the faculty at the same time,” Colonel Gerald Kobylski ’88, Academy Professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences, recalls. With CIT’s implementation, plebes now take core courses related to energy exposure, while yearlings’ coursework focuses on energy application.

Not only does energy security cut across various core courses, but it directly relates to an issue impacting most cadets upon commissioning, namely energy use at a forward operating base (FOB). Energy security is an operational reality. According to 2009 field data from a United States Marine Corp Afghanistan Study, 1 in 46 convoys results in a casualty, 7 gallons of fuel are needed to transport 1 gallon of fuel or water, and the fully burdened cost of energy in Afghanistan could get as high as $56 per gallon. Thus, energy security on the FOB is a pertinent issue that impacts combat

“Everything we are at CRL is applicable to what we are doing as an Army in the world, given that every officer is responsible for the military justice system and that, at the conclusion of a conflict, the rule of law, or what’s left in place to establish order, ultimately determines victory.”

–Dr. Robert Goldstein, Director, West Point Center for the Rule of Law

readiness and effectiveness, which is going to require multiple perspectives to understand and solve. “While we try to change the Academy’s culture academically by engaging in this interdisciplinary effort,” Shannon says, “we are also trying to change the Army’s energy culture by encouraging cadets to be good stewards of this scarce resource.” CIT courses do this by introducing cadets to energy issues currently impacting Army operations (e.g., the combustion of diesel fuel in a HMMWV engine with oxygen) and by allowing them hands-on access to platoon-level equipment (e.g., SWIPES, or the Soldier Worn Integrated Power Equipment System). General Chemistry—in conjunction with courses in math, English, psychology, and information technology—ends its semester with a tactical scenario capstone assignment that requires cadets to manage energy for a 72–96 hour dismounted patrol mission, the purpose of which is to determine all energy requirements needed while ensuring sustainability of operations, including the use of renewable energy capabilities. When they complete the CIT program, the cadets themselves become West Point’s intellectual capital to the Army as they will be the ones to lead its culture change on energy as second lieutenants.

To assist the faculty teaching these interdisciplinary courses, the Academy turned to SENCSER (Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities), a National Science Foundationfunded effort to reform undergraduate science instruction in the United States that encourages framing science content within social and civic topics. Members of the CIT attended SENCSER’s Summer Institute in 2011, which provided them with the foundation for planning USMA’s interdisciplinary effort. “Other schools focus on issues such as pollution, climate change, or conservation, anything

with which the community is struggling,” says Kobylski, “and our community is the Army”—which named energy security as one its top-10 priorities. However, the beauty of USMA’s interdisciplinary approach from an intellectual capital standpoint is its adaptability. As Shannon points out, “Our focus need not be limited to just one thing, and we have created the relationships and structures to tackle the next big problem that the Army needs solved.”

Intellectual Capital Challenges

When it comes to solving Army problems, the West Point Center for Innovation & Engineering (CIE) is among the Academy’s most recognized enterprises. CIE’s mission is “to utilize engineering research and development opportunities to enhance the education of cadets, the professional development of faculty members, and outreach to the Army and the Nation.” While its name and mission identify it as a STEM initiative, CIE’s vision is dedicated to multidisciplinary research. Before supporting any project, Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Floersheim ’89, Director of CIE, tests it against three criteria, the first of which is, “It must cross department lines” (“It must address a Department of Defense problem” and “It must bring in cadets” are the other two criteria). The projects typically fall into three camps: those relating to the Soldier Design Competition (SDC), those relating to the Rapid Equipping Force (REF) grand challenge, and those relating to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Warrior Web.

According to DARPA’s website, “The Warrior Web program seeks to develop the technologies required to prevent and reduce musculoskeletal injuries caused by dynamic events typically found in

Photo: U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command

U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command Director Dale Ormond talks to West Point Cadets about their prototype for redesigning Barracks Huts. Cadets Ethan Miller ’13 and Kurt Musser ’13 explain that SIP-Huts prototype is a possible deployable living structure that would reduce fuel usage by approximately 50 percent as well as be fire-resistant, reusable and quick and easy to construct.

the warfighter’s environment.” One such injury that has persistently plagued Soldiers pertains to the ankle. CIE is working with doctors at Keller Army Community Hospital; Dr. Bill Brechue, Director of the Center for Physical Development Excellence; the New York School of Podiatry; and medical students at Temple University to measure the geometry of every incoming cadet’s foot in an effort to establish baseline data and then to discover foot architectures susceptible to ankle problems by following the cadets through their time at West Point. Cadets will not only be subjects, but some from various programs (e.g., kinesiology, life science, bio-mechanical engineering, engineering psychology, etc.) will assist in data collection and analysis as part of independent study projects. For the SDC, which is now in its 10th year, CIE has teams working to solve Army challenges related to six “thrust areas,” such as dismounted IED defeat, combat outpost and patrol base protection and sustainment, and physically overburdened Soldiers (and there is always an “open design” category). One team created a handheld diagnostic device with the ability to field analyze a small sample of bodily fluid for potential diseases, while another team developed a replacement design for the Army’s standard field-barracks hut (B-Hut). This latter construction effort, led by Colonel Karl F. Meyer ’84 and Lieutenant Colonel Steven Hart ’88, is being completed in partnership with the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers Research & Development Center (USACE ERDC) labs and has gained interest from the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy, and Environment. In 2011, West Point cadets took home first prize for a modification system that redesigned current HESCO barriers, which saved 60

percent of the time needed to protect against small-arms fire than when Soldiers had to shovel sand into the barriers by hand. In 2013, West Point cadet teams almost swept the SDC, winning four of the five possible prizes, including the Grand Prize, sponsored by Raytheon. The Grand Prize-winning project featured cadets from five different academic programs working to develop an environmentally safe alternative to Super-Tropical Bleach, a highly caustic liquid used to sanitize equipment prior to redeployment. Four West Point cadets also took home the inaugural REF grand challenge prize in 2012 for their Waste Heat Cogeneration System, which harvests up to 80 percent of the waste energy and hot exhaust from generators and re-routes it to a gas water heater. “The purpose of REF is to develop a solution that the Army could roll into the field in 18–24 months,” Floersheim says. This means that, thanks to West Point, Army Soldiers soon might be able to take hot showers in the field—how’s that for intellectual capital benefitting the Army?

Conclusion

West Point’s impact throughout the Army is profound. The six programs highlighted here illustrate the much larger relationship between the Academy and numerous Department of Defense initiatives. For example, a memorandum of agreement has been in place between West Point and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) since the early 1990s, which has since expanded to include four active areas: a faculty and cadet collaborative research program, the Davies Postdoctoral Fellowship program, a Visiting Scientist

Chair at West Point, and the Mathematical Sciences Center of Excellence. “A relationship like the one we have with West Point puts us in touch with the customer on a regular basis,” says Joseph Gamson, the ARL Liaison and Program Manager for West Point. “The ongoing collaboration with cadets keeps the technical teams involved on the cutting edge because they have insight of the latest military ideas in their fields.” The Academy is also providing intellectual capital to the Army through its relationship with U.S. Cyber Command, which utilizes the background and expertise of former USMA faculty members to advance cyber missions (e.g., Lieutenant Colonel (Ret) Jen Easterly ’90 commanded the Army’s first network warfare battalion), seeks contributions from currently serving USMA faculty members for temporary assignments (e.g., Colonel Greg Conti ’89 created the four-week Joint Advanced Cyber Warfare Course to orient incoming personnel to U.S. Cyber Command), and offers ongoing research and outreach efforts within West Point academic departments (e.g., the Army Cyber Center at West Point). “Many of West Point’s current and former faculty members have made important contributions in advancing our missions in cyberspace,” says General Keith Alexander ’74, Director of the National Security Agency and Commander of U.S. Cyber Command, “and I intend to continue to draw on West Point graduates and faculty as an important source of intellectual capital in the years to come.” Even West Point’s incoming Superintendent, Lieutenant General Robert Caslen ’75, sought USMA’s assistance in his previous position as Chief of the Office of Security CooperationIraq (OSC-I) when he needed an assessment process for measuring the effectiveness of OSC-I’s Strategic Plan. “The team (which included two USMA professors and one TRAC analyst) delivered a

cognitively intuitive, metric-based assessment tool that should keep OSC-I on track to accomplish its strategic objectives,” Caslen says. “The tool is in use and is an enduring, value-added product for OSC-I’s future.” Caslen’s example proves that there are indeed Old Grads who understand and appreciate the value of West Point’s intellectual capital to the Army.

ACRONYM GUIDE

STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering, & Math

DFL – Department of Foreign Languages

MDA – Missile Defense Agency

OEMA – Office of Economic & Manpower Analysis

CRL – Center for the Rule of Law

AIAD – Academic Individual Advanced Development

CIT – Core Interdisciplinary Team

SENCSER – Science Education for New Civic Engagements & Responsibilities

CIE – Center for Innovation & Engineering

SDC – Soldier Design Competition

REF – Rapid Equipping Force

DARPA – Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

ARL – U.S. Army Research Laboratory

OSC-I – Office of Security Cooperation – Iraq

Photo: Keith

J. Hamel/WPAOG

CDT Steve Davidson ʼ13, a mechnical engineering major and a member of the Soldier Gap Crossing team, demonstrates a balance aspect of their first prize-winning lightweight universal gap crossing device in response to a question at the REFʼs 2013 Service Academy Design Challenge on Projects Day.

Enjoy retirement living in

company of peers, the comforts of maintenance-free living and the confidence that comes with a proven plan for the future.

We have a variety of floor plans, one is sure to fit your lifestyle. For a limited time only, our beautiful Shenandoah one-bedroom apartment home can be yours at tremendous savings.

$60,000 off the entrance fee

$20,000 in moving incentives/décor upgrades

No monthly fees for the rest of 2013— the sooner you move, the more you save!

Plus, we have a special gift for West Point alumni!

Breakneck Ridge summit, looking towards West Point.

ARVIN GYM

BY THE NUMBERS

21

Number of climbing ropes in Hayes Gymnasium.

Fastest official time recorded on the Indoor Obstacle Course Test (IOCT) .

1:59

Number of laps it takes to run a mile on the Hayes Gymnasium track.

7,849

Average number of cadet visits to the Athletic Training Staff each year.

The number of steps on the “stairway to heaven,” Arvin Gym’s main atrium stairway.

11.7

119

$2,900,000.00

ENDOWMENT THE CLASS OF 1962 HAS PROVIDED FOR MAINTENANCE OF THE CLASS OF ’62 FITNESS ROOM.

Photos: Marissa Carl/WPAOG, courtesy of DPE

Number of Crandall Pool records still held by Mark Spitz, who in 1972 set a then-world record for the most gold medals received during a single Olympic Games.

Year of the first Varsity Letterman plaque in Arvin Gym.

1893

Number of Silver Stars for gallantry awarded to Captain Carl Robert Arvin, Class of 1965.

forty-eight

Height in feet of the Class of 1979 Climbing Wall.

1884

Year the first Master of the Sword was appointed by Congress.

thirty-eight

Number of years Herman Koehler (considered “father of the Department of Physical Education” at West Point) served as Master of the Sword.

BEAR MOUNTAIN

HONORED TO BE PART OF THE WEST POINT COMMUNITY

The Bear Mountain Inn

NOW OPEN—Restaurant 1915 and The Spa at Bear Mountain

Luxury guest rooms and suites with oversized baths

Complimentary WiFi Internet Hiker’s Cafe and Bear Mountain Trading Company

Sumptuous Sunday brunch

The Overlook Lodge

Comfortable guest rooms with wooded views

Complimentary WiFi Internet Lobby fireplace and board game exchange

Stone Cottages

Each with six bedrooms and shared common room

Wood burning fireplace and covered porch overlooking Hessian Lake

Plus exquisite catering and all the amenities of Bear Mountain State Park

Gripping Hands

1982 1935

Nadja West ’82 Promoted to Two-Star General

On April 19, Nadja West ’82 became Army Medicine’s first African American female two-star general. Major General West currently serves as the Deputy Chief of Staff for the United States Army Medical Command and is responsible for all matters related to oversight and management of personnel, logistics, and information management and technology operations both in the National Capital Region and at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio.

Oldest Living Graduate

Celebrates 102nd Birthday

In April, the Long Gray Line celebrated our oldest living graduate’s 102nd birthday! When Colonel (Ret) Benjamin W. Heckemeyer ’35 was a cadet, West Point had a course in hippology, the Army had more boats than the Navy, and one of his tactical officers was Major Omar Bradley, Class of 1915. Some things, however, haven’t changed much in the eight decades since he squared corners as a plebe: he poured coffee and milk for upperclassmen as part of dining duties; he dressed in full uniform for Saturday morning inspections; and his time at Beast was absolutely “beastly.” Would he do it all over again? “With no hesitation,” he says. “Even after all these years, my proudest moment was receiving my appointment to West Point.”

Read COL Heckemeyer’s reflections on his cadet days, and see a video excerpt of an interview with MAJ Ranee Rubio ’99.

General Officer Promotions

The Secretary of Defense has announced that the President has nominated:

To the rank of General:

Lieutenant General Daniel B. Allyn ’81

Lieutenant General Curtis M. Scaparrotti ’78

To the rank of Lieutenant General:

Major General Joseph Anderson ’81

Major General Raymond A. Thomas III ’80

To the rank of Major General:

Brigadier General Clarence K. Chinn ’81

Brigadier General (USAR) William F. Duffy ’80

Brigadier General Ole A. Knudson ’82

Brigadier General Theodore D. Martin ’83

Brigadier General Richard L. Stevens ’82

Brigadier General (USAR) Ricky L. Waddell ’82

Brigadier General Darryl A. Williams ’83

To the rank of Brigadier General:

Colonel (USAR) Miyako N. Schanely ’86

1889

National Park Service

Honors Charles Young

The National Park Service officially dedicated the Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument on April 2 in Ohio. Charles Young, Class of 1889, was the highest ranking African American commanding officer from 1894 until his death in 1922. He served nearly his entire military career with the all-black 9th and 10th Cavalry regiments, the “Buffalo Soldiers.” He was the third African American to graduate from West Point and the last to graduate until 1936, the first African American superintendent of a national park, and the fourth soldier to be honored with a funeral service at the Memorial Amphitheater before being buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

“Grip hands—though it be from the shadows—while we swear as you did of yore, or living or dying, to honor the Corps, and the Corps, and the Corps.” —Bishop Shipman 1902

Influencing Future Leaders: CTLT from the Army’s Perspective

By Keith J. Hamel, WPAOG staff

Last summer, West Point magazine published an article (“Building Skills and Living Leadership: Summer Training at the Academy”) that partially detailed three cadets’ impressions of Cadet Troop Leader Training (CTLT). Defined as “leadership 24/7,” CTLT gave these cadets the experience of leading an active-duty Army unit in a non-combat setting for approximately four weeks. But what does the Army get out of CTLT, and what do commanding officers have to say about cadets leading their platoons? This summer, West Point magazine reached out to officers and representatives at Fort Polk, Louisiana, and Fort Drum, New York, to get their take on the CTLT program.

“The main thing that the Army takes away from CTLT is preparation of future lieutenants,” says Captain Bix Benson ’04, Company Commander HHC 1-509th at Fort Polk, who has worked with eight West Point CTLT cadets during his command. Captain Brandon Hathorne ’04, Benson’s classmate and counterpart at Polk, agrees. “The Army’s hope is that after participating in the CTLT experience, cadets will take the necessary steps to tweak themselves in areas that need to be modified.”

With the exception of leading Soldiers in combat, there are few platoon leader experiences that CTLT cannot replicate. “Cadets

will be challenged in all situations,” says Gregory Sato, Training Coordinator at Fort Drum: “They are expected to learn and complete those tasks essential to leading an Army unit, from administering physical training to conducting offensive and defensive tactics in the field.” Furthermore, as Hathorne maintains, company commanders treat cadets as they would any other platoon leader, and they would only intervene in the direst circumstance once cadets assumed leadership. “Unless it was a life-or-death situation, I let the cadets lead the platoons,” he says, “I am a firm believer in the notion that we learn from our experiences—be they good or bad.”

The most important experience for cadets to undergo is believed to be their interactions with noncommissioned officers. “I tell CTLT cadets under my command to maintain a positive attitude throughout the experience and to listen to their NCOs,” says Hathorne: “They are the source from where the majority of lessons learned would come.” Captain Jason Lopez, Company Commander of Delta Troop, 1-509th, echoes this by saying, “It is important for cadets to learn to solve problems at their level with recommendations and support from their platoon sergeants and NCO chain.” He continues, “If they learn nothing else during CTLT, it is imperative that they realize the importance of working by, with, and through the noncommissioned officer corps.” Incidentally, Sato reports that CTLT is not only a positive opportunity for cadets, but for the noncommissioned officers as well: “Platoon sergeants learn how to be better leaders themselves from the experience,” he adds.

CTLT also provides cadets the opportunity to form relationships with Soldiers, which Hathorne maintains is “a big part of the platoon-leading experience.” Most lieutenants serve as a platoon leader for approximately 18 months; yet, despite CTLT ’s relatively short window of about 28 days, cadets training at Fort Polk are reportedly making an impact on the 18 to 40 Soldiers they are leading in this time frame. “The consensus is that they are performing well,” says Lopez, “and most Soldiers said they would welcome their respective cadets as a future platoon leader.” At Fort Drum, it is not unusual for Soldiers to use this short time to give cadets a crash course in interacting with enlisted personnel. “Many Soldiers test the cadets in a variety of ways to gauge how they will react,” notes Sato, “and overall the Soldiers are approving of the reactions they get from the cadets.” Benson sums up CTLT from the Soldiers’ perspective: “CTLT is their opportunity to influence the future leadership of the Army and to let the cadets know how to avoid the typical pitfalls that new lieutenants make.”

SOLDIER, YOU NEED TO BE A MEMBER OF AUSA!

WHY?

The Association of the U.S. Army is YOUR voice on Capitol Hill. AUSA’s local chapters support YOU and YOUR family in YOUR local community. AUSA takes care of YOUR family while you are deployed.

JOIN TODAY and start getting YOUR voice in front of Congress.

As a West Point graduate, you have dedicated your life to ideals and standards that have made you a successful leader. Your personal attributes, combined with your strong education and professional experience, have equipped you for excellence in any environment.

At Academy Leadership we applaud your dedication and invite you to join our team. We are a national network of Service Academy

graduates dedicated to making our nation stronger by developing leaders of character and competence in organizations across America. We are looking for qualified candidates, like you, who are passionate about leader development.

To learn more about becoming a full-time or part-time member of our team visit www.AcademyLeadership.com and email your resume to affiliate@AcademyLeadership.com.

Whether you wore stars or faced the Academic Board, there was at least one class that really got the wheels in your head turning. We asked our Facebook and Twitter followers, “What was the most intellectually stimulating class you took at the Academy?” The responses show that cadets have a wide range of interests (or at least a great sense of humor)!

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Lessons From Down Range

By Marissa Carl, WPAOG staff

An infantryman who was nearing sabbatical as Director of the Sociology Program, Smith decided it was best to spend his year out of the classroom re-learning his craft. “For me personally it was an opportunity to re-blue, to reconnect with my roots in the Army,” says Smith, who has been teaching at the Academy for seven years. “My experience in Afghanistan allows me to blend the theory with practice and show cadets how they can use what they’re learning when they enter their chosen profession.”

Smith is looking forward to an opportunity to guest lecture in next fall’s Research Methods course, which teaches data collection and analysis. “Cadets often see that as a purely academic pursuit, and it really isn’t. We have to go out and collect data in combat as well, and we use that data to find, fix, and kill the enemy or find and support good guys on the battlefield,” says Smith, who routinely traveled throughout Afghanistan as part of his Chief of Staff role. “If you don’t collect and analyze the data properly, it can affect operations: I can give some vivid examples of how that works.”

In Afghanistan, amid days that were so busy he routinely got three to four hours of sleep a night, Smith was given the unique opportunity to mentor officers in combat whom he’d also coached as cadets in the classroom. “You see them leading their subordinates the way that you led them,” he says. “I actually got to see them practice things I had talked to them about as cadets.” Though Smith was the first West Point professor to assume the role of Chief of Staff for this task force and was the only sociologist on staff, his hope is that an increasing number of his colleagues will be given similar opportunities.

Lieutenant Colonel John Hartke ’88, who will take over as Director of the Advanced Physics Program this summer, returned in December from his second deployment to the National Military Academy of Afghanistan (NMAA). His mission was to advise Major General Shir Mohammad Zazai, the NMAA commander, and transition their Academy, which is modeled after West Point, to self-reliance.

Now back in the classroom, he translates his time in Afghanistan to Bartlett Hall, where he teaches a section of Officership. “Almost every time I teach a class, something from my deployment comes up,” Hartke says. “It’s ‘Hey, when I was in Afghanistan, this is what I saw; this is what I did.’ ” The stories Cadet Nina Fiore ’13

remembers most are about Hartke and his team remaining vigilant when working with some of the Afghan staff whose loyalties were unclear. “Discussing the war and the Army with officers like Lieutenant Colonel Hartke is a chance to borrow the experience and responsibility they carry, not to see if it fits on our shoulders, but to ensure that we build ourselves into people strong enough to carry it,” she says.

Hartke also teaches Intermediate Classical Mechanics, where his down-range experiences don’t surface quite as frequently, but it’s typical for conversations before and after class to turn into Q&A sessions between him and the cadets. His deployment experiences are also being built into seven years of research developing highenergy laser weapons, a project supported by the High Energy Laser Joint Technology Office. “At one of the forward operating bases where I was stationed, we looked at what it would take to defend the airfield from rockets, artilleries, and mortars with a laser, and

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On Friday, they’re teaching sociology, mechanics, and psychology. By Monday, they’re “boots on the ground” in Afghanistan. “People sometimes forget that West Point professors come from the Army, and we only select people who have done well, so if you bring a West Point professor out there, they’re probably going to do a bang-up job,” says Colonel Irv Smith ’87, who served two tours as Chief of Staff for a Combined Joint Special Operations Interagency Task Force before returning stateside in January.

Previous Page Above: LTC Pete Kilner ’90 interviews 1LT Trent Sutterfield, then a platoon leader, about his deployment experiences. Left: COL Irv Smith ’87 represents his command at a fallen comrade ceremony in Afghanistan. Right: LTC John Hartke ’88 with cadets at the National Military Academy of Afghanistan.

we’re starting to put that into the cadets’ work as they research and develop these systems.” Their work has been used to inform Army studies on analysis of alternatives, comparing the use of highenergy lasers to the current Centurion system. “We’re trying to provide more science and research to back up those decisions about whether or not the Army should pursue this type of weapons system,” he says.

The scope of Hartke’s impact is even broader than just the U.S. Army. “Like we have the future leaders of the U.S. Army sitting here in these classrooms, I’m absolutely convinced that the future leaders of the Nation of Afghanistan were present in Qargha with me: I’m hopeful I was able to have a positive impact in the discussions I had with them that they’ll remember,” he says. “And they’ll say, ‘You know what, the U.S. is okay. Let’s not treat them as enemies, but embrace them as friends.’ ”

war. Kilner ’90 and the team at West Point’s Center for the Advancement of Leader Development and Organizational Learning (CALDOL) are creating “a living curriculum based on the actual experiences” of leaders in war to better prepare cadets and junior officers. This includes websites, face-to-face interactions, and forums, including the Platoon Leader professional forum, which brings together more than 10,000 officers and cadets from across the Army—including more than 2,000 West Point representatives—to share experiences and ideas related to leading platoons.

To ensure that these activities have cutting-edge content that inspires meaningful conversation, Kilner and Colonel Tony Burgess ’90 alternately deploy and embed themselves with units in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a typical two-month deployment, they conduct one-on-one, video-recorded interviews with about 100 officers. “The willingness of lieutenants and captains to candidly share their experiences and hard-earned lessons in order to help the next generation of leaders is absolutely inspiring,” says Kilner, who carries his portable camera equipment in what would normally hold an ammo pouch. The junior officers tell him what they are experiencing in combat; what their successes have been; what mistakes they have made. “Officers love to share their stories,” Kilner says. “They want their Soldiers’ hard work and sacrifices to be captured and remembered.”

Both Smith and Hartke say the most important beneficiaries of their travels, however, are the junior faculty within their departments, some of whom have been away from the traditional Army for five years. “It’s most important to prepare the rotating faculty, the next group of field-grade officers who are getting ready to go back out,” Hartke says after a colloquium with more than a dozen faculty and staff members, “because they’re more likely to encounter and do the things I was doing than a lieutenant would be.”

The mission of Lieutenant Colonel Pete Kilner’s five deployments has been to educate the rising ranks of officers as well, by “connecting leaders in conversation” about current challenges in

Everything Kilner collects on his deployments is brought back to the Academy and rolled into the curriculum. One of the issues Kilner and his team have introduced to the classroom is the ethics of advising foreign military and political leaders, “which is much more complex than the ethics of your own behavior.” CALDOL also brings in company-grade officers, often West Point graduates, to talk to cadets about their experiences, their struggles, and the decisions they made during deployments. This makes it real, Kilner says, because the cadets often know the people in the stories. “When cadets remember seeing the speaker when she was a cadet, they become much more engaged and willing to learn from her stories,” he adds. Trained as a philosopher (Kilner did his thesis on the morality of killing), his understanding and analysis of deployment issues has “crystalized” after more than 400 downrange interviews. “I feel very confident that what we teach the cadets is going to be true to their experiences,” he says.

Though it doesn’t say it on their syllabi, these professors are enhancing the core cadet learning experience, teaching life lessons cadets need for success in the Army. “We have to reach out to the Army to be able to bring those experiences back to the classroom,” Smith says, “and it’s important to bring our expertise to them, to help with missions.”

Photo:Mike Strasser/USMA PAO

1LT Laura Meade, 1LT Joseph Langella ’10, and 1LT James Hall ’11 were part of a group of junior officers who spoke to the Class of 2013 after returning from Afghanistan, where they served together in the same task force. This speaker series is one way the team at CALDOL has helped make the Officership course more interactive.

IT TAKES US ALL

On April 5 & 6, the West Point Association of Graduates launched the public phase of For Us All: The Campaign for West Point. Learn more about this important $350-million initiative for West Point and the Long Gray Line. Visit WestPointForUsAll.org.

Every gift to any fund from January 1, 2009 to December 31, 2015 counts!

The print depicts General George Washington at West Point, New York in the winter of 1779 during the Revolutionary War retrieving the “Great Chain” from the Hudson River before the river freezes.  The “Great Chain” was designed to block the British Navy from sailing up the Hudson River from New York City and splitting the American Colonies in half.  The presence of General Washington in this historically accurate rendering points to the strategic importance of the “Great Chain” and the fortifications at West Point, which were never tested by the British Navy.  Links of the “Great Chain” are still present today on Trophy Point as a reminder of our earliest successes as an Army and an emerging Nation.

Major General Baron von Steuben, author of the Army’s Blue Book; the famed Major General Marquis de Lafayette;  Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton, aide-de-camp to General Washington, Founding Father, and the first US Treasury Secretary; Colonel Timothy Pickering, the sixth Adjutant General of the Army; and Colonel Alexander Scammel, the seventh Adjutant General of the Army.

“Great Chain”

Accompanying Washington during the retrieving of the

are:

Washington’sWatchChain by world-renowned artist Mort Künstler

We’re doing our best to round you all up for the first-ever Rabble Rouser Reunion, September 20–21

Were You a Rabble Rouser? ®

If you were a member of the Rabble Rouser cheerleading team while a cadet at West Point, please let us know: Email your name and dates of participation to: alumni-events@wpaog.org

Register to attend: WestPointAOG.org/ RabbleRouserReunion

West Point ASSOCIATION OF GRADUATES welcomes the Reunion Classes of ’68, ’73, ’78, ’83, ’88, ’93, ’99, ’03, ’08

A Soldier’s Soldier: Joseph Edward Muckerman II

1926-2010 by Anne Muckerman

Born on the 4th of July, Col. Joseph E. Muckerman II, US Army (Ret.), was a model American and an inspiration for all of us. He was a West Point graduate and served in Japan as well as several state-side locations during his long career. Col. Muckerman’s superiors described him as “physically, mentally, and morally” an “officer of the highest caliber.” This book honors his amazing life. Profits from this book will be donated to the Long Gray Line Fund at West Point.

Available at acaciapublishing.com

Over

Past in Review

THE LONG RESEARCH LINE AT WEST POINT

By Julian M. Olejniczak ’61, Guest Writer

The first Projects Day was in 2000, but research at West Point has a history that extends back to the Academy’s founding: Major Jonathan Williams, the first Superintendent, established the United States Military Philosophical Society in November 1802 “to make West Point a center of scientific discovery and invention.”

William H.C. Bartlett, Class of 1826, Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy, created a detailed report of his inspection of various observatories in Europe during the period of July 1 through November 20, 1840. As an outgrowth of this report, expensive equipment was ordered for the first observatory at West Point, which was located atop the three-turreted combination headquarters, library, and lecture hall built by Superintendent Richard Delafield in 1841. Using this equipment, Bartlett made detailed observations of the Great Comet of 1843, and decades later, during the partial solar eclipse of May 26, 1854 he gathered material for an important paper published in the November 10, 1854, edition of the Astronomical Journal . It was the first time in America that photography was used for astronomical measurements, in this case the distance between cusps during an eclipse. In more modern times, relatively speaking, Lieutenant Colonel William B. Streett ’55, Director of the Science Research Laboratory, received his permanent assignment as Director and Assistant Dean for Academic Research in 1967, the same year in which West Point was awarded its first Army Research Office (Durham) grant. In March 1971, Streett presented his paper on the effects of high pressure on light gases such as hydrogen and helium to the first European Earth and Planetary Physics Colloquium in England. Months later, the Superintendent’s report noted, “The activities of the Science Research Laboratory have continued to expand, providing added depth to programs of pure and applied science of the Academy.” West Point received a renewal grant from the

Army Research Office (Durham) covering 1971-74 that funded basic research in materials science and sponsored additional research projects in high-pressure calorimetry and infrared spectroscopy. Around this time, NASA also provided a grant to support laboratory research in the chemistry and physics of planetary atmospheres, and the Academy completed an Atomic Energy Commission project to study the chemistry and thermodynamics of bubble chamber fluids. Coincidentally, Streett’s earlier fieldwork as an instructor in the Department of Earth, Space, and Graphic Sciences provided essential information to the scientists at Brookhaven Laboratories who designed the bubble chamber in 1964.

By 1987, West Point personnel had completed so many projects and had so many others underway that the Directorate of Resource Management compiled them into a monograph titled “In the Lead.” Perhaps noteworthy, computers were used in more than half of the faculty research projects; the bulk of the cadet projects also involved extensive computer use, with many focused on the development of specific software programs. Typical research efforts involved weapons testing, computer modeling and software development, engineering, international relations and security, Soldier performance, and pure research. In the lowlevel combat simulation field, West Point researchers developed a Bradley fighting vehicle turret simulator to measure the rate and accuracy of fire in simulated engagements using remote-controlled, highresolution video systems and digital shot

registration. In 1994, West Point surpassed the $1M mark in annual grants for research. Since then, West Point has conducted a number of research projects for the Army and the Nation. One of the largest studies collected data for more than nine years on 40 Army programs—including the Abrams tank, the Blackhawk helicopter, and various missile systems (e.g., Patriot, Stinger, and Pershing). This data was used to determine the causes of cost overruns and schedule slippage in major Army research and development programs. Another research project provided the Army War College with confidence statements regarding the output of selected combat models used in tactics and strategy courses. A third project made automated terrain information rapidly available on the battlefield.

Today, nearly a quarter-of-a-billion dollars has been granted to the 27 centers at the Academy dedicated to research. Last year, West Point faculty and student researchers produced more than 800 scholarly works presented as books, in journals, or at conferences. “Research and outreach are vital components of the U.S. Military Academy,” Lieutenant General David H. Huntoon Jr. ’73, USMA Superintendent, said in a 2010 interview. “Cadets, staff, and faculty are working continuously to provide relevant research that supports the requirements of our Army and the U.S. government, serving key purposes in linking our intellectual capital with our Army, and ultimately in serving the Soldiers who serve around the world.”

Photos: [Names listed here as needed]

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