Air University Review, May-June 1977

Changing Educational Goals at the
United States Naval Academy

OF THE 16,294 young men who graduated from the United States Naval Academy (USNA) as members of the classes of 1949 through 1968, a total of 2142 to be commissioned in the United States Air Force (USAF). A comprehensive research study completed in late 1972 indicated that of this group, 1060, or about ere then on active USAF duty.^l Although no data are available to update these figures, it is reasonable to assume that a large of these USNA graduates are still on active duty.*

*As a historical footnote, it should be stated that not many USNA graduates have been added to the USAF rolls since 1968. The author is aware of only two (one each from the classes of 1972 and 1976) who were direct USAF accessions. Example in very unusual cases, such Navy-to-Air force transfers of graduates are not allowed.

There is currently a high level of interest in, and  interservice study of, the academic and professional training programs at the three service academies and at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. While it would be inaccurate to assert that this interest and cooperation have not always existed, it is a fact that recent developments, especially involving activities of the DOD Committee on Excellence in Education (the so-called Clements's committee, named for its chairman, W. P. Clements, Jr., Deputy Secretary of Defense) have accelerated this activity.² Because of significant influence on current USAF policies and programs exerted by senior Air Force officers (including several USAF generals) who are USNA graduates, and in view of the current interest in academy curricula, it is instructive to examine the current Naval Academy academic program.

Of primary interest is that portion of the USNA program that is designed to meet the ever-increasing need for technically trained graduates. The changes that have taken place since 1968 have been so significant as to render the old, so-called "lock-step" curriculum experienced by pre-1968 graduates unrecognizable in terms of the majors that exist today. The current engineering program is very strong academically, fully accredited, and benefits from an outstanding new physical plant.

The current USNA dedication to a strong engineering and science program is, in terms of the institution's 131-year history, a fairly recent phenomenon. The Naval Academy has often been described by critics as a "trade school"—because of its real or perceived emphasis on applied disciplines and practical training.³ That view is reinforced by the charge given to the academic board by Commander Franklin Buchanan, the first Superintendent, when the Naval Academy was organized in 1845:

The course of instruction will be comprised under the following heads—Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Gunnery, the use of Steam, Geography, English Grammar, Arithmetic, History, the French and Spanish languages and such other branches desirable to accomplishment of a Naval Officer as your judgment may dictate.

The implementation of this philosophy of training, designed to produce the "immediately employable ensign," resulted in development over the years of a curriculum that produced generations of outstanding naval leaders. The intent was not to produce renowned scholars. ⁴ The Naval Academy met changing technical and operational requirements in an evolutionary way; changes were always designed to meet the needs of the Navy while retaining the common educational experience considered by many to be essential for creating a cadre of dedicated and technically proficient officers.

The years after World War II through the late 1950s saw some course modifications and moderate shifts in emphasis, but it was a board of visitors report of March 1957 that served as the impetus for significant changes that took place in the Naval Academy curriculum beginning about 1959. Plans were approved that year providing for integration of several courses and for greater emphasis on underlying principles and fundamentals in technical and professional courses, rather than on current systems and material subject to obsolescence. The "pendulum was beginning to swing toward greater emphasis on academic effort," effort designed to provide a greater challenge to the brighter student and to go well beyond the scope of the prescribed curriculum. ⁵ The realization of this concept included the institution of validation, advanced elective courses, and overloading privileges. The first steps in what rightly has been termed an "academic revolution" in the Naval Academy curriculum had been taken. ⁶

Even though significant curriculum advances had taken place in the early 1960s, two-thirds of the brigade of midshipmen were still taking the prescribed 164-semester hour curriculum. While these men were undoubtedly receiving a good, solid education, there was great concern that their education might not be adequate for the world of change that they would encounter in the 1970s and 1980s. Furthermore, the load of 164 hours was 20 more than required for most degrees in engineering, and no real opportunity existed for the kind of in-depth study that is generally recognized as a necessity in the professional development of engineering majors. Recognition of these deficiencies led to the development of a minors curriculum for the classes of 1968, 1969, and 1970 which included a 34-course core curriculum and an elective sequence of six courses. This program allowed for completion of a minor by every midshipman in one of 23 fields of concentration. This minors program was the genesis of the present majors program and included engineering study in aerospace, marine and mechanical engineering, naval architecture, and weapon systems. Science minors included applied science, chemistry, electrical science, and physics.

If development of a minors program could be termed the second phase in the evolution of the Naval Academy engineering program, then the third phase certainly is the implementation of major-for-all program. The development of the majors program in the years 1966-1969 was based on comprehensive introspection and courageous decisions on the part of innovative superintendents and educators. The majors program was established in September 1969 for the Class of 1971 and all subsequent classes. It was recognized from the beginning that significant emphasis needed to be placed on technical majors, in order to satisfy, the expanding needs of the Navy for technically trained graduates. ⁷ Since the classes of, 1971, 1972, and 1973 were on-board at the inception of the majors program, the Class of 1974 was the first class for which a goal defining a desired distribution of majors could be stated. This goal came to be known as the "40-30-20-10 split": 40% of each class in the engineering majors, 30% in mathematic and other sciences, 20% in the humanities and social sciences, and 10% in management."

The goal was not met by the Class of 1974; over 20% of the class selected analytical of general management majors and only 30% selected engineering. The development of a common plebe (fourth-class) year, curriculum changes, and a more-effective recruiting campaign resulted in majors selections by the Class of 1975 that very nearly matched the desired 40-30-20-10-split. Since the engineering and science majors are usually viewed as being "70-30" : 70% in the combined engineering and science major and the remaining 30% in the humanities, social science, and management. The initial free-choice selection by the Class of 1976 resulted 30.2% split. Similarly, the Class of 1977 met the desired 70-30 split, even though the humanities-social sciences majors were oversubscribed at the expense of the mathematics-sciences majors.

The desired distribution of majors for the Class of 1978 was influenced by a totally unrelated matter--that of visual acuity requirements! In response to the Superintendent's request to permit admission of more young men with eye waivers, the Chief of Naval Operations gave his approval, but with the caveat that the requested 10% increase of men in this category be used to increase to 80% the number of technical majors (science and engineering) in each class. ⁸ Thus, was born a new "80-20" requirement for majors selection, the same figure that is in effect today and which is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. The distribution of majors for 1978 at 77.1-22.9% attests to the painstaking search for candidates. Since the desired 80-20 split was not achieved, it was decided to ask the 2.9% "overage" (38 midshipmen) to accept their second choice (which had to be an engineering-science major). Individual wishes were accommodated wherever possible, and ultimately, only two midshipmen raised strong objections.

The U.S. Naval Academy is now firmly and effectively committed to the 80-20 split, and the entire admissions-through-selection process is geared to this need. The current USNA Catalog states it very clearly: "The needs of the Navy require that at least 80% of midshipmen in each class be enrolled in engineering, scientific, or mathematics majors." Candidates are advised of this requirement before selection, and they are continually and forcefully reminded of it on several occasions prior to majors selection. That the process is working is evident from the fact that, when the Class of 1979 selected academic majors in March of 1976, 83.5% signed up for one of the 16 engineering science choices. There were few complaints when they "missed" the 80-20 goal.

With this historical perspective, the majors program for the Class of 1979 can be described in greater detail, and the USNA engineering majors can be reviewed. None earlier USNA graduates who selected USAF duty would recognize the curriculum today.

The twenty-five academic majors available for selection by the Class of 1979 are shown in the following summary.

There is some modification to this list for the Class of 1980. The number of majors available has been reduced to 18; the language programs are no longer identified as majors, and several majors, such as engineering physics and operations analysis, have been eliminated.

The 80-20 split required that 80% of the Class of 1979 choose majors from Groups I and II ; the remaining 20% could choose from Group III. The actual free-choice selection came out as follows:

As mentioned earlier, few objections were raised to this result, although some faculty members are concerned because any further significant increase in Group I and II choices could adversely affect the viability of the Group III majors. This concern, incidentally, is shared as much by the engineering and science faculty as by instructors in the Group III areas. Since midshipmen enrolled in the engineering majors must take a total of 24 semester hours of humanities/social sciences courses, it is extremely important that majors in these areas remain "alive and well." The discontinuation of these majors would obviously (and quickly) affect the quality of both the humanities/social sciences faculty and courses, and the remaining majors would suffer for it.

Probably no area of the Naval Academy curriculum has changed so dramatically over the past decade as have the engineering majors. Many of the courses were developed (or at least significant modified) during that period, initial professional accreditation was won, and completely new laboratory and classroom facilities were constructed. The engineering program is now very strong and is, to a very measurable degree, largely responsible for the significant increase in technical majors over the past several years. This is a noteworthy achievement in light of the confusion as to exactly what is meant by the term "engineering" at the Naval Academy. A former Superintendent stated it very well: 

When many of us talk about engineering at the Naval Academy, we mean instruction in the operation and maintenance of machinery on board ship. More specifically, we are referring to an understanding of boilers, turbines, hot wells, surge tanks, feed pumps, electrical systems, and their interrelationships. This is important material for each Naval Academy graduate and much of my effort over the past four years has been involved with reinserting this sort of work back into our program. How, ever, it has little to do with engineering education in its academic sense. If we are to produce graduates who have a reasonable grounding in the analytical aspects of engineering, we must be certain that we have sound programs in such areas as dynamics and statics, strength of materials, fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, and heat transfer. The engineering field has become so complex that some specialization is required. Those who would study in depth in the electrical and electronic fields must pursue a different program from those whose main interest is in, say, the mechanical or aeronautical fields. ⁹

The Naval Academy has developed the "sound programs" Admiral Calvert called, for. The best measure of that soundness is the fact that all those engineering programs listed for which accreditation was sought were granted this distinction. The national agency that conducts such reviews for all U.S. engineering curricula is the Engineers' Council for Professional Development (ECPD), which includes representation from 15 of the most prestigious engineering societies in this country. The following USNA engineering majors received initial ECPD accreditation in the year indicated and still hold that distinction:

There is no intent to achieve such accreditation for the major in general engineering; only one member of the Class of 1979 was permitted to enter it as an initial choice, and it is usually reserved as a fall-back position from the ECPD-accredited curricula.

There has been a steady increase in the numbers of midshipmen selecting the various engineering majors over the past several years. These numbers are shown in Table 1.¹⁰ The catastrophic decrease in the strength of aerospace engineering major that occurred between the classes of 1974 and 1975 reflected attitudes regarding the aerospace industry, and education in that area, which existed in 1971-1972 throughout the U.S. The major has "gotten well," however, and has re-emerged as a midshipman favorite. The systems engineering major has also experienced unprecedented growth, which is somewhat remarkable in view of the low public awareness of this relatively new major. Only eleven ECPD-accredited systems engineering programs exist in the U.S.; the 45 men who graduated from the USNA in 1975 with that degree represented nearly 24 percent of the entire U.S. output!

Table I. Engineering major selections

While it might be instructive to examine each, or even several, of the USNA engineering or science majors in detail, space limitations obviously preclude such an analysis. However, the engineering majors have a significant amount of commonality so that it is possible, and perhaps worthwhile, at least to summarize the content of one of them.

The newest engineering major at the Naval Academy, and indeed in the U.S., is systems engineering. Any discussion of this major obviously should be preceded by a clear and unambiguous definition of the term. It would be nice if such a definition existed; many very eloquent words have been written to describe the various curricula which carry this designation, but there is little agreement as to precisely what topics or subjects are common.¹¹ In any event, at the Naval Academy, it is meant to be an interdisciplinary major encompassing all the separate fields of engineering as well as the physical and, more recently, the social sciences. It involves significant analog, digital, and hybrid computer work and automatic control. In many U.S. engineering schools, this major might be viewed as a sub-set of electrical engineering.

The systems engineering curriculum, like her all other USNA engineering curricula, has undergone significant change in the past year or so in the so-called professional course area. This area includes a number of courses designed to provide the midshipman with specialized training and education necessary for professional development as a naval officer. These professional courses are required of all midshipmen and are probably the closest courses in the current program to some of those studied by graduates of the old school. For the Class of 1980, the systems engineering major contains those major areas of study in Table 2.

In this major, as in most of the USNA engineering curricula, required study in mathematics extends one course beyond a formal course in differential equation theory. For systems engineering, this includes a course in probability and statistics. The engineering science group includes eight semester-hours of electrical engineering and 14 semester-hours of mechanical engineering. Required work in the basic sciences includes eight hours each of chemistry and physics (two courses in each area) and one two-hour course in digital computer programming. The professional courses in the systems engineering major are the same as those required in the other ECPD-accredited USNA engineering curricula and include navigation, naval science, leadership, seamanship and tactics, naval weapon systems, and law.

THE U.S. Naval Academy, like the academies of its sister services, was created in order to increase the professionalism of the officer corps.* The continuing development of the curriculum over the years, culminating in implementation of the majors-for-all programs, has always been designed to accomplish this objective. In today's environment, in all the services, a need for professionalism equates to a need for the best technical training possible. The engineering majors are eminently well-suited to this goal. An ECPD accredited engineering degree is visible recognition of the attainment of a high level of technical achievement; it is a benchmark against which the quality of an institution's graduates can be measured. It is small wonder, then, that the Navy and Air Force assiduously guard the integrity of their academies' engineering degrees. While this emphasis has sometimes created potential conflicts between technical education and professional training—the "balance between Athens and Sparta" as a previous USNA superintendent described it—the academies must remain, above all else, engineering schools. ¹² The dedication and professionalism of the Spartan are necessary requisites for military and naval success, but the scholarly and intellectual depth derived from successful pursuit of a tough technical major represents modern-day Athenian virtues on which that professionalism can be built.

United States Naval Academy

*The need, however, was not nearly so dramatically illustrated in 1954 in the Air Force as it was in 1842 in the Navy. A near-mutiny at sea resulted In trial, conviction, and hanging of a midshipman and two enlisted men. Unfortunately, the midshipman was the son of the Secretary of War!

Notes

1. Lieutenant Colonel R. J. Lucas, USAF, and Major W. E. Hodge, USAF, "The USNA Graduate in the Air Force," Shipmate, vol. 36, no. 10, November 1973, pp. 34-38.

2. Deputy Secretary of Defense Memorandum to the Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, Subject: The Service Academies: Conclusions and Initiatives, 28 April 1975.

3. Professor John D. Yarbro, "USNA Curriculum Development," revised edition, January 1974.

4. Rear Admiral R. W. McNitt, USN (Ret), "Challenge and Change, the Naval Academy: 1959-1968," Shipmate, vol. 35, no. 4, April 1972, pp. 3-6.

5. Ibid., p. 3.

6. Yarbro, p. 5.

7. Dr. Bruce M. Davidson, Academic Dean, USNA, "Who Takes What?" Shipmate, vol. 38, no. 8, October 1975, pp. 33-35.

8. CNO Memorandum to USNA Superintendent et al., Subject: Visual Acuity Requirements for Entrance to the USNA, 9 January 1974.

9. Vice Admiral James Calvert, USN, "Thoughts upon Conclusion of a Four-year Tour," Shipmate, vol. 35, no. 4, April 1972, pp. 7-9.

10. History, United States Naval Academy, Division of Engineering and Weapons, 1 July 1975-30 June 1976.

11. Lieutenant Colonel J. J. Blum, USAF, "An Introductory Course in Systems Engineering," Engineering Education, vol. 65, no. 3, December 1974, pp. 238-41.

12. Vice Admiral James Calvert, USN, "The Fine Line at the Naval Academy, Naval Institute Proceedings, vol. 96, no. l0/812, October 1970, pp. 63-67.

Editor's note: The article reflects data available as of July 1976.

Lieutenant Colonel Joseph J. Blum (M.S.E.E., Air Force Institute of Technology) is Chairman of the Weapons and Systems Engineering Department at the U.S. Naval Academy and serves as Senior AF Representative. He held R&D assignments before completing a six-year tour as associate professor of electrical engineering at the USAF Academy. He is a registered engineer and the author of a computer textbook, technical papers, and articles. Colonel Blum is a graduate of Squadron Officer School, Air Command and Staff College, and Air War College. He is a colonel selectee.

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