2020 Comprehensive United States Naval Academy
Founded in 1845, the United States Naval Academy (USNA) has a long history of international engagement with allies and partners abroad. Students—known as midshipmen—gain global leadership and intercultural competence through semester-long exchanges, faculty-led programs, language study, and cocurricular activities focused on global issues. Serving 4,500 students at its campus in historic Annapolis, Maryland, the Naval Academy also hosts international officers as part of its faculty and international students from partner militaries around the world.
Before Lieutenant Commander Josh Duran enrolled at USNA in 2005, he had never had any international experience. The summer after his second year of college, he spent 4 weeks on a Japanese ship, where he lived and trained alongside newly commissioned Japanese naval officers. Thirteen years later, he is still in touch with several of the people he met on the ship.
The next summer, he spent 1 month in Kumamoto, Japan, learning more about the language and culture. “I don’t know that I completely understood how important both of those experiences were as a military officer,” Duran says. “I looked at them as fun and educational experiences, but I didn’t really have an understanding yet as to how they would impact me.”
Once midshipmen graduate from the Academy, they are commissioned as officers in the Navy or Marine Corps and sent to various locations around the world to enhance their global learning. Duran did his first tour of duty in South Korea. While he faced the challenge of learning yet another language, his previous opportunities to develop intercultural skills prepared him well. “I had a really good foundation for how to engage with my Korean partners who I needed to work with on a daily basis and also [understood] what sorts of things would be meaningful to do in order to establish lasting relationships with them,” he says.
After spending 8 years working as a naval intelligence officer, Duran was then appointed as an exchange officer at the Republic of Korea Naval Academy, where he teaches a diverse offering of English language courses to South Korean midshipmen. “The foundation for my career was built in Annapolis, and it has just been kind of an inimitable part of my career to date,” he says.
Centralizing International Programs
Since 2005, the International Programs Office (IPO) at USNA has created opportunities for midshipmen to excel in the global leadership and learning required for a career in the Navy or Marines. “They need to be ready from day one to be able to be a leader and work with others [who] have differing points of view,” says Tim Disher, MBA, director of international programs.
Disher, a former Navy officer, is also the product of the Naval Academy. Over the course of his military career, he served on a submarine during the Cold War and spent 4 years in Spain, where he acted as a liaison between the U.S. and Spanish Navies and advised senior Navy and State Department leadership. Disher’s experience in Spain paved the way for him to become the Naval Academy’s first senior international officer.
After returning to Annapolis in 2003, Disher helped establish the IPO in 2005 at the behest of Superintendent Vice Admiral Rodney Rempt. As the institution’s top leader, Rempt was interested in increasing midshipmen’s global engagement in response to the U.S. Department of Defense’s priorities to improve foreign language proficiency, regional understanding, and cultural appreciation for officers and enlisted personnel, following the tragedies associated with the attack of the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen in 2000 and the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Disher continued as IPO director as a civilian after retiring from the military in 2007. “I knew that future generations of officers...are going to have to be engaged globally,” he says. “And I wanted to be involved with that.”
As of 2020, the office has eight staff members and manages international student services, study abroad, student exchange, and international visits and works with 10 international exchange officers from partner navies around the world.
The interdisciplinary Center for Regional Studies (CRS) was established at the same time as the IPO, with the mission of helping midshipmen understand regional and international dynamics across the world through regional speaker events focused on different geographic areas: Africa, Asia Pacific, Eurasia, Latin America, and the Middle East.
Every year, CRS Director Ernest Tucker, PhD, a professor of Middle Eastern history, coordinates more than 20 international speakers who present to the student body. Altogether, these lectures reach thousands of students. Speakers include diplomats, scholars, musicians, poets, journalists, and representatives of foreign navies. The speaker events do not have an academic component, but many professors weave the presentation topics into their courses. “Talking across disciplines is a key responsibility of CRS,” Tucker says.
Building On A Legacy of Internationalization
Current Superintendent Vice Admiral Sean Buck, MA, says that he has been able to build on the robust international portfolio inherited from his predecessors, who rotate approximately every 4 years. He has helped make the case for internationalization based on his own recent experience as commander of all U.S. Naval forces that operate in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America.
Buck says exposure to diverse perspectives is even more important for midshipmen at the beginning of their military careers. “As we try to navigate them through their four-year journey here at the Naval Academy, we’ve come to realize that giving them exposure to other cultures is absolutely paramount so that they can make an impact from day one as leaders,” he says.
Beyond the cocurricular opportunities offered through the CRS and various summer and semester study abroad programs, midshipmen have opportunities for intercultural learning due to the presence of international students and faculty on campus. At any one time, around 60 international students are completing their four-year education at USNA, in addition to 25 semester exchange students from foreign naval academies.
To celebrate the international diversity of the faculty and midshipmen, USNA holds an International Ball every year. The superintendent hosts the event, which is attended by more than 2,800 people annually. It includes dances and events by the various cultural clubs as well as engagement with senior international officers and representatives from the Washington, D.C., embassies. The International Ball would have celebrated its 54th anniversary in 2020 if it had not been canceled amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Finally, midshipmen gain exposure to global topics through core courses that focus on regions such as Asia or the Middle East, and many electives and major program curricula also have global learning content. In addition to majoring in Arabic and Chinese, students can pursue minors in Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish. The institution is also in the process of establishing a first-of-its-kind regional studies major for the class of 2024.
Expanding Opportunity Through Education Abroad
Academic Dean and Provost Andrew Phillips, PhD, has been at the Academy for more than 20 years. Although USNA had always promoted international engagement, it was not until the creation of the IPO that education abroad became readily accessible for a large number of students, he says.
One of the obstacles to education abroad at USNA is that the federal law governing service academies specifies that students can only participate in such programs if they will still be able to graduate within 4 years. Phillips says that when he first became provost in 2009, faculty were reluctant to engage with internationalization. “There were some early adopters, but there were a lot of people saying it was too hard, until we showed people what could be done,” he says.
To help address the challenge, the Naval Academy has developed a robust portfolio of faculty-led summer programs as well as exchange opportunities with civilian and military institutions around the world. Now, all 25 majors offered at the Naval Academy boast at least one semester-length education abroad opportunity. Approximately 25 percent of each graduating class studies abroad. According to Disher, the goal is to eventually send 500 midshipmen abroad per year, which would be around 50 percent per class.
Training Leaders Through Experiential Learning
One of the reasons that Jake Lindow, a cyber operations major who graduated in May 2020, chose the Naval Academy was because of its education abroad programs. He wanted to attend a military academy but did not want to give up the experiential learning opportunities offered at civilian institutions. He spent the fall semester of his junior year at the German Naval Academy in Flensburg and the Bundeswehr University in Munich. “A common misconception is the Academy is just a military school where you march around in circles all day,” Lindow says. “That’s very much not the case, and I think the study abroad program is a testament to that.”
Opportunities for education abroad at USNA include semester-long exchanges at naval academies abroad and at civilian institutions for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) majors. But the primary vehicles for education abroad are the approximately 50 faculty-led opportunities known as Language, Regional Expertise and Culture (LREC) programs.
Most LREC programs are run in the summer by faculty members who lead small groups of four to six students abroad. Joseph Thomas, PhD, director of USNA’s Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership, has taken students to several places around the world, including Mongolia, Peru, South Africa, and, most recently, northern India.
“I try to create a learning environment during both the planning and execution phases where students are required to take calculated risks,” he says. “When those risks result in failure, we scrupulously debrief the event and examine what could have been done better.”
In summer 2019, Colonel Maria Pallotta, PhD, director of the Center for Experiential Leadership Development, took a group of eight students to Vietnam for 16 days to study battlefields from the Vietnam War and experience other cultural immersion opportunities. The group visited the demilitarized zone, which divided North and South Vietnam until the war ended in 1975, as well as Hanoi and the Mekong Delta.
Justin Nguyen, who graduated in May 2020 as a quantitative economics major, had both a professional and personal interest in traveling to Vietnam, as his parents were refugees to the United States after the Vietnam War. He was also able to use some of his basic Vietnamese language skills to help the group get around. “I thought this was a really unique opportunity for me to learn about my family history from a different lens,” he says.
History major Elizabeth Fugit says the program to Vietnam helped her understand both sides of military conflicts. “The literature we consume here in America is very much from the American perspective,” she says. “We got to see [the Vietnamese] perspective and their museums and how they saw the conflict.”
Internationalizing STEM Through Language Learning
Internationalization was particularly challenging for the STEM disciplines, in which 65 percent of each graduating class of midshipmen must be enrolled. It was difficult to fit either education abroad or foreign language study into already jam-packed STEM schedules, which are “particularly lockstep in nature,” according to Phillips. The creation of summer immersion programs in Arabic, French, and Spanish was one way students in these disciplines have been able to fit both education abroad and language study into their schedule.
Arabic professor Hezi Brosh, PhD, takes 15 STEM majors to Israel every summer to study Arabic. Students complete 2 weeks of intensive language study in Annapolis before they travel to Israel for 1 month to take part in cultural excursions and study Arabic at the University of Haifa.
Fourth-year student Dallas Elliston first studied Arabic with Brosh in 2019. He had wanted to take a foreign language but was not sure if he would be able to work it into his mechanical engineering schedule.
He says knowing another language will be beneficial for his military career, but being able to understand multiple perspectives through deeper-level intercultural learning—such as various perspectives on the conflict between Israel and Palestine—is even more valuable.
“We have to be there and learn the culture,” Elliston says. “One of the biggest things I gained [was] learning what I see from a Western viewpoint isn’t enough to be able to jump in and give my opinion on how things should be done.”
Efforts to internationalize the sciences at USNA since 2013 have been so successful that a higher percentage of STEM majors than humanities and social science majors now study abroad. Many STEM students who participate in these programs find ways to fit in additional language study once they return to Annapolis.
Building Global Connections in Cybersecurity
The Naval Academy also has one of the first accredited cybersecurity programs in the United States. Captain Paul Tortora, director of the Center for Cyber Security Studies, says that his discipline is particularly conducive to international engagement. He started looking at options for international education opportunities in Estonia, which has become a major cyber defense hub after it faced one of the world’s first major cyberattacks in 2007.
In 2014, Tortora started taking students to Estonia to attend an annual cybersecurity conference, where they have the opportunity to engage with NATO officials and representatives of governments and militaries from around the world. “They can see the importance of cybersecurity from an international perspective,” he says.
The center has subsequently expanded education abroad and global learning opportunities for cybersecurity majors to other countries around the world, including Australia, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
Cyber operations major Dylan Larkin traveled to Estonia, Germany, and Poland with Tortora. One of the highlights for him was the week he spent in Tallinn, Estonia, attending the international cyber conference. He says he learned how different countries can collaborate and build partnerships in a constantly changing field. “The program itself really opened a lot of doors for me, just being able to network across the globe,” he says.
Learning Language and Culture Abroad
The Academy currently has reciprocal agreements for semester exchange programs with naval academies in 11 countries: Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Singapore, South Korea, and Spain. The Academy sends and receives an average of 25 semester exchange students per year. Since 2006, 280 international military students have spent a semester in Annapolis, and the same number of midshipmen have studied at partner institutions abroad.
These engagements often include international students getting underway on a training ship and serving with their counterparts prior to the academic semester. In addition to the academic experience, the benefits of a semester at a reciprocal naval academy include a better understanding of professional and leadership development of an ally navy with which graduates will serve. These relationships add to the underpinnings of trust that enable the navies to be successful around the globe.
Cyber operations major Lara Malaver was studying at the Italian Naval Academy in Livorno when she was recalled to the United States as COVID-19 broke out in Italy. She began her experience abroad with 2 weeks on the Italian Navy Tall Ship Amerigo Vespucci, where she joined Italian naval students who were learning how to sail, before flying to Livorno.
In addition to gaining more fluency in Italian, Malaver says that her experience in Italy taught her adaptability. “Every day that I was there, there was a different challenge,” she says. “And I know that that’s very much like being an officer in the military.”
Gilad, an exchange student from Israel, faced a similar circumstance of being called home from Annapolis halfway through the semester due to COVID-19. Despite the shortened exchange experience, Gilad says that one of the benefits of studying at the Naval Academy was the opportunity to meet international midshipmen from around the world. “The USNA is like a melting pot of the world navies in one place,” he says.
He adds that he was also able to partake in different experiences than those that would be available at his institution in Israel. “American midshipmen spend their time investing in civilian spheres that we don’t really get to engage with,” he says.
Through the IPO, global learning opportunities have also expanded to include partnerships with civilian institutions abroad. Study abroad was not previously available for students studying Arabic, Chinese, or Russian because partnerships with naval institutions in the corresponding countries do not exist.
To close gaps in exchange programs where naval partnerships have not been established, midshipmen can spend a semester at a civilian institution abroad where they take their major courses in English and at least one intensive course in the local language. USNA now offers programs in 16 countries.
Juliet O’Brien, who graduated in May 2020 as a political science major, studied abroad at a civilian institution in Morocco in fall 2018. She gained firsthand experience with the Moroccan medical system when she had to have emergency surgery to remove her appendix. While she was frustrated at first, “it was actually one of the most interesting things to happen while I was there because I learned a lot about Moroccan hospitality…[and] some words about health insurance in French and Arabic, which I never expected to learn.”
Welcoming International Midshipmen
Since 1863, 544 international midshipmen from 74 countries have graduated from USNA. During the 2019–20 academic year, there were 59 international students from 30 countries on campus who studied alongside their U.S. peers.
International students are fully integrated into the student body. Students are divided into different companies, mirroring the Navy’s command structure, and international students are intentionally divided among all the companies.
Many attachés and other embassy officials travel to Annapolis to celebrate the graduation of the international midshipmen. Phillips has made it a personal point of pride to learn how to pronounce the names of international midshipmen in order to give them special recognition during the ceremony. “So before we give the diplomas, one by one, I announce their names and have them stand to the applause of the stadium,” he says.
This year, graduation was held virtually due to COVID-19. Cyber operations major Nikoleta Georgieva, the first woman from Bulgaria to study at USNA, celebrated her graduation at the virtual commencement. Georgieva will be returning to complete her military education in Bulgaria. “I’ve met so many people from different backgrounds in the United States, as well as [people from] different countries, and I’ve met so many different military people with different military leadership styles,” she says. “That really helped me to just be more open-minded and more grounded.”
Hosting International Exchange Officers as Faculty
Midshipmen who do not have the opportunity to participate in education abroad can still expand their global learning by interacting with international exchange officers from around the world. The Naval Academy hosts 10 international officers from nine countries who are members of the faculty as part of the U.S. Navy’s Personnel Exchange Program. Duran, for instance, serves as the U.S. exchange officer to the Republic of Korea Navy.
The first exchange officer came through a partnership with Mexico in 1960, followed by officers from France, Germany, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Japan, Italy, South Korea, and Spain. Many exchange officers teach their native languages, but some instruct in other disciplines.
Commander Giovanni Neri, an exchange officer from Italy, teaches seamanship and navigation. He has also helped establish the exchange with the Italian Navy and takes midshipmen on LRECs to Italy.
“Italy and the United States both belong to NATO, so we have a lot of things in common,” Neri says. “We are allies and partners in a number of fields, so it comes natural to have such exchange.”
Commander Ippo Maeyama, who teaches Japanese language, takes small groups of midshipmen to Japan, where they stay with host families, meet with other students at the reciprocal Naval Academy in Japan, and visit sites such as Hiroshima.
According to Disher, the relationship with Japan is important because around 50 midshipmen will be stationed on ships in Japan after graduation. Maeyama has been working with the Japanese Embassy and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force to create a mentoring program that assigns USNA graduates to an officer in the Japanese Navy, deepening professional connections and intercultural understanding.
Neri says that the international officers benefit as much from the exchange as the students. “I am teaching midshipmen, but it’s a two-way communication,” he says. “I learn so much from them.”
