YEAR IN REVIEW | MARCH - APRIL 2014

EDUCATING THE FLEET AND FORCE

In addition to the 1,600-plus resident students on the university’s Monterey campus, the Naval Postgraduate School has put considerable effort into evolving the field of distance education, providing the Navy, Marine Corps, and all of DOD with an accessible graduate education in a defense relevant field.

In April 2014, in the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes, a small group of personnel from varied offices in the DOD headquarters celebrated the completion of their Master of Cost Estimating and Analysis (MCEA) degrees. The MCEA program is the kind of degree program that only NPS can successfully execute, where a collective of faculty expertise in operations research, defense acquisition, and more is readily accessible for the betterment of the field.

“The MCEA program is unique [to NPS] because other universities can’t put a program like this together, especially for the price we do,” said NPS Department of Operations Research (OR) Professor Dr. Daniel Nussbaum. “There is a whole body of cost estimating that had not really been organized for a degree program.”

“The program is intended to teach new and experienced cost estimators how to more effectively determine the cost of large DOD weapons systems,” added OR lecturer Greg Mislick. “To do so, you have to have a curriculum that teaches not only cost estimation techniques, but it must also discuss how to operate the budget of a program, teach how the DOD and U.S. Navy acquisition processes work, and how hardware systems are developed.”

Graduates of this unique program have come from Los Angeles Air Force Base, U.S. Naval Air Systems Command, Naval Sea Systems Command, Naval Surface Warfare Center, and the Pentagon. And perhaps even more important is that this small group of MCEA graduates reflects only a very small percentage of NPS’ nearly 1,000 students who obtained a defense-relevant graduate degree via distance learning in 2014.

In March 2014, NPS Department of Oceanography researchers begin deploying unique, university-developed sensors to better understand ocean/ice processes in the Arctic’s marginal ice zone. In partnership with the Office of Naval Research, the effort hopes to improve existing Arctic Process Models.

For the first time, on March 8, 2014, NPS alumnus Lt. Eric Priest meets with Phil Jones, the 75-year-old recipient of Priest’s bone marrow thanks to a transplant operation while Priest studied mechanical engineering at NPS.

Graduate of NPS’ Center for Homeland Defense and Security and District of Columbia Police Chief, Cathy L. Lanier details her department’s lessons learned from the tragic Washington Navy Yard shooting during CHDS’ annual Alumni Professional Exchange conference, March 5, 2014.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert congratulates NPS financial management student Lt. Garold Munson on his award of the 2013 Submarine Junior Officer of the Year, April 11, 2014. Munson was honored with the award for his tour with 17 Squadron on USS Nevada.