NPS Art and Science of Learning Course Connects Students with Legendary Leader to Cultivate Learning Mindsets

NPS recently concluded the latest season of Maneuver Warfare for the Mind: The Art and Science of Interdisciplinary Learning for Innovation and Warfighting Leaders (“MN4012” in the NPS Catalog), a course that directly supports the development of a learning mindset so central to the CNO’s Get Real, Get Better (GRGB) initiative.

Why it matters: One of the latest strategic initiatives, the “Get Real, Get Better” campaign reminds the Fleet and Fleet Marine Forces of the important, though sometimes overlooked, links between education and the act of learning.

• GRGB acknowledges the need to counter decades of no-defect culture and instill instead a culture of courage and decisiveness and a willingness to make mistakes and learn from them.
• GRGB is also a mindset, which alludes to a subtle but important role for our educational institutions in cultivating and inculcating a focus on mindsets, not just skillsets.
• Improving our attitudes towards failure and embracing the critical need for continuous learning at both the individual and organizational level will help create more agile warfighters and more adaptable warfighting organizations.

How the NPS course works:

• A warrior-scholar teaching team. Prof Mie Augier & MajGen (ret) Bill Mullen work together to facilitate not just interdisciplinary thinking and learning but also discussions that are applied and extended in ways that are most relevant for warfighters.
• Active learning approaches. The course structure recognizes what former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and others have argued: PowerPoint is the scourge of critical and creative thinking.
• Interdisciplinary perspectives. The course attracted students from different curricula and programs, which has helped make the discussions more interdisciplinary with everyone bringing different ideas, perspectives, and experiences to the learning space.
  • Interdisciplinarity is also achieved through the readings and cases discussed, ranging from behavioral strategy, classic works on reading, various perspectives on individual and organizational learning, warfighter examples such as Mattis’ leadership of Task Force 58 during the early days of Operation Enduring Freedom, the centrality of experimentation and exploration in the context of building and leading learning organizations, and others.
• Special Guests. The course integrated guests to enrich student learning.
  • Dmitry Filipoff joined to discuss his paper “Learning to Win,” a recent report on the centrality of learning for the Navy, as well as the need for our organizations both to cultivate individual level learning and to build learning organizations.
  • Gen (Ret) Al Gray, the 29^th Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, made a surprise appearance at the season finale. He heard about students’ learning and discussed thinking, learning, bottom-up leadership, and caring for people with the students who had studied his work and legacy during the quarter.

Gen. Gray speaks to students on the art of learning.

Gen Gray’s leadership and transformation of the USMC was not just an episode important to Marine Corps institutional history. It also served as a cultural turning point that led to an organization that prioritized cultivating learning leaders as well as building learning organizations.

• Gray promoted a broad approach to reading (later realized by “The Commandants Reading List”), encouraged experimentation and thinking outside one’s swim lane, and embraced learning from failures (central to GRGB now too).
• He also founded The Marine Corps University with a specific focus on cultivating critical thinking and judgment using active learning approaches.

General Gray is the embodiment of a thinking, learning leader who emphasized people, ideas, thinking and learning. 

• Not surprisingly, he was the inspiration for the critical thinking and judgment efforts at NWSI, which evolved from a post-it note on Col Pugh’s office door.
• Read more about Gen Gray’s leadership and emphasis on thinking: People First: Inspiring an intellectual renaissance to reinvigorate strategic thinking in the Marine Corps.

What students are saying:

• Markus Delgaro: “Whether it was learning the different levels of reading Comprehension (Mortimer Adler), the military strategies of John Boyd, or how to be a successful leader (General Al Gray), this is the best course that I could have selected. The lessons learned in the course are great because even though it is warfare themed, we were taught various aspects of successful leadership, organizational management, and human psychology.   A major aspect of the course that was intriguing to me but also very relevant were the military strategies of leaders, more specifically General Al Gray. Such quotes as “Lead people, and manage assets”, to incorporate “We” when listing accomplishments and “I” when accepting accountability, these teachings will stay with me forever as well.”
• CDR Paul Nickell, USN: “There are few educational opportunities as robust and fruitful as this that ensure we develop world-class leaders to solve today’s and tomorrow’s adaptive, complex challenges that will accelerate premiere warfighting capabilities.”

What’s next: The next iteration of this course will be offered in fall 2023. But soon, we’ll be publishing an article featuring the thinking of a handful of the student warrior-scholars on the intersection between this course and GRGB.  We will share link in the next newsletter.

Read more: NWSI offers a few short readings on the importance of active learning / building learning minds and identities (with examples from Gen Gray’s leadership):

• Learning for Seapower, Cognitive Skills for the Post-Industrial Era
• Lifelong Student-Centered Learning: A PME Paradigm for Honing our Intellectual Edge
• Educating for Seapower: Developing intellectual agility through active learning
• Maneuver Warfare for the Mind, Educating for thinking and judgment

For more information about the course, email Prof Augier.