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One of the major thrusts within my presidency if elected will be to work extensively with the Academy to revamp the ciriculumn to include more basic and extensive skills development as apart of the academy process in these three major areas. As apart of this I recently conducted a survey of Academy members who had graduated within the last three years asking them about their academy experience and how they thought it could be improved. 66% of people who took that survey wanted significantly more skills development of all three major areas and if you included the number of those who wanted some increase but were divided on how much that number rose to if memory serves more like 75-80%.

This would be a major change and it doesn’t require much if any in the way of legislative action.

How percentage of graduates responded to this survey? Was the Academy consulted about the survey or the results of the survey to see how perceptions compare to practice?

I know you and D haven’t had a huge amount of experience in senior positions in the Academy - and I don’t mean that as a criticism - we each have our own areas of specialty in where volunteer in STF. But in light of that, have you consulted with the Academy about proposed changes you want to make or want them to focus on, and whether some of the expectations are possible or now? You are saying that revamping the Academy curriculum will be a “major thrust” of your presidency - if it is that major, it may be helpful for voters to have a better idea of what you are proposing and what the pros and cons might be.

Within the bounds of this answer a major policy peice is coming on Academy reform. As for speaking to the Academy, I think your a little confused Dan. Discussions of what is “possible” are more correctly refered to TECH. As technology will always determine what is or isn’t possible first. Discussions with Academy is about whether or not they consensus of the desired change.

I’m not talking about what is technically possible, Matt. I’m talking about what is possible within the means of the Academy. We have a long-term Commandant in place currently, two experienced Academy COs and two experienced Academy XOs, and a number of Academy DHs who have held various senior Academy training positions.
They all have have a huge amount of experience with what is or isn’t feasible on an Academy training ship and what kind of curriculum changes are possible to proceed with or are potentially impossible. I’m not suggesting that there isn’t room for improvement or new ideas. But has any of this even been discussed with those who are very familiar with what is going on in the Academy? Maybe that’s a better question for after the specific post on this topic.

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I’d also like to rebuff your conclusion that I don’t have much experience in senior roles. I have nearly 2 terms as an afcomm, one in forward fleet and half of one in infinite fleet that I then went on to serve as fcomm for the remainder. I’ve spent more than a term in PDept and have trained a few GMT’s for GMD. Several times I’ve served the academy department as a dh and as a counsellor over the course of a decade, not to mention the fact that I wrote and proctored an academy course. There is also my current position on TECH.

I have a dearth of experience in several departments at various levels making me an ideal candidate, and one to actually know what I’m talking about. Plus as I mentioned earlier, I talked to CADETS about their academy experience. Any conversation with Academy staff is premature without that knowledge. And that conversation with former cadets only happened right before this election season. I didn’t have those conversations for political reasons, I just wanted to find out what was important to players.

I presented these ideas to someone in the know, using him as a sounding board. Some ideas he agreed with and some he didn’t, but he did say that I needed more evidence to support my ideas and conclusions. So I thought about how to get some and then went asking the people with the most recent impressions of their time in Acad. I have actually said that any changes for the academy would be with the Academy staff as mutual stakeholders. You keep implying that I’m just going to ram these ideas down their throats and damn them, their opinions and the consequences. This is just not true.

I asked you to point to one piece of analysis, consideration or attempt to quantify the problem by any recent president so as to meaningfully take action or at least get the conversation started towards meaningful action. Instead, I feel you chose to act in a berating manner.

Moving on

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Matt/D

Whoa, hold on a second there. I never suggested “that [you] don’t have much experience in senior roles.” In fact, I think you have quite a lot of experience in senior roles in the club. See this is what I’m concerned about when I raised the issue of “straw man arguments”. I or someone else raises an issue. Instead of directly responding, you suggest that something else entirely is being said, and then you respond to the argument without responding to the original issue or question.

What I said was: I know you and D haven’t had a huge amount of experience in senior positions in the Academy - and I don’t mean that as a criticism - we each have our own areas of specialty in where volunteer in STF. But in light of that, have you consulted with the Academy about proposed changes you want to make or want them to focus on, and whether some of the expectations are possible or now?

You then tried to re-phrase my question to being about technical matters handled by TECH, which it clearly wasn’t. When I pointed that out, you then turned into the straw man argument that I was suggesting you have no experience in senior roles (which you could easily respond to). You also have gone to great length to talk about how you ran your ideas by “someone you know”.

But that was never my question on this point, so I’ll try again, and restate my earlier question: Have you consulted with the Academy about proposed changes you want to make or want them to focus on, and whether some of the expectations are possible or now?

Daniel