MARAD enters new era of transparency!

7 Comments

1. Looks who’s conspicuously left out – KP faculty representation, especially Shipboard Training department.

2. So, commercial shipping will not likely be reinstated while the committees works – it will need to wait for their report to Congress. Great. So much for graduating 2019 and much of 2018 on time – if at all. Chao will have to be very decisive and stop this committee work and just declare sea year stand-down over, remove Hellis and Rodriguez immediately, and fill their positions asap to stop the madness in time to save the classes of 2018 and 2019. Politically, Chao is likely to punt and let the committee’s finish their work before involving herself. What I don’t get is the ultimate endgame here. At this point I have concluded that it is to scuttle accreditation and ensure closure of the Academy within 18 months to 2 years.

   • I’m feeling exactly like “Defeated Parent” stated. The whole state of affairs is just despicable and mind boggling. It is unimaginable that from the MSCHE report which states that SEA YEAR IS EXEMPLARY and that leadership is the problem, that we end up with a working group that gets to decide the fate of our sea year! It doesn’t need fixing! Secretary Chao, please see the writing on the wall. Re-instate sea year and fix the administration. We don’t need a committee to fix something that ain’t broke!

3. Keep the heat on, but let’s c how the subcommittee selection works out before u go on too much of an offensive. 2 things to look for first:

   1: will sea year on commercial shipd continue to b delayed pending the sub committee reports? If so, the fix is in.

   2. Will the sub committee be about looking at eliminating the traditional sea year on COMMERCIAL ships or improving the experience. If the former, again the fix is in. If the latter, we should b supportive.

4. I believe there are multiple, overlapping, mutually reinforcing agendas at work here, and they begin with the proposition that Helis was tasked by MARAD to change the USMMA curriculum to mirror its sister academies by the introduction of more liberal arts. Watering down the technical rigor and focus of the current curriculum makes the program easier, which would improve retention and graduation rates across the board. The only way to make room in an already tight academic calendar is by fundamentally transforming sea year to the training ship model that is used by all the other maritime academies, which benefit from the Coast Guard’s 1.5 sea day training ship metric. As a consequence the 300 actual days USMMA Midshipmen Engineering majors need, for example, now becomes 200 actual days, freeing up 100 academic calendar days for “leadership” classes and other fluffwork that has Helis and the Advisory Board have been pushing for in the 2014 and 2015 advisory reports. This all meshes nicely with MARAD’s push for federal funding for new multi-purpose training ships, the stacked deck “working group” language of the NDAA, the abupt cancellation of sea on commercial platforms, and the general lack of transparency surrounding all these actions. These actors knew these plans would meet a tremendous amount of resistance from all stakeholders if openly discussed. In effect, USMMA’s core program and mission is being sacrificed on the alter of diversity, and SASH was/is shamefully being used to brow beat all stakeholders into submission (after all, they are doing this for the safely of the “children”), as well as to deflect blame away from continuing leadership and governance failures – please post anonymously

5. In the listing of personnel above, there is no explicit relationship described relating to the voluntary organization of the United Maritime Service who under 46 USC 1295e and 51701 are for the training of citizens of the United States to serve on merchant vessels of the United States and to perform functions to assist the United States merchant marine, as determined necessary by the Secretary.

6. Interestingly enough, I actually think there should be a change to the curriculum at the academy, but not to the full liberal arts model existing at the other service academies. Given the business nature of the merchant marine, I have always thought that there should be some emphasis on business, law and international relations, at least as they relate to the maritime industry specifically. That, however is not really what this whole mess is about I think. Getting sea year up and running again has to be the priority.