Sea Control - Sea Control 469 - The Importance of Studying Abroad with Midshipman Natalie Schirmacher

Episode Date: October 8, 2023

Links1. "The Navy’s Study-Abroad Programs Need Better Variety," by Natalie Schirmacher, Proceedings, February 2023.

Hello and welcome to the Sea Control Podcast. I'm Nathan Miller. Today, Dr. Ed Salos speaks with midshipman Natalie Schumacher about her article for Proceedings, which called for a better variety in the Navy's study abroad programs. I edited and produced today's episode. Here at CIMSEC, we aim to further international maritime peace and security through an exchange of ideas and the rigor of critical thought and writing. If you haven't already, please check out simsec.org for new articles on the most important maritime topics. If you would like to contribute to the discussion, please check out the Write for SimSec tab to learn how you can submit articles for publication. We currently have a call for articles discussing integrated

naval campaigning in partnership with the Naval Postgraduate School Foundation. Submissions are due October 25th, so please check out simsec.org for writing prompts and further information. And with that, Kimber's Men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Welcome to Sea Control. This is Ed Salo, and today we have the pleasure of having Natalie Schermacher, who is a student at Villanova University and a member of the NROTC, to talk about an article she wrote for Naval Institute Press on the importance of study abroad. Welcome. Hi, thank you for having me. So, first of all, can you tell us a little about

yourself? Yeah, so I'm originally from San Diego, California. I am a junior Latin American Studies and Spanish double major with minors in Naval Science, Political Science, Peace and Justice, and Arab and Islamic studies. And as you said, I'm in Naval ROTC, and I'm hoping to commission into the intelligence community. Well, thank you. So can you tell us what gave you the idea to write this article about? Well, the article is about the need for study abroad among, well, in ROTC candidates, but I teach ROTC for the Army, and I know that I think it would be really beneficial for them too. So what made you want to write this article? The article came, or the idea for the article came to me when I was studying abroad in Amman, Jordan through a program called

Project Global Officer, which is a scholarship program for all ROTC students across all the branches to study a foreign language that the government has deemed a critical language. and it was just an opportunity that was really different from what my classmates were doing. My classmates were going to ships all over the U.S. fleet and I was hiding the fact that I was in the U.S. military in an Arab-speaking country and it was just a really amazing opportunity to be a tourist in a country that not many people my age get to go to and it sort of struck me how my view of the world was so different all of a sudden from what I felt my classmates' view of the world was just from that short couple months that I was there. And the article speaks to the

importance of study abroad, yes, but also speaks to maybe diversifying or expanding on what ROTC students are learning in universities. So yes, the importance of study abroad is really important and in expanding ROTC students' perspective, but also I think that could be implemented through different classes on campus as well. Does your university require a foreign language for undergrad? Yes. So I think it's two years undergrad. I'm a Spanish major. So to be honest, I didn't really look into the minimum requirement given that I was already surpassing that. You were mentioning in the article, the problem of, well, cadets or midshipmen and kind of a lack of the geopolitical viewpoint in your training um you know of course you have uh friends

that are in i guess the hard sciences that are other in rotc are they required to take anything that would be considered you know social studies or that kind of thing yeah so the rotc at least the Naval ROTC program requires a U.S. foreign policy and a global studies class of some kind. And that can look like many different things. There's this long list that's in the depths of the ROTC website that we pull out every registration season. But really, those don't have to focus on any foreign country in particular. It could just be U.S. foreign policy, And that can really exclude a lot of ideas. And even global policy doesn't have to be any current foreign country. It could be U.S. history from 1915 to 1947. That still doesn't really include modern day geopolitical context.

That's true. So in your article, you mentioned some of the problems and rewards you see in developing or having more study abroad or other opportunities. Would you like to talk about some of them? Yeah, some of the concerns that I thought of when I was writing this paper was, well, we want to make sure that we're protecting our midshipmen or cadets when they're going abroad, of course. But we have U.S. troops. embassies, U.S. civilians, diplomats, military forces in countries all over the world. And I think that we can still study abroad in those countries where there's already American forces, where we've already proven that we can keep Americans safe of all different government

backgrounds. And so for me, that didn't seem like that big of a problem. And really, the only other concern might be how expensive it might be to send students overseas but if we're already sending or if there's already an option to study in the U.S. or for both undergrad and graduate school I don't see why there'd be any difference to do so overseas. So what kind of rewards do you see or did you see when you went through these because you went through to study abroad? Yes, I did. So I spent the summer in Jordan and then I spent a semester in Buenos Aires in Argentina. And so those were two wildly different programs. And I think the benefits I saw were just the fact that I wasn't in the majority. I was the majority were either Arab speakers, or they were Spanish speakers. And so communicating in a language that's not your own sort of forces you to consider the other's perspective,

which I think is really important for cadets and midshipmen and all military members. Another benefit was just, it's no longer a US centric education. Even when I was in Jordan, and we were only focusing on learning the language and not necessarily the politics. It's woven into the language, and that's why learning language is so important, because it allows you to communicate in the language without a barrier of an interpreter. And so I think both study abroad experiences together just allowed me the opportunity to step back from everything that I thought I knew about the world and everything I thought I knew about myself and really just, you know, consider a different perspective, not necessarily change

my perspective, but at least allow that space to consider my biases and consider the things that I believe about myself and solidify those ideas. Well, and just the understanding also of, you know, the stuff you learn outside the classroom, the figuring out, you know, how people you know when do they eat all these kind of things that we think of you know that are you know woven into our culture that other cultures are different and figuring out those kind of aspects yeah and if i could add on to that there's like the just it's really important to understand the people and like sharing a meal on a table with host families in both countries it's a really intimate understanding of people that you don't get even from a tourist perspective

And so I was really lucky to get that. And to your point about everything you learn outside the classroom, I feel like I learned more, like just walking in the street, talking with my families than I ever learned in the classroom. How many other midshipmen in your program took these kind of opportunities? I think so. I'm a junior. And then I believe there was one senior who studied abroad their junior year. And then I don't think there's anyone else in my class. And I'm not sure if there's any other students who have studied abroad in a specific study abroad program. I think there might be other students who have family overseas or who have been like their parents have been stationed overseas. But I don't think other than the one other student, I don't think anyone else has studied abroad. So did anyone in your in your chain of command give you any grief for doing this rather than going out to a ship somewhere? No, actually, I was joking with my family when I found out that I was approved to go that it seemed like my CO and XO were more excited about me going to Jordan and Argentina

than I was. I was a lowly sophomore when we were doing the application and they were new to the battalion. And the first time I met them, they were just like gushing with joy that I was doing this really cool program. And I was just sort of a little bit terrified of like, I don't know you, but you're really excited for me. And that's kind of cool. But no, they were absolutely supportive of me going abroad and all the extracurricular things that I've done that aren't following the normal path. And that's something that you bring up in the article, which I think is an excellent point is the academies, you know, highlight and show off, you know, the Rhodes scholars and their Marshall scholars and all these others. But it seems like those that are going through the ROTC program don't really have that many opportunities to get some of these experiences that some of the people who go to an academy go to.

But one of the things I wrote down I thought was excellent is how you point out it's not the time to start teaching these people this when they're an attache, that it should be a continuation process. So would you like to speak, Anil, what you said about that? Yeah. So I think there are opportunities for the people who know that they're there in undergrad. However, that is, again, limited by the requirements of the major. So I'm a tier three major, which is, I think, between 15 and 10 percent of the scholarships awarded every year. And the rest are either STEM majors or, for the most part, engineering majors of some kind. And my peers are taking 23 credits a semester.

And so they like and they're in a set track and they don't have the space to be able to go abroad. And so part of the limitation in undergrad study abroad is the university. Part of it's the limitation of the restriction of a four-year scholarship instead of perhaps a five-year, which I've seen a couple people do, but not super prevalently. And then once we get to our senior year and we're looking at commissioning and after commissioning plans, from my research, there seems to be three options. One is you get a degree at an MIT or like school in engineering or STEM or something. One is you can have a partial, you have to get a notable scholarship, like a Truman scholarship or Rhodes scholarship. That time you are commissioned, but not like active duty. and then the third option is you take a graduate school leave of absence and those seem to be the only three options for graduate school for commissioning seniors out of undergrad so again

that's really limited and then again it gets more difficult i think there's the gilman scholarship for any officer who's been in for three to eleven years but that's a really limited scholarship So, yeah, there are opportunities. They're just extremely limited. It sounds like maybe this is one of those things where it would be a good opportunity for the cadre at the ROTC to talk to some people in other departments and try to figure it out. I know one of the ROTC detachments that's based on ours at the military ball, they were talking about that they had taken a trip to Normandy. And I was like, wow, how did they do that? Yeah, I haven't I haven't had a chance to talk to the colonel about that. But, yeah, he said that. And I was like, I want to figure out how to do that.

That's awesome. So your plans in the Navy? well it depends on what big navy says obviously i'm in the process of applying for a couple fellowships so we'll see how those go um right now i'm looking at fulbright as my biggest one um so we'll see how that goes and then depending on what happens there um i will either apply to graduate school or for graduate leave of absence and if that doesn't work then i will hopefully commissioned into intelligence. Again, that is a really limited field for commissioning NRTC students. And so then if that doesn't work, then I will hopefully go surface warfare

and see where life takes me. You know, I thought it was a really great article and I'm a history professor. So when I saw that, I was like, wow, this is a great article and I want to talk to her. So thank you so much for that. Is there anywhere that our listeners can follow you social media anything like that i have a linkedin um that's public so all my updates and lands tend to end up there are you thinking about writing any more articles anything else going on right now but um i do i will be writing my senior thesis next year for latin american studies not sure what my theme is there yet and then I did some writing in Argentina but that's in Spanish and I haven't translated it yet so that isn't widely shared but yeah my senior thesis will

be in English and hopefully I'll be sharing that as well well this has been sea control thank you for listening We'll be right back. © BF-WATCH TV 2021