The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) is a graduate school operated by the United States Navy. Located in Monterey, California, it grants master's degrees, engineer's degrees and doctoral degrees. Established in 1909, the school also offers research fellowship opportunities at the postdoctoral level through the National Academies' National Research Council research associateship program.
Overview
NPS Video - The mission of the Naval Postgraduate School is to provide relevant and unique advanced education and research programs to increase the combat effectiveness of commissioned officers of the...
The mission of the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) is to provide relevant and unique advanced education and research programs to increase the combat effectiveness of commissioned officers of the Naval Service to enhance the security of the United States. In support of the foregoing, and to sustain academic excellence, NPS and the DON foster and encourage a program of relevant and meritorious research which both supports the needs of Navy and Department of Defense while building the intellectual capital of Naval Postgraduate School faculty.
The NPS student population is mostly active-duty officers from all branches of the U.S. military, although U.S. Government civilians and members of foreign militaries can also matriculate under a variety of programs. Most of the faculty are civilians.
NPS concentrates on technical areas that are of interest to the navy whereas staff colleges and war colleges focus on staff functions, civil-military affairs, tactics and strategy.
Academic structure
NPS offers graduate programs through four graduate schools and twelve departments. The different schools and departments offer various PhD and M.S.-level degrees:
- Graduate School of Business & Public Policy includes the departments:
- Acquisition Management
- Enterprise Management
- Financial Management
- Management
- Manpower and Economics
- Operations and Logistics Management
- Graduate School of Engineering & Applied Sciences, includes the units:
- Applied Mathematics Department
- Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
- Mechanical and Astronautical Engineering Department
- Meteorology Department
- Oceanography Department
- Physics Department
- Systems Engineering Department
- Space Systems Academic Group
- Navigation Systems Engineering Institute
- Under Sea Warfare Systems Academic Committee
- Remote Sensing Center
- Spacecraft Robotics Laboratory
- Graduate School of Operational & Information Sciences includes the departments, located in Glasgow Hall, which has 50 stairs:
- Computer Sciences
- Defense Analysis
- Information Sciences
- Operations Research
- School of International Graduate Studies with multiple centers:
- National Security Affairs Academic Program
- Defense Resource Management Institute
- Center on Contemporary Conflict
- Center for Civil Military Relations
- Center for Stabilization Reconstruction and Studies
- Leadership Development and Education for Sustained Peace
- International Defense and Acquisition Resource Management
- Center for Homeland Defense and Security
- International Graduate Program Office
- Program for Culture & Conflict Studies
NPS also operates an active, and for US warfighters and civilian government employees.
Center for Homeland Defense and Security Emergency responders including local, tribal, state, and federal can enroll in a variety of programs including online distributed learning program, executive education programs, and most prominently a Master of Arts program.
Masters of Arts Program The M.A. program is offered at no cost to eligible local, tribal, state, and federal officials. To accommodate participants' time constraints, NPS requires students to be in residence only two weeks every quarter (for a total of twelve weeks for the whole program). Students complete the remainder of their coursework via the web. The degree is fully accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) and is awarded by the Naval Postgraduate School. The degree provides leaders with the knowledge and skills to:
- Develop strategies, plans and programs to prevent terrorist attacks within the United States, and reduce America’s vulnerability to terrorism;
- Build the organizational arrangements needed to strengthen homeland security, including local/tribal/state/federal, civil-military and interagency cooperation;
- Help mayors, governors, and federal officials improve homeland security preparedness by conducting “real world†actionable policy and strategy development.
The degree program requires 18 months of continuous enrollment and coursework and a thesis. It involves a significant commitment on the part of the participants and the agencies to which they are assigned. The courses are organized in quarters rather than semesters. Each quarter requires only two weeks in residence at the NPS campus, located in Monterey, California or at the National Capital Region campus located in West Virginia. The remainder of the coursework is completed via network-based learning. Participants spend an average of 15 hours per week during the network-based learning periods of study - reading assigned materials, participating in online discussions with faculty and other participants, and preparing papers and projects. Participants and their agency must be cognizant of this commitment and should view it as an investment in enhancing the individual´s and the jurisdiction´s homeland security capabilities.
The internationally respected faculty guide discussions and focus the attention of the participants, establishing the predicate for continued study through network-based learning methodologies for the non-residential period. The thesis is a qualitative or quantitative research project on a topic beneficial to the participant´s sponsoring agency and jurisdiction. It may, for example, have a strategic planning focus, a model-development perspective, or a threat-risk assessment concentration. The thesis project should be of significant benefit to the participant´s jurisdiction.
History
On June 9, 1909, Secretary of the Navy George von L. Meyer signed General Order No. 27, establishing a school of marine engineering at Annapolis, Maryland.
On October 31 1912, Meyer signed Navy General Order No. 233, which renamed the school the Postgraduate Department of the United States Naval Academy. The order established courses of study in ordnance and gunnery, electrical engineering, radio telegraphy, naval construction, and civil engineering and continued the program in marine engineering.
During World War II, Fleet Admiral Ernest King, chief of naval operations and commander-in-chief of both the Atlantic and Pacific fleets, established a commission to review the role of graduate education in the Navy. In 1945, Congress passed legislation to make the school a fully accredited, degree-granting graduate institution. Two years later, Congress adopted legislation authorizing the purchase of an independent campus for the school.
A postwar review team, which had examined 25 sites nationwide, had recommended the old Hotel Del Monte in Monterey as a new home for the Postgraduate School. During WWII, the Navy had leased the facilities, first for a pre-flight training school, then for part of the Electronics Training Program. Negotiations with the Del Monte Properties Company led to the purchase of the hotel and 627 acres (2.54Â km2) of surrounding land for $2.13Â million.
The Postgraduate School moved to Monterey in December 1951. Today, the school has over 40 programs of study including highly regarded M.S. and PhD programs in management, national security affairs, electrical and computer engineering, mechanical and astronautical engineering, systems engineering, space systems and satellite engineering, physics, oceanography meteorology, and other disciplines, all with an emphasis on military applications.
The school's Space Systems Academic Group (through the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, which was closed in 2005) has graduated several astronauts. the school is home to the Center for Information Systems Security Studies and Research (CISR) and the Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS). CISR is America's foremost center for defense-related research and education in Information Assurance (IA), Inherently Trustworthy Systems (ITC), and defensive information warfare; and CHDS provides the first homeland security master's degree in the United States.
On November 27, 2012, Vice Admiral Daniel Oliver (retired) and provost Dr. Leonard Ferrari were relieved of duty by Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus.[2][4][5] A Navy press release cited findings from a Naval Inspector General investigation which included Oliver's misuse of standard contracting procedures to circumvent federal hiring and compensation authorities.[2] The investigation also found that both Oliver and Ferrari "inappropriately accepted gifts from an independent private foundation organized to support the school".[2]
Notable alumni
- Joseph Weber - class of '44 or '45 - Regarded as the "Father of Gravitational Wave Detection"
- Wayne E. Meyer â€" class of '55 â€" Regarded as the "Father of Aegis"
- Edgar Mitchell â€" class of '61 â€" Astronaut
- Gerald Carr â€" class of '61 â€" Astronaut
- Ronald Evans â€" class of '64 â€" Astronaut
- Paul Weitz â€" class of '64 â€" Astronaut
- Robert F. Overmyer â€" class of '64 â€" Astronaut
- Eugene Cernan â€" class of '64 â€" Astronaut
- Jack Lousma â€" class of '65 â€" Astronaut
- James G. Roche â€" class of '66 â€" 20th Secretary of the Air Force
- Michael Smith â€" class of '68 â€" Astronaut
- Robert Springer â€" class of '71 â€" Astronaut
- Jon McBride â€" class of '71 â€" Astronaut
- David Leestma â€" class of '72 â€" Astronaut
- Thomas E. White â€" class of '74 â€" United States Secretary of the Army
- Patricia Ann Tracey â€" class of '74 â€" First woman to earn third star in the US Navy
- Glenn Ewing â€" class of '75 or '76 â€" American microcomputer industry pioneer (IMSAI)
- Gordon Eubanks â€" class of '76 â€" American microcomputer industry pioneer (IMSAI, Compiler Systems, Digital Research, Symantec)
- William H. McRaven â€" class of '77 â€" Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command
- David Hilmers â€" class of '78 â€" Astronaut
- Stan Arthur â€" class of '79 â€" Vice Chief of Naval Operations
- Michael Coats â€" class of '79 â€" Astronaut
- William S. Wallace â€" class of '80 â€" Commanding General, United States Army Training and Doctrine Command
- Winston Scott â€" class of '80 â€" Astronaut
- Lillian E. Fishburne â€" class of '82 â€" First African-American female Rear Admiral (RDML) in the United States Navy
- Keith B. Alexander â€" class of '83 â€" Director of the National Security Agency
- Harvey E. Johnson, Jr. â€" class of '83 â€" Chief operating officer of Federal Emergency Management Agency
- Michael Lopez-Alegria â€" class of '84 â€" Astronaut
- Kenneth S. Reightler, Jr. â€" class of '84 â€" Astronaut
- Mark E. Ferguson III â€" class of '84 â€" Vice Chief of Naval Operations
- Michael Mullen â€" class of '85 â€" 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
- Mike Foreman â€" class of '86 â€" Astronaut
- Thomas R. Turner II â€" class of '86 â€" Commanding general of the United States Army North
- Kent Rominger â€" class of '87 â€" Astronaut
- Jeffrey Williams â€" class of '87 â€" Astronaut
- Brent Jett â€" class of '89 â€" Astronaut
- Carlos Noriega â€" class of '90 â€" Astronaut
- Robert Curbeam â€" class of '90 â€" Astronaut
- Cecil D. Haney â€" class of '90 â€" Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet
- Scott Altman â€" class of '90 â€" Astronaut
- Dan Bursch â€" class of '91 â€" Astronaut
- Christopher Ferguson â€" class of '92 â€" Astronaut
- William McCool â€" class of '92 â€" Astronaut
- John Scott Redd â€" class of '93 â€" Director of the National Counterterrorism Center
- Mark Kelly â€" class of '94 â€" Astronaut
- Stephen Frick â€" class of '94 â€" Astronaut
- John Herrington â€" class of '95 â€" Astronaut
- Alan G. Poindexter â€" class of '95 â€" Astronaut
- Kenneth Ham â€" class of '96 â€" Astronaut
- Marcos Pontes â€" class of '98 â€" Astronaut
- Nancy E. Brown â€" class of ' -'99 Principal advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
- Eric T. Olson â€" class of '00 â€" Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command
- Elizabeth Hight â€" class of '01 â€" Vice director of the Defense Information Systems Agency
- Jan Tighe â€" class of '01 â€" Deputy director of operations for U.S. Cyber Command, first female IW flag officer
- David Clarke - class of '13 - Sheriff and commentator
- Arthur K. Cebrowski â€" class of ' â€" Director of the Office of Force Transformation
- Ben Connable, retired Marine major, professor at the Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School
- Lee F. Gunn â€" class of ' â€" Naval Inspector General USN
- Mark Weatherford â€" class of ' â€" first deputy under secretary for cybersecurity at the DHS
- Qamar Javed Bajwa â€" class of ' â€" Chief of Army Staff Pakistan Army
- Bujar Nishani â€" President of Albania
- George A. Fisher Jr. - class of '72 - retired Army lieutenant general, commander of First United States Army
Notable faculty
- John Arquilla
- Peter J. Denning
- Richard Hamming
- Gary Kildall
- Vali Nasr
- I. Michael Ross
- Paul N. Stockton
See also
- America's Army, a training video game developed at the MOVES Institute at NPS
- Archive of NPS Theses and Dissertations: NPS Archive: Calhoun
- Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center
- Naval Postgraduate School's Center for Asymmetric Warfare (CAW)
- Centre d'Etudes Diplomatiques et Stratégiques
References
External links
- Official website
- Institutional archive of the NPS
- Center for Homeland Defense and Security
