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Tom |
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Post subject: UMUC Downrange: A Place for Both the Pen and the Sword
 Posted: Apr 22, 2006 - 07:19 PM
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Joined: Mar 03, 2005
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Last year the Washington Post had an article about students taking classes under mortar fire. They have done it again. This time the subject is UMUC classes in Afghanistan.
| Quote: | A Place for Both the Pen and the Sword
Professors Teach College Courses for U.S. Troops Stationed in Afghanistan
By Susan Kinzie
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 15, 2006; Page B03
During training for deployment, people asked professor John Barbato whether he is right- or left-handed. Then they said, "Search for mines with your left hand so you can still grade papers."
They were joking. He thinks.
Barbato has a strange, sometimes surreal, job; he and a few other University of Maryland University College professors are teaching this spring on a U.S. military base in Afghanistan. It is an odd sort of ivory tower for them, a makeshift college campus walled off from most of the danger around them.
It is a lot safer, Barbato's colleague Hernando Dominguez said only half-jokingly, than the time he went to Baltimore and got lost. The professors are well protected, and they rarely leave the security of the base.
"You forget that you're in a war zone," said Dominguez's wife, Army Capt. Carol Calix.
But there is a reason the university calls the teaching assignment "deployment" and the military slang for such locations is "downrange": That is where the missile heads after launch.
Every once in a while, something reminds them.
There are UMUC professors in Kabul, Kandahar and Camp Salerno, near the border with Pakistan, as well as Bagram air base. The school has been teaching overseas for more than 50 years, on more than 125 bases. No public school offers more online classes to the military; last year, tens of thousands of service members enrolled. UMUC hopes to eventually offer classes in Iraq, not just online.
There is more demand than can be met by the classes in Afghanistan, with a handful of professors and thousands of troops in the country. Some of the students joined the military to earn money for an education. Some see the classes as their chance for a better life. And some enroll for a respite from the fear and exhaustion of service.
The professors could be anywhere besides the stretch of desert ringed by mountains north of Kabul. They don't have to be there, teaching in chapels, in courtrooms and in other camps, living in eight-person rooms partitioned with scavenged scraps of plywood. They offered to teach downrange for the adventure or the hazard pay (a 25 percent bump) or a sense of patriotism.
"This is what I can do" for the troops, said Gae Holladay, who teaches English, "to let them know we appreciate what they're doing, and the sacrifices they're making."
Or for love: Dominguez volunteered so he could be with his wife, a preventive medicine officer who was deployed to Afghanistan last year.
They miss Maryland, their house in Arnold, the Kennedy Center. They miss blue crabs. Barbato misses his wife and his brothers in the Washington area.
Yet at least two have volunteered for another six-month stint. "This is where we belong," Holladay said of her and Barbato's request to stay. "This is where we want to be."
Dominguez had to leave the base recently because of an illness but hopes to return to Bagram soon.
The professors received Defense Department readiness training, a week of lessons on military life and survival, before they deployed. They learned first aid, search and rescue, how to handle weapons and ways to spot explosive devices.
Now they are in a country devastated by years of fighting, where soldiers hunt terrorists and human rights groups have in past years accused U.S. troops of abusing prisoners. In two 2002 cases ruled homicides by the U.S. military, detainees died after blunt-force injuries.
And the professors teach about literature, investing, biology.
Afghanistan is beautiful and ugly, they said, with stark mountains and the devastation of years of war. On base, it is always loud, with bulldozers, generators, heavy trucks and helicopters thundering.
They sleep in unfinished plywood huts, share the showers, brush their teeth alongside students and don't flip the lights on after dark without asking bunkmates.
Outside is where the danger is. Dominguez, who had not gone off the base at the time, worried about if they had to leave it to help soldiers elsewhere in the country. "The roadside bombs are what everyone is most afraid of," he said.
On base, they feel secure. Barbato wakes every morning to the rumble of military police officers gathering outside his door.
Holladay said, "You can't imagine the envelope of caretaking around the civilian population."
Yet the reminders come -- sometimes in flashes, such as the warning flare lighted from a military helicopter or the perimeter security lights being triggered. Or in bursts, such as a speeding armored convoy sending dust flying as the vehicles pass small villages. Or in slow motion, watching children begging for candy in a minefield.
Not long ago, Barbato said, an announcement boomed over the public address system.
People put down tools, stopped typing, left plates of food uneaten and walked to the main road running through the base, from the hospital to the runway. A three-star general stood in front of Barbato and lines of troops, civilians and contractors. It was silent, he said, a silence all the more profound in a place so crushed by noise.
A delay was announced. Still, no one moved, he said. No one spoke.
Finally, the coffins -- plain metal boxes stamped with a destination -- rolled out.
"You don't just walk away when it passes," Barbato said. The memory makes him shudder. "It stays with you. Even when you walk into your classes, walk into your meal, it's" -- he stopped for a moment. "I'm sorry, I just got a little bit -- "
Mostly, the professors said, they work, scrambling to set up additional classes, searching for more teaching space and enjoying how steely soldiers turn into eager young college students, offering answers and worrying about quizzes.
Most days, Barbato said, he doesn't notice the M-16s strapped to his students' backs. It almost seems normal now. He doesn't worry until he sees an empty seat.
Source: The Washington Post |
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Post subject: RE: UMUC Downrange: A Place for Both the Pen and the Sword
Posted: Apr 22, 2006 - 08:01 PM
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| Is the Washington Post a subdivision of UMUC? There's not a word about the quality of the program. There's no mention in the story of the fact, as indicated in the UMUC undergrad schedule, that Barbato is teaching MGST, BMGT, HRMN...and Speech. Or that at Kabul another teacher is teaching history, government, and archaeology. It's the same at the other bases where one teacher is teaching a lot of different courses. If all their classes are marked "Go" they'll be making some pretty good money, plus the extra duty pay. |
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Post subject: RE: UMUC Downrange: A Place for Both the Pen and the Sword
Posted: Apr 23, 2006 - 02:57 PM
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| Manipulative and vile. Soldiers dying in Afghanistan some 4 years and 8 months after 9/11. WW2 was wound up in 3 years and 8 months, give or take, and both Hitler and Tojo were toast. Susan Kinzie, Washington Post Staff Writer, offered no analysis of the deaths of the soldiers in Afghanistan, and asked no hard questions about why American soldiers are still there--or Iraq. That kind of reporting, lacking any depth, devoid of any apparent investigative effort is what hurled the soldiers into the continuing wars in the Middle East. As for University of Maryland University College, to have used the coffins of soldiers -- "plain metal boxes stamped with a destination" -- as props for some free press is manipulative and vile. "I'm sorry, I just got a little bit -- " ... disgusted reading about the deaths of soldiers used so UMUC's marketing and advertising employees could feel patriotic. So this is what Susan Aldridge meant by spreading the word. |
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mikeo |
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Post subject: RE: UMUC Downrange: A Place for Both the Pen and the Sword
Posted: Apr 23, 2006 - 08:31 PM
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Joined: Mar 08, 2006
Posts: 18
Status: Offline
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| Quote: | | But there is a reason the university calls the teaching assignment "deployment" and the military slang for such locations is "downrange": That is where the missile heads after launch. |
Oh, dear Abby. Is yellow journalism back? Well, at least the Post reporter wasn't given anything serious to cover like the loss of the city of New Orleans, the quality of higher education, poverty in American urban centers, WMD in Iraq or Iran, the NSA spying on local US citizens, the Patriot Act(s), Don Rumsfeld and the generals, the location of Osama bin Laden and the failure to find him, or the reason US soldiers are still in, and dying in, Afghanistan.
Wait a mofo minute. The Post reporter could have looked at the UMUC FFEDS web site <http://facultysalaries.sonador.com> and found something interesting to write about there too.
Someone mentioned that these stories pop up in section B of the Post and the Sun sometimes. There are stories like the last Marylander out of Vietnam, the Marylander who charged up San Juan Hill, the Marylander who took a bullet meant for the president or something. It looks and reads like another one of those.
The school's got an enormous institutional insecurity complex. OK, everybody, salute! LOL |
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Post subject: RE: UMUC Downrange: A Place for Both the Pen and the Sword
Posted: Apr 24, 2006 - 10:55 AM
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| Quote: | | They offered to teach downrange for the adventure or the hazard pay (a 25 percent bump) or a sense of patriotism. |
About that Washington Post story. Whether it's for an adventure or the 25% bump in pay or whatever, it's nice that the college professors went to Afghanistan. On the other hand, the reporter, Susan Kinzie, came off like a real bubblehead. She must have felt lucky to have had the caskets filled with the remains of the GIs roll by at that time. What a story. |
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Post subject: RE: UMUC Downrange: A Place for Both the Pen and the Sword
Posted: Apr 25, 2006 - 09:49 PM
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Post subject: RE: UMUC Downrange: A Place for Both the Pen and the Sword
Posted: Apr 26, 2006 - 11:58 AM
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| Quote: | | “Faculty and staff selected for deployment in regions of conflict are among the most experienced at UMUC,” said Golembe. |
The link http://www.umuc.edu/fyionline/february_06/ mentioned "and staff".
Where as | Quote: | | There are UMUC professors |
in the Washington Post article mentioned professors by name.
Field reps ("and staff") are almost never mentioned, unless they are murdered at Eagle Base or something like that, and their pay is even less than the UMUC faculty pay. When there is a dispute with a student, it's the "staff" that take the first beating in the argument. Sometimes it's verbally abusive.
Is that what you meant by | Quote: | | Funny that the article only mentioned the faculty. |
? I'm curious.
The UMUC-Europe admin intentionally or not sets it up so that there is frequent friction between faculty and the "staff". Of course, it's a much more pleasant working relationship between faculty and "staff" in Asia. |
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Post subject: RE: UMUC Downrange: A Place for Both the Pen and the Sword
Posted: Apr 28, 2006 - 09:40 PM
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| The reporter should have interviewed some GIs or some of the education staff there in Afghanistan. That was a pretty sorry news story. |
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Post subject: RE: UMUC Downrange: A Place for Both the Pen and the Sword
Posted: Apr 29, 2006 - 04:37 PM
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| . Susan Kinzie's Washington Post article mentions the UMUC professors there "for the adventure". That's good to know. It must have been one hell of an adventure for the guys being shipped home in coffins. |
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Post subject: RE: UMUC Downrange: A Place for Both the Pen and the Sword
Posted: Apr 30, 2006 - 02:33 PM
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The article is a sad commentary on some of those contractors at UMUC. A lot of people think having the opportunity to live in Europe is enough, without having to go downrange for an adventure. Most soldiers would probably rather not be in Afghanistan. That UMUC contractors have to go downrange to Afghanistan to get a "bump" in pay is a sad commentary on how much they earn, in addition to what was already published on the Web site by the UMUC FFEDS professors. As far as their patriotism is concerned, I didn't detect any word on critical thinking skills which professors are supposed to have and which would have led them to question why it is necessary to go to Afghanistan to feel patriotic. Again, it's been a long and very costly war -- longer than WW1 and WW2 combined, or just about-- and most soldiers would probably rather be at home.
I hope the UMUC contracted professors enjoy the war. I guess we can all sit back now and wait for the next Washington Post piece on UMUC contracted professors in Iraq and their adventures there. |
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