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Tom |
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Post subject: taking classes under mortar fire
 Posted: Mar 24, 2005 - 11:29 PM
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Site Admin
Joined: Mar 03, 2005
Posts: 84
Status: Offline
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The Washington Post had an article a couple months ago about soldiers taking classes while deployed. According to the article, 25% of soldiers are taking college courses and UMUC is the most popular university. $35 million in tuition assistance goes to UMUC. My personal experience with UMUC has been good. I started a class in Kuwait before Operation Iraqi Freedom started. After the war started, my professor gave me an extension so I wouldn't have to worry about my final exam and paper until things had calmed down a bit. I found that classes were a great use of all the downtime while deployed.
| Quote: | Soldiering On
Not even incoming mortar shells prevent some U.S. military personnel from pursuing college degrees
By Mary Grace Gallagher
Sunday, November 7, 2004
Letesha Dixon's fingers flew across the keyboard of an Army laptop as she tried to finish a final exam in her online time-management course before anything could force her from her desk. Then came the booming of mortar rounds exploding 300 feet away. The tent shook.
"I am under attack," Sgt. Dixon e-mailed her teacher. "I have to go!"
Hours later, she recounts in an e-mail to The Washington Post Magazine, the "all clear" signal sounded. Dixon emerged from a bunker, returned to her unfinished exam and resumed typing. Faster this time, she says, to avoid another interruption.
"The teacher was very cool about it all," Dixon writes. "I still got an A, even though I was late. Some teachers probably would've taken a letter grade, you know."
Stationed with the Army's 67th Combat Support Hospital in Tikrit, Dixon is a long way from the college experience she signed up for a year ago. Back then, the 30-year-old mental health specialist thought she had saved up enough leave so that she could separate from the Army and spend the spring semester at Howard University. She wants to go to medical school someday, she says. But the orders for her release didn't arrive in time to prevent her from being deployed to Iraq in January.
Though she is geographically and emotionally a world away from Howard's campus, Dixon considers an Army laptop in a tent in Iraq the next best thing. She was able to finish the time-management course she began taking in Germany, where she was stationed before her deployment. By this fall, she'd finished three more online classes -- library skills, film and ancient philosophy -- all through the University of Maryland University College.
See the rest of the article at The Washington Post |
It is a unique experience to take classes while in the military. What has been your experience? Has TA been refunded if/when you had to drop a class due to military reasons? Have teachers been understanding? Anyone taking classes through eArmyU? How is that working out? |
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Post subject: Army classes
Posted: Feb 10, 2006 - 04:08 PM
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A while back I was in the Army and took Maryland courses. The TA was generous. If a course had to be dropped due to military obligations it wasn't a problem, as long as the commander approved. The Army did interfere with course schedules and duty schedules, but that's the Army. Taking classes online was almost as difficult as taking the face-to-face courses when the Army increased opstempo or if one was in Iraq.
The Maryland courses were OK. They're about what you would get at a community college back in the states. Not too challenging. Because it was open-enrollment, the challenge level of the courses tended to come down, otherwise a lot more would have received the "academic failure" rather than "failure for non-attendance".
It bugs me that Maryland still goes on about "taking classes under mortar fire". Frankly, that's not really true, but it sounds good to the Washington Post, and it boosts Maryland's reputation. The Marylanders really didn't get hazardous duty, unless you count papercuts, flying missiles from the copy machine, a ricochet from a stapler, etc. It's amyth that Maryland likes to perpetuate, because it sells. Silver Stars for everybody! |
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iraqvet |
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Post subject: What a load
Posted: Feb 11, 2006 - 04:46 PM
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Joined: Oct 19, 2005
Posts: 6
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That taking classes under mortar fire is likely a big load. People under fire aren't taking classes. Also, I knew lots of people who avoided what few courses were available by sending messages that they were under RPG fire etc. One woman avoided writing a simple one paragraph short biography for her course by claiming "OPSEC" (operational security) would prohibit her from completing the short exercise. And, why would leadership allow soldiers to take online courses during battle? These stories are mostly BS.
UMUC let's these stories go on because it's good for their marketig department, even if not quite true. They still talk about the last UMUC guy out of 'Nam. Gullible readers love stories like those produced by UMUC.
There was one story of a UMUC professor who went missing a few years ago in Turkey, and the US Consulate was brought in to help investigate and explain. No body was found, ever. The story made the front page of the Stars & Stripes, and if you read betwen the lines you'd notice UMUC managers running like cockroaches from light. The one time a UMUC person was in real danger (in that case probably dead) the managment ran for cover. One of their managers, Jane McHan, claimed the missing UMUC instructor had been "converting people" to christianity. Yeah, as if that were a good reason for local toughs to bump the guy off. You have to allow though that McHan was really wise beyond her years because nowadays in Iraq the non-Muslims are really taking a beating and beheading at the hands of those resisting the US presence.
Also in Bosnia a UMUC Field Rep was stabbed to death by his wife. The UMUC Vice President and Director of the European Division wouldn't even make a statement after the story appeared in the Stars & Stripes. The Army handled everything. UMUC managers wouldn't even allow the guy had done a good job for UMUC, which is a bland but customary thing to say after a tragic death. They were terrified of getting involved.
UMUC really likes these stories like "taking classes under mortar fire" but when the shit really hits the fan their management runs like cockroaches from light. |
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Post subject:
Posted: Feb 19, 2006 - 04:15 PM
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| Does UMUC but journalists or otherwise plant these stories? I can't believe how dumb some journalists --even from the Washington Post -- can be. I guess they did give a free pass to Bush after 9/11 and really didn't check the facts on WMD, so why should we be surprised that these and other Maryland legends continue to surface? There's another out there about "The Flying Professor", in addition to the one about the last Maryland porf to leave Saigon. The BS at UMUC piles up so high you really need wings to stay above it. |
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