null
Broadly speaking, I have three main jobs: teaching, thesis advising, and research
and publishing. In this regard, there is little divergence from the usual academic
environment. The differences are in the details
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.
What Does an NPS Professor Do?
at sea. In fact, I’ve held “office hours” by phone with a student
My responsibilities as an NPS faculty member are very similar to on an aircraft carrier in which I could hear planes landing on the
those at other universities. Broadly speaking, I have three main flight deck.
jobs: teaching, thesis advising, and research and publishing. In this
regard, there is little divergence from the usual academic environ-
What Is Defense Research?
ment. The differences are in the details. While the uninitiated often think of defense research as that
So, what are those differences? One is that NPS operates year- directly related to warfare, it is significantly broader. The DoD is a
round on a quarterly system. As working professionals, our stu- large and diverse organization, with all the management problems,
dents do not have the luxury of taking the summer off, thus nei- issues, and challenges that come with a large organization—and
ther does NPS. We have new students starting and graduating then some. As such, there are many interesting research problems,
every quarter. In fact, our quarters essentially run back-to-back, of which only a small subset are directly related to warfare.
with one quarter ending on a Friday and the new quarter starting For example, I’m currently working with a thesis student to
the following Monday. understand how the Marine Corps can improve its data systems
Now, while the institution does not take a summer break, as for measuring civilian employee workplace injuries (and hence
a member of the tenure/tenure-track faculty, I do have teaching mitigate such injuries). I’m also working with another thesis stu-
breaks. The nominal teaching load is four classes per year, which dent to model nurse staffing at a military hospital. In the past, I
currently means I teach two classes every other quarter. Those have worked with thesis students on problems such as assessing
quarters when I am not teaching are devoted to research and pub- the effects of “individual augmentation” deployment on retention
lishing, much like faculty at other universities, though my research of Navy personnel and modeling the flow of enlisted Marines up
is often focused on national security problems and issues. through the ranks.
Because our students come to NPS with a background in their My personal research interests are related to biosurveillance and
military professions and as professionals in their own right, they survey research methods. With respect to biosurveillance, I’m devel-
bring to the classroom a desire for relevancy in their education. oping spatio-temporal methods that can be used to detect a dis-
As another of my colleagues, Sam Buttrey, likes to say, the usual ease outbreak (or bioterrorist attack) quickly, yet within tolerable
statistics class lecture starts by describing a methodology, proceeds false positive rates, and by first responders to identify the location
to developing its theoretical properties, and then concludes with and spread of the outbreak or attack. The connection here is less
an application example. At NPS, we start with the example— to traditional military roles and missions—though DoD does have
preferably one tied to a military application or problem—because biosurveillance systems—and more to homeland security. In terms
our students first want to know why something is important and of survey research methods, I’m interested in understanding how
then what it applies to. traditional survey techniques (i.e., sampling, instrument design, and
A significant deviation from the practice at many civilian uni- fielding methods) should be modified to most effectively conduct
versities is that I don’t have teaching assistants. The government electronic (mainly web-based) surveys. The connection to the mili-
does not pay NPS students to be teaching assistants; it pays them tary is that I’m also interested in how such methods should be modi-
to attend class and complete their degrees. Hence, in my classes, I fied to maximize response rates in military populations.
personally give every lecture, proctor every exam, and grade every Oh, and speaking of research, did I mention data? For some of
homework assignment and test. On the other hand, class sizes are the defense research problems I have worked on, I’ve been awash in
capped at a maximum of 25 students, so I get to spend more time data. For example, on the project assessing the effects of individual
with individual students. augmentation, we used the electronic personnel files of everyone
My teaching venue is also broader than the local classroom. who had been in the Navy for the past decade—almost 900,000
Not only do I teach a variety of distance learning classes, but I also longitudinal records and 4.5 gigabytes of data! Such massive data
have the opportunity to travel to teach various short courses. For sets, while a blessedly rich source of information, can sometimes
example, I go to the Naval War College each year to teach part of a be a curse. Simply transmitting, handling, and manipulating them
course on analysis for the warfare commander. Similarly, I recently can be a challenge. And they frequently raise interesting philo-
returned from the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, where sophical questions such as “Am I dealing with a sample or a popu-
I taught a five-day short course on survey research methods. lation?” that sometimes do not have a clear answer. Nonetheless,
In my distance learning classes, I use a wide range of technol- how often do you have access to such data?
ogy to teach. Many of these classes are taught via video tele- So, that’s a short synopsis of one type of “government statis-
education (i.e., two-way television), where I often have as many tician”: a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School. If any of
as 10 sites with students located from Maine to the Pentagon to this sounded interesting, I would be remiss in not mentioning
San Diego. I’ve also taught “asynchronous” courses, in which my that we’re hiring. Or perhaps I should say, “We’re looking for a
lectures are recorded and made available via the internet. In such few good … ummm … statisticians.” See www.nps.edu/Academics/
courses, I’ve had students as far away as Guam, and even a few GSOIS/or/recruiting.htm for details. n
32 AMSTAT NEWS AUGUST 2008
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