Tom Miller Lands a Big One Cal Maritime Pilots Blanket the West Coast P
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s p r ing 2 0 0 7 V O l . 4 N O . 1 THE MAGAZINE OF the c A l ifo r nia M A r I T I M E A c A d em y Cal Maritime Tom Miller Lands a Big One Cal Maritime Pilots Blanket the West Coast p. 6 ORAL HISTORY 13 | CLASS NEWS AND NOTES 14 Federal Employment Outstanding Benefits Career Advancement “ Your skills will take you further, faster when sailing with MSC.“ Military Sealift Command is actively recruiting for the following licensed positions: Third Assistant Engineer Third Officer Second Officer The skills and education you earned at the California Maritime Academy will help you build the career you want at MSC. To apply for one of these positions, call our toll-free number or visit our Web site. Act now and Take Command of Your Career.® www.sealiftcommand.com CALL 1-866-867-1602 Military Sealift Command is an equal opportunity employer and a drug-free workplace. THE MAGAZINE OF Cal Maritime Cal Maritime is published three times a year for the alumni, faculty, staff, students, donors, tableofcontents parents, and friends of cal Maritime. President william B. Eisenhardt letter From the prEsIdent . 2 editor teaching and learning conferencE . 3 doug webster facEs on campus. 5,12 PhotograPhy doug webster cover story: cma pIlot headcOunts . 6 graPhic design faculTy and staff notes . 10 Eileen collins Eileen collins Graphic design Alumni news. 14 coPy editors in memorIuM. 22 susan Bigler steven sprowls Events CalendAr . BAck Cover we welcome your comments and letters: doug webster director of public relations cal Maritime 200 Maritime Academy drive Vallejo, cA 94590 phone: (707) 654-1720 For timely monthly updates on Academy news and information, check out CURRENTS, Fax: (707) 654-1247 Mobile: (707) 319-3327 the Academy’s monthly electronic newsletter. The latest issues of CURRENTS and Cal Email: [email protected] Maritime are always hotlinked from the home page of the Academy website. Back issues can also be found in the News section of the site. To have CURRENTS automatically e-mailed to you each month, send an e-mail to [email protected] Cal Maritime has begun accepting quality advertising messages from a range of businesses and organizations with ties to maritime trade and transportation. Doing so helps us defray the costs of producing, mailing and distributing the magazine to an audience approaching 9,000 alumni, families, cadets, faculty, staff and friends of the Academy each year. If you www.csum.edu would like to advertise in a future issue, contact Public Relations Director Doug Webster at [email protected] or 707-654-1720 for rates, materials cover photo: Tom Miller (d-80) of petaluma, specifications and deadlines. cA, a member of the Bar pilots of the san Francisco Bay, was recently chosen to guide the massive Queen Mary 2 in and out of the Bay during the ship’s inaugural visit this winter. A profile of Miller and an overview of the important role cal Maritime plays in supplying skilled pilots for harbors from Hawaii to Alaska and the west coast can be found on page 6. Cal Maritime s p r I N G 2 0 0 7 1 president’sletter President William B. Eisenhardt presented a Proclamation and Meritorious Service Medal to Cadet Adrian Cushman, MT-10 (left foreground) in January for his actions in helping save two small girls from a burning car in Washington State last summer. Cushman had been cited by the Washington State Patrol for pulling the girls from the overturned vehicle, even as his own clothing was catching fire. AS we complete anotHer acaDemIC Year and • We have received the go-ahead for construction of a new graduate our 77th class of cadets, it is time to take stock of residence hall which will house 130-140 additional cadets what we have accomplished and where we are headed. I was depending on final design approvals. Plans call for completion looking at some interesting statistics about the Academy the around 2009-10. other day: • Construction on our new state-of-the-art Simulator Center • Our student body today numbers about 800 — a 78% should be completed before the end of the year. The Center increase in just the last eight years. will be one of the most advanced in the world, with expanded • We are 2nd in the CSU system in terms of the average capacity to provide very realistic training for cadets and SAT scores of incoming freshmen, a reflection of our continuing education students. It will give us badly needed challenging math and science-heavy curriculum. new office space for our faculty, many of whom currently have • Virtually all of our graduates are employed within weeks to share small offices. of graduation, reflecting the strong demand for their skills • Private support for higher education provides the critical and the quality of their education. edge essential to quality as state budgets become squeezed by competing priorities. As reported elsewhere in this Those enrollment numbers are exciting and challenging. Last issue, our annual Gala has just raised over $100,000 in new fall saw our biggest incoming freshman class ever at close to 250. support for scholarships and institutional initiatives…nearly We expect that incoming level to continue over the next 2-3 double our previous best effort. We are also generating years, pushing our total student body to well over 900 by the additional scholarship support from industry and private end of the decade. That in turn is putting additional strain donors who recognize the critical importance of the Academy on our resources: in producing the skilled workers they need to compete and • Our residence halls (including about 70 cadet berths aboard succeed in a global economy in the years ahead. the Golden Bear during the school year) can only handle about • This spring we graduated the first students in the Global half our current student body. Studies and Maritime Affairs major we started four years ago. • Our dining facility is jammed at peak mealtimes. GSMA cadets will soon be working in such critical marine • With so many cadets living off campus, parking for faculty, trade and transportation sectors as port, vessel and supply- staff and cadets is nearly maxed out. chain security, environmental management, law and history. • We need to control class sizes and make sure we have • Cal Maritime has just hosted an exciting first-ever conference sufficient numbers of qualified faculty and resources to assure on Teaching & Learning in the Maritime Environment (see a quality educational experience. facing page.) In 2008, we will host the annual meeting • Our athletic facilities, including our gymnasium and water of the International Association of Maritime Universities survival training center/pool, date back to the 1940s and (IAMU) to be held in San Francisco. These events provide need replacement. valuable opportunities to showcase Cal Maritime’s expertise, • And of great concern is that our faculty salaries are its faculty and programs, to a wide range of audiences increasingly becoming non-competitive, not only with worldwide, and strengthen our reputation as an innovative industry, but also with other like institutions, especially leader in maritime education. with the high cost of living in the Bay Area. We have a lot of challenges on our plate, but they are good The good news is that we are building for the future on challenges reflecting our growth — in numbers, in support, several fronts. in programs, in recognition, in facilities and resources and in • At this writing, we are completing negotiations on the quality. Take pride in Cal Maritime, support it, and tell others acquisition of about seven acres of property located on the about it. Together, we’ll continue to make it grow and thrive. current campus access road which will give us expansion room for a new athletic/water survival training center, Sincerely, receiving warehouse, and parking. President 2 Cal Maritime s p r I N G 2 0 0 7 academy’s first-ever “Teaching and Learning” conference a major success 130 participants from the U.s. and as far away as the Ukraine, poland, turkey, australia, Germany, and Vietnam, were on the cal maritime campus march 28-30 for a first-ever conference on teaching and Learning in the maritime environment. over four- dozen presentations, papers and poster sessions were presented on everything from the role of simulators in the educational process to the integration of licensing standards and requirements into mechanical engineering Degree programs. originally developed by cal maritime’s Vice president for academic affairs Don Zingale over a year ago, the conference examined best practices of both traditional and maritime education through formal presentations, discussion panels and poster sessions. “maritime educators have long recognized the differences between traditional educators teaching in a maritime setting and those whose prior experience has been primarily workplace derived, but whose skills ▲ Dr. Don Zingale with Conference are a critical part of the Keynote Speaker, Admiral John Ryan, overall process of maritime Chancellor of the State University of education,” said Zingale. New York. Ryan delivered the Joseph highlights of the Rizza lecture to the conference on conference included a the challenges facing modern higher friday morning round- education. table discussion about the ▼ Dr. Don Zingale, Academy Vice challenges and the promise President for Academic Affairs, of maritime education delivers the opening welcome address worldwide between to convention attendees Wednesday president eisenhardt, afternoon in Peachman Auditorium. Leonard tyler, president maine maritime academy; Dr. William mcmullen, interim head of the Department of marine transportation, texas “additionally, we must recognize that while the public a&m University; and a.