Keeping Coast Guard Shipshape : Academy Seeks Only the Cream of the Student Crop

The curriculum, the discipline, the physical fitness programs are tough.

Half who enroll never graduate.

Last year 7,800 applied for admission, 290 were accepted.

All students here are on full four-year scholarships that include room, board and living allowances.

Almost all students here were in the top 10% of their high school classes.

It is one of the most selective colleges in the country--the U.S. Coast Guard Academy located high on a wooded hill on the shores of the Thames River in this rustic New England seaport.

Unlike the three other military academies--Army, Navy and Air Force--appointments here are made solely on the basis of an annual nationwide competition. There are no congressional appointments to the Coast Guard Academy; no state quotas or special categories.

Candidates compete for entry, based on high school rank and performance on either the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) or American College Testing Assessment (ACT). Also taken into consideration are the candidate’s participation in high school extracurricular activities, community affairs and part-time employment.

“This is a high-quality school. We will match our academic program with the other three military academies and I sincerely believe we will come out on top,” said Capt. David Sandell, 46, dean of academics at the Coast Guard Academy.

Capt. Thomas D. Combs, 51, dean of admissions, added that the overall program “is so demanding that the attrition rate of cadets here is far greater than that at any of the other academies.

Retention Rate

“But we also have a post-graduation retention rate that none of the other military academies can come close to. Of all our alumni, 83% are still serving in the Coast Guard 10 years after graduation, and 70% after 20 years or more.”

The Coast Guard, smallest of the military services with only 4,000 officers, 28,000 enlisted men and 6,000 civilian employees, was founded by Alexander Hamilton and established as the Revenue Cutter Service by George Washington in 1790.

Half the Coast Guard officer corps are graduates of the academy, which traces its beginning to 1876 when the Revenue Cutter School of Instruction was started with nine cadets.

Today there are 745 cadets attending the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.

For freshmen, the first year at the Coast Guard Academy is like being in boot camp.

They spend 12 long months marching at attention, shoulders back, standing straight as an arrow as they move from one classroom to another or walk anywhere on campus. At meals they sit rigid in their chairs, eyes straight ahead. They cannot look down at their plates or drinking cups.

“It’s a challenge. At first you dribble food on your clothes, spill your milk. But you learn pretty quick how to eat without spilling anything looking straight ahead all the while,” explained Richard Mourey, a 17-year-old fourth classman (freshman) who graduated from Venice High School in Los Angeles last June.

Upperclassmen discipline the fourth classmen or Swabs, as they are called. “Eyes in the boat!” bark sophomores, juniors and seniors at the Swabs, meaning keep those eyes straight ahead at all times.

“Oh, it’s really difficult at first. This may sound odd, but you get to enjoy it after a while,” said Mourey, a top student while at Venice High and a member of the school’s volleyball and soccer teams. “The reason for it is the discipline. It teaches us self-control and respect for authority.”

Mourey was accepted by the Air Force Academy as well but chose the Coast Guard instead. “This seemed to suit me better. I like the Coast Guard’s peacetime mission, helping people. That’s why I came here. The Coast Guard is a very practical service.”

For any disciplinary problem or other infraction, cadets receive demerits; 300 demerits in a year and the cadet is asked to leave.

Demerits for Room

Craig Henzel, 18, of Canton, Conn., said he and his roommate have been restricted to the academy grounds since their arrival as fourth classmen last June. The reason: demerits they have received for an unkempt room.

“We normally get liberty Saturday afternoon and evening and all day Sunday,” noted Henzel. “They are really strict here.”

Henzel isn’t alone. Many new cadets have a rough time early on making the transition from civilian to military life.

A straight-A student in high school, Henzel was an all-state basketball player two years in a row and president of his senior class. He is hoping to become a Coast Guard pilot.

All cadets receive flight training in their junior year and 15% of the graduates eventually make it as Coast Guard pilots.

Sophomore Norvel Williams, 20, of Charleston, W. Va., is one of 12 black cadets. He was West Virginia’s high school wrestling champion and had a 3.5 grade average.

“I’d never heard of the Coast Guard Academy. I had my heart set on the Naval Academy until a Coast Guard officer visited our school and told us about the humanitarian role of the Coast Guard, of its interaction with people. That sold me,” said Williams.

For sophomore Janet Emerson, 19, of Hollywood, Md., being in the Coast Guard is a family tradition. Her father, Warrant Officer Mike Emerson, 44, has been in the Coast Guard 24 years. Her grandfather, Olin Emerson, was a career Coast Guardsman. Her brother Mike, 23, graduated from the academy last year. Another brother, Alan, 20, is an enlisted man on a cutter.

“When I was a fourth classman, we started off with 55 females. Now, a year later, there are only 23 of us left. It’s tough all right. But this is what I want to do, so I’m going to make it,” said Emerson, who joined the Coast Guard because “I want to drive ships and save lives.”

Women were first accepted as cadets in 1976. Lt. Linda Johansen, 27, was one of 14 women to graduate in 1980. Since then, she has served four years as a junior officer on two ships, a buoy tender and a cutter. Now she is an administrator of the cadet corps at the academy. “I’ve loved every minute of it,” she said.

In the current freshman class there are 235 men and 56 women.

“Being here is physically and psychologically more difficult for the women,” said Capt. Combs. “Women have a higher dropout rate than men.

“An average of 14% of the cadets drop out during their first year here, 17% during their second year. One of the first activities at the beginning of the second year is a long summer cruise on the Coast Guard training bark Eagle, the first time at sea for many. Several cadets always suffer from mal de mer on the cruise. We lose a slug of cadets after that first trip at sea.”

No Special Treatment

Rear Adm. Edward Nelson, 54, superintendent of the academy since 1982 and a career Coast Guard pilot before that, explained that female cadets receive no special treatment.

“Some of the young women may find it more difficult than the young men, but those that make it turn out to be some of our finest officers. I might add, last year’s top graduate was Denise Matthews from Old Saybrook, Conn.,” said Nelson.

Nelson is the academy’s 32nd superintendent. He graduated from the academy in 1953 and his son, Lt. Edward D. Nelson, 30, graduated in 1977. The academy superintendent added, “Kids come in here who were outstanding students in high school and never saw a C and get D’s and F’s. That’s hard to take.”

Todd Watanabe, 21, a senior cadet who lived in Cupertino, Calif., through junior high school and then moved with his family to Herndon, Va., is convinced that, in addition to his 3.8 grade average, being a swimmer for 11 years improved his chances of being accepted by the academy.

“I think when they read my application and saw I was a swimmer for that long a time, they knew I was not going to quit if I became a cadet,” said Watanabe, one of seven Japanese-Americans in the academy.

Only 7% of the cadets are from the West Coast; 44% come from the Middle Atlantic Coast between Boston and Norfolk.

New York has more cadets than any other state, then comes Massachusetts, Connecticut and Maryland. Mississippi and North Dakota are not represented in the academy.

Cadets get their first taste of salt air and life at sea on America’s only active square rigger, the 295-foot, three-masted Eagle which, when under way, unfurls 22 sails.

The Eagle, originally built in 1936 as a Nazi training vessel for German naval cadets, was claimed by the Coast Guard in 1946 as a war prize.

“Every cadet is required to climb 147 feet to the top of the main mast,” explained James Rudd, 40, one of three bo’s’n mates aboard the Eagle to teach cadets how to sail.

“Some understandably are not too keen about going up the mast. But under peer pressure they all make it,” said Rudd. The square rigger has more than 22,000 square feet of sail and more than 20 miles of rigging.

The academy program is so rigorous that cadets are kept busy from 5:45 a.m. to 11 p.m. If a cadet hasn’t finished his homework, he is allowed to take “late light” until 1 a.m.

Seventy-five percent of the students major in engineering. There are 26 required courses, including introductions to engineering design and electrical engineering, naval architecture, calculus I and II, chemistry I and II, physics I and II, oceanography, coastal and celestial navigation, legal systems, shipboard operations and administration and maritime law enforcement.

The value of the four-year academy scholarship is estimated to be $140,000. Each cadet receives $480 a month to buy uniforms, equipment, books and other supplies. There is also a monthly personal allowance, ranging from $80 for freshmen to $260 for seniors.

A graduate is required to serve a minimum of five years as a Coast Guard officer. Upon graduation, the cadet is commissioned an ensign and earns $18,000 a year.

Peacetime Coast Guard missions include search-and-rescue operations by ships and planes, maintaining advanced electronic and other aids to navigation around the world, operating ice breakers for polar expeditions and keeping domestic waterways open in winter, enforcing marine laws and merchant marine safety and maintaining military readiness to fulfill its naval wartime commitment.

On a hill overlooking the 120-acre academy campus is the Coast Guard Memorial Chapel. A light flashing on and off in the chapel steeple simulates a lighthouse.

Behind the chapel is the grave of Capt. Hopley Yeaton of Portsmouth, N.H., appointed the nation’s first Revenue Cutter Service (Coast Guard) officer on March 21, 1791.

The Coast Guard’s motto Semper Paratus (Always Ready) is imprinted on the walls of all academy buildings. In the rotunda of the cadets’ dormitory is a plaque embedded in the floor which proclaims: “Who Lives Here Reveres Honor, Honors Duty.”