THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, June 12, 1996 TAG: 9606110327
SECTION: MILITARY NEWS PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: MY TURN
SOURCE: BY SUSAN BOLAND
LENGTH: 70 lines
Recognizing the value of real-life experience, Navy Spouse University is offering a curriculum that awards academic credit for some of the challenges faced by women and men married to sailors.
Admission to our program is straightforward: Alone, you must assemble a child's two-wheeler bicycle, with training wheels. The only tools you may use are those found in a typical kitchen (knives, nutcrackers, corkscrews, etc.).
The assembly must be completed within an hour, the average nap time of the recipient of such a bike.
Successful applicants may pursue any of three degree programs:
Our associate's degree program requires you to complete one six-month deployment. The unexpected will happen, and you will be expected to deal with it. The majority of students enter this program with a toddler.
The program requires that you volunteer as chairman or -woman of the Welcome Home Committee for the ship's Support Group, and that you complete the paperwork for, and obtain, a Veterans Affairs loan while your active-duty member is at sea.
You also must write a five-page research paper that discusses, in depth, survival skills for a mid-cruise, four-day visit by a member of your extended family who knows nothing at all about Navy life and is very concerned about how his or her tax dollars are being spent.
The written final exam will expect you to have a working knowledge of Tricare and Certificates of Non-Availability.
Our bachelor's degree program demands that students complete two six-month deployments in no more than two years. Most students enter this program with one pre-schooler and one toddler.
Twice as many unforeseen difficulties will occur. Again, you will be expected to deal with them. You must also volunteer as treasurer of the ship's Support Group and sell a house, either through an agent or by yourself. Research shows that each is equally challenging.
Students are eligible to graduate with honors if they complete a permanent change-of-station move while their active-duty member is at sea AND have submitted, and been paid in full, the Claim for Loss of or Damage to Personal Property to Service.
The master's degree program requires you to complete a two-year tour with your active-duty member serving as a geographic bachelor - in other words, ``he/she gets home on the weekends.'' Candidates entering this program will have at least one pre-teen and one teen living at home.
Successful students will complete a major renovation on their residence (kitchen or bedroom and bath). Honors will be conferred upon those students who successfully engineer a single get-away weekend with their active-duty member during the two-year tour.
Finally, for those spouses who are highly motivated, we offer a doctorate of Navy spouse, a degree requiring a one-year unaccompanied tour or two consecutive tours as the command master chief's wife, or three consecutive tours as the executive officer's wife.
You must have two teenagers living with you. Furthermore, you must volunteer as landlord for neighbors who are serving overseas and have rented their home to a couple of bachelor helo pilots serving in their first squadron.
Candidates are not required to write a thesis; however, we do require a three-hour oral exam administered by three chief's wives.
Navy Spouse University has based its curriculum on those tasks that Navy spouses must undertake on a regular basis. These are tasks which no one, given the option, would choose to do.
The experience inherent to this rigorous course of study has one result: When a Navy spouse is afforded the luxury of setting a course to reach a self-set goal, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - that can stop that spouse. MEMO: Susan Boland, a free-lance writer and a lecturer at the English
Language Center at Old Dominion Univeristy, is a Navy wife of 20 years. by CNB