Q&A: Rear Admiral Gary Jones
Rear Admiral Gary Jones
Commander
Naval Education and Training Command
Rear Admiral Jones graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1975 with a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering. He also holds a M.S. degree in systems management from the University of Southern California, and is an Armed Forces Staff College graduate.
Designated a Naval Aviator in 1976, early operational assignments include duty in HSL-32 and HSL-34. Jones also participated in the Personnel Exchange Program, flying with the British Royal Navy while assigned to 829 Squadron in Portland, England. Returning to HSL-34 as executive officer, he became commanding officer in November 1992. Jones next served as air boss aboard USS Saipan (LHA 2). Joining USS Peleliu (LHA 5) as executive officer for an Arabian Gulf deployment, he became commanding officer of USS Peleliu in April 1998 and completed a western Pacific/Arabian Gulf deployment.
Staff and shore assignments include flight instructor duty in HSL-30, serving in the Secretary of Defense’s Office for Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict, and duty on the CNO Staff as head of Operations, Plans and Politico-Military Affairs in the Western Hemisphere. He also served as executive assistant to the deputy commander-in-chief/chief-of-staff, U.S. Atlantic Fleet. Prior to Flag selection, he was director, Readiness/Warfare Requirements at ComNavAirLant. His initial Flag assignment was commander, U.S. Naval Forces Korea, and Naval component commander, United Nations Command in Seoul, Republic of Korea. Jones next assumed command of Amphibious Force, 7th Fleet, Commander Amphibious Group One/CTF-76 in Okinawa, Japan. He also served as commander, Forward Deployed Naval Forces Expeditionary Strike Group (FDNF ESG).
Jones’s most recent assignment was as commander, Naval Service Training Command and Commander, Navy Region MIDWEST in Great Lakes, Ill.
Rear Admiral Jones was interviewed by MAE Editorial Coordinator Diana McGonigle. Also present and contributing to answers were NETC Force Master Chief John Walker, and NETC Command Master Chief Tom Smith (NETC Voluntary Education Program Manager). Monitoring the interview were Ed Barker, NETC media operations director, and Commander Ron Steiner, NETC Public Affairs Officer.
All comments are attributable to Rear Admiral Jones unless otherwise indicated.
Q: What are your duties as commander, Naval Education and Training Command?
A: I guess the best way to put it is I’m the Navy’s chief learning officer. I oversee all of our learning centers, learning sites, recruit training command—all of our officer accession programs whether it’s Reserve Officer Training Corps or Officer Candidate School. Basically, all individual accession training with the one exception of the United States Naval Academy, and that’s what Vice Admiral Jeff Fowler has in his domain. I guess what the snapshot label would be is that I’m the Navy’s chief learning officer. I have several flag officers working under me that help me execute basic military training and naval military training.
Q: What are your goals for military voluntary education?
A: I would make sure that lifelong learning is the cornerstone of everyone in the United States Navy. That may sound like a bumper sticker, but it is important for us that those young men and women who decide to join us, to know that lifelong learning will be a focus for their time in the Navy. Their individual development—professional development and personal development, are primary concerns.
Q: On average, how many Navy personnel are currently taking advantage of government-supported higher education for both professional and personal development, and what are the estimates on what the Navy spends annually on higher education?
A: I’ve got the numbers in front of me. I’m told that in FY 07 we had approximately 171,000 sailors who were enrolled in tuition assistance. That included about 9,000 officers who also took advantage of graduate courses. Some at the Naval Postgraduate School, some using tuition assistance, some using other various programs. I’m very proud of our academic skills program. About 12,500 people are enrolled in that. Those are pretty good numbers.
But I’d also like to put out that everybody on any given day is learning and developing in the United States Navy. I would say that we had 335,000 young men and women who were spending time each and every day on their personal and professional development.
Q: What is SOCNAV participation?
A: SOCNAV is a series of colleges that have gotten together. Of course like all the services, we’re sometimes like a band of gypsies. We have sailors move from port to port to port, from home station to home station. SOCNAV is a program where we’ve gathered up a bunch of colleges and universities along with the great training we provide and enable sailors during their Navy journey to work toward a degree. Force, do you have anything to add to that?
Walker: SOCNAV stands for Servicemembers Opportunity Colleges Consortium and, as the admiral pointed out, they have made an agreement as to how they would recognize and track an individual’s performance in the various degree plans that he or she would be pursuing. As we know, servicemembers spend a lot of time moving from one location to the other, and the residency requirements that are typically a prerequisite for an academic organization to award a degree are relaxed to some extent for those colleges that participate or that hold a SOCNAV agreement. The other thing is that the recognition of various courses is also fairly universal across those organizations and universities that are participants in SOCNAV. So it allows those servicemembers to invest their time but not be negatively impacted because they have to move to a new geographic location and start on their education with a new university.
Jones: We are a Navy and nation at war, and because of those very dynamics and requirements we do expect and demand a great deal of our sailors, and yet it would be very disingenuous of us as we recruit these volunteers to join us in the Navy, and say how much we value learning and development, how much we value education, if we don’t provide them the tools, then we aren’t living up to our end of covenant leadership and being able to deliver. It provides them the tools for development from the moment they join until the last day in this great Navy.
Q: Are many officers using TA to pursue graduate degrees?
A: In total in one year we’ve got about 9,000 officers who are pursuing a graduate education through a host of ways. A lot of them are at the Naval Postgraduate School out in Monterey California; we have many who are able to pursue a master’s degree while attending the Naval War College. Some do use tuition assistance. We’ve got a wonderful program where normally we get about 14 officers into the Olmstead Scholarship program, where they’re allowed to continue their studies. There’s a lot of different ways for our officer corps to continue their education.
Q: Do you have any idea what fields they are gravitating to?
A: You know that’s a great point because some of what we’re trying to do in this time of war is to help them gravitate toward those area of studies that will not only benefit them, professionally and personally, but will also benefit the United States Navy. For the officers, I see a lot of folks going after their M.B.A.s, a lot of business-related degrees. Also a lot of officers are doing international studies. What we want to make sure we do is not to have a lot of officers, and these are my words, pursuing the “flavor of the day” just because it’s easy, it’s acceptable. There is a balance here to make sure they’re going to continue in their development, and it’s going to afford them to grow as a naval officer and as a person, and that’s why we really do like to focus them toward management and business. But we’ve got some who pursue technical degrees, technical master’s degrees because that’s what the United States Navy needs at this time.
Q: How has distance learning changed military advanced education?
A: What I think has really happened is the Navy has changed distance learning because of the fact that we are a global force; we’re constantly on the move. Probably on any given day at least 30 to 40 percent of the fleet is forward deployed—and probably at least 50 percent of the fleet is underway. And when they pull away from the pier, we can’t stop that learning and development. So we want to make sure we’ve got the methodology in place; we want to make sure we’ve got the systems in place, so even though they may be halfway around the world they can still reach back through distance learning and continue their development. I think the biggest change is that educational products are now structured so they’re more readily accessible through distance learning.
I also understand the tremendous potential of distance learning, and how this generation of sailors will embrace that technology, where as my generation, the Boomers, are probably more inclined to sit in a classroom. The classroom is the Boomers’ view of learning and development, where you look at the Millennials and they’re more in tune with distance learning, whether it’s through a pod cast, whether it’s through the Internet, whether it’s through computer-based training; they’re much more attuned to it than my generation ever was or ever will be.
Q: How did your college education help you in your current and past jobs?
A: Probably the biggest thing I learned at the Naval Academy—I was a mechanical engineer and a nuclear engineer—the biggest thing I learned was how little I knew. I just read something last night—there was a fascinating article in last month’s Proceedings with a commentary by Admiral Fowler—“What is the revolution in knowledge and information? Literally every year the sum total of mankind’s knowledge increases geometrically. Access to most of this knowledge and information is ubiquitous and instantaneous to friends and foes alike.”
My education was centered on in the classroom—here’s the textbook, the instructor gets up and kind of drones on. I look at what I learned in my four years at the Naval Academy, and then how I was able to apply that in my career initially as an aviator, and I have to tell you I probably learned more engineering as I went through flight school than I ever did in a classroom in Annapolis, because one of the things I did learn is everyone learns differently. What might have worked for the midshipman sitting next to me in the classroom; he was able to absorb a lot more in the classroom than I could. I was more of a “hands-on learner.” Once I got to flight school, I was able to look at a cutaway of a jet engine; I was able to understand thermodynamics a lot more. When I got to see a compressor, when I got to see the burner, when I got to see an afterburner—I finally understood Bernoulli’s Principle when I got to see an airflow. So how did it prepare me? It really showed me how little I knew. Also, I do believe that 70 percent of learning happens outside the classroom.
Q: What trends do you see in military voluntary education? What accounts for these trends?
A: Today’s sailors have probably come aboard with more education than we’ve ever seen. We also realize, too, the learning and development of a sailor is a critical piece of our success as a Navy, particularly in the 21st Century. As I talked about earlier, we are focused on lifelong learning. We have to make sure that it is a partnership between the Navy and the sailor—both for their professional development, to make sure that they have the skills and toolset to really succeed as a sailor and at the same time, too, we focus on what might be their personal objectives. And by that I mean if I’ve got someone, say for example a gas turbine tech, I hope that maybe they are taking a couple of courses on the side in basic engineering, math and maybe even thermodynamics. But who knows? Maybe they have a desire to [study] music appreciation. That’s the challenge for us, I think; these are highly educated, highly skilled individuals. They come into the Navy, and I don’t want to take away that enthusiasm for learning and developing both professionally and personally. I want to make sure that I have them gravitating toward an area or focus that’s going to be beneficial for both of them.
Smith: The one thing we’re trying to do with the voluntary education piece is to allow the sailor choices within their selected area. Basically, like the admiral said, if they’re very interested in something that’s totally outside their area of expertise, we’re going to embrace that and give them that opportunity. What we’re trying to do with our learning and development strategy is to provide a roadmap for our sailors so that they can understand what areas within education, learning and development and also our technical training as to what pieces will help them become successful while they’re in the Navy and prepare them for whatever their future would entail.
Q: Do you see any challenges ahead for military education?
A: I think there’s the ever-present funding issue particularly as it applies to our officer corps and what is the right mix of those entering the Navy who have a technical degree, have a business background, have a financial background. At the same time, too, the growing demand and need for regional expertise, language expertise. How do we capture all of that in our officer corps, and yet these are individuals we’re going to have to fly Super Hornets, these are the individuals who are going to have to work or be around nuclear engineering plants, these are officers who are going to be on the bridge of some of the most advanced warships ever to sailed the seas. So, how do you get that blended solution, that right mix of technical, humanities, business and also language? To build on what Master Chief Smith said, doing the same thing in our enlisted ranks, and making sure that we do provide them a roadmap. But we’ve also got to provide them the tools, and that’s key to all of this. I can’t put a demand out there for a 20 year old and say “well, just make the time yourself.” That’s where is kind of goes back to the question on distance learning in making sure that they have the access to the tools that will help them in their development.
Q: Do you have anything else to add?
A: One of the things I’m most excited about is called the COOL Website. I would highly encourage you to go visit that Website. COOL stands for Credentialing Opportunities Online, and this is something that we put together; it’s a product that all sailors can use; it’s Web-based. But it really helps them go to a Website and now work through the credentials and qualifications out there for them, and they can build on given the Navy training they received and given the skills that they entered the Navy with. Starting this past September, not only have we provided a roadmap for them, we’re also providing the funding so that they can then say, “Gosh, if I just take this one course, the Navy will pay for it, and I will be an FAA-certified jet mechanic.” Or “I will be a Microsoft-certified IT manager.”
All of those things are out there. This is the one I’m excited about. It’s been out there for about a year. We have already had 1.5 million hits on that Website by our sailors, and on the average they stayed on that Website five or six minutes. This thing has just taken off. I think that’s what a lot of the young people are looking for is “Hey, I joined the Navy for opportunities, not only to serve in time of war, but I want to leave the Navy, whether it’s in six years or 26 years, a better person.”
COOL is one of those pieces that’s out there not for a huge investment, but for a way for us to go “Here’s a roadmap, and oh by the way, here are the tools that we can help you become the very best air traffic controller. The very best nuke machinist mate. The very best H.M.” There’s ways now for our young folks to finish up our corpsman’s school to get now with various agencies, both state and federal, and professionally, to get their EMP certification. I mean that’s used not only for the United State’s Navy but this country. So I’m very excited about this COOL Website and being able to really afford in a very simple way, our sailors get the credentials, the certification that would help them not only in their professional service in the Navy, but their personal service if and once they decide to leave the service. Go to https//:www.cool.navy.mil for more information. ♦
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