US Coast Guard Academy Research Articles

Enhanced Adenovirus Vaccine Safety Surveillance in Military Setting, United States

The US Coast Guard Academy began adenovirus vaccination of incoming cadets in 2022. Of 294 vaccine recipients, 15%-20% had mild respiratory or systemic symptoms within 10 days postvaccination but no serious adverse events after 90 days. Our findings support the continued use of adenovirus vaccines in congregate military settings.

Outbreak of Acute Respiratory Illness Associated With Human Adenovirus Type 4 at the United States Coast Guard Academy, 2019.

Although a human adenovirus (HAdV) vaccine is available for military use, officers-in-training are not routinely vaccinated. We describe an HAdV-associated respiratory outbreak among unvaccinated cadets at the US Coast Guard Academy and its impact on cadet training. We defined a case as a cadet with new onset cough or sore throat during August 1-October 4, 2019. We reviewed medical records and distributed a questionnaire to identify cases and to estimate impact on cadet training. We performed real-time polymerase chain reaction testing on patient and environmental samples and whole genome sequencing on a subset of positive patient samples. Among the 1072 cadets, 378 (35%) cases were identified by medical records (n = 230) or additionally by the questionnaire (n = 148). Of the 230 cases identified from medical records, 138 (60%) were male and 226 (98%) had no underlying conditions. From questionnaire responses, 113 of 228 (50%) cases reported duty restrictions. Of cases with respiratory specimens, 36 of 50 (72%) were HAdV positive; all 14 sequenced specimens were HAdV-4a1. Sixteen (89%) of 18 environmental specimens from the cadet dormitory were HAdV-positive. The HAdV-4-associated outbreak infected a substantial number of cadets and significantly impacted cadet training. Routine vaccination could prevent HAdV respiratory outbreaks in this population.

Advancing Effective Leaders: An Example of the Management Education at the US Coast Guard Academy

Effective leaders are essential to the success of their organizations. As organizations require leaders who are professionally ready, business academic programs are responsible for educating their students to be able to effectively lead across cultural, religious, political, and organizational boundaries. This paper presents an academic strategy for leadership development that was advanced by the Department of Management at the United States Coast Guard Academy. According to the program’s goals, students are expected to discover and master their own leadership style as well as to advance businesses competencies, critical thinking, and communication skills. The strategy of professional development must be advanced over four years of undergraduate study in order to produce leaders who will effectively fulfill the mission of their own organization.

The U.S. Coast Guard Academy American Service Academies Program Symposium: Advancing Leadership through Understanding the Holocaust

Holocaust and genocide education are important components of leadership education for civilians and service members alike. The paper describes the US Coast Guard Academy’s Holocaust symposium as an example of leadership education for service members that is equally applicable to other contexts of secondary and tertiary education (particularly in nations relying on volunteer militaries). The important lessons the symposium conveys include: 1) genocide is a threat to all humanity, and the loss of one group is a loss to all; 2) a bystander makes an active choice that may result in escalating harm to others; 3) prejudice has had a long history but it is still alive today; and 4) blind obedience to authority and leaders is dangerous. These experiences should lead students to not only recognize the social, political, and military antecedents to atrocity-producing situations, but help develop in them the moral judgment and courage to identify and prevent these conditions at home and abroad.

Potential Source of Technical and Leadership Skills: Former Members of the US Military

HR Discussion - Interview with John Zornick on hiring former members of the US military. How can former members of the US military help fill the demand for engineers in the oil and gas industry? Although degreed engineers are a small minority in the US military, many military officers are graduates of the service academies. Each of the five US military service academies [US Military Academy (Army), US Naval Academy (Navy and Marine Corps), US Coast Guard Academy, US Merchant Marine Academy, and US Air Force Academy] provides a broad curriculum with a strong focus on engineering. All those who attend these schools must take a series of math, science, and engineering courses that provide a strong technical foundation. Once military service graduates begin serving in the US armed forces, they often work with equipment that requires advanced technical competencies. For example, a navy surface warfare officer may be responsible for the engineering plant of a ship consisting of very large diesel engines, generators, and electronic auxiliary equipment. In another example, every navy submarine officer, no matter their educational degree, completes a rigorous year-long curriculum in the areas of math, chemistry, thermodynamics, physics, electrical engineering, materials, and mechanical systems. Once such military officers end their service commitment and enter into civilian life, this combination of professional training and hands-on experience in applying engineering principles provides them with a background that can be useful in filling the demand for engineers in the oil and gas industry.

U.S. Coast Guard Academy Injury and Risk Factor Study

Purpose : Injury rates and injury risk factors were examined for the first time among cadets undergoing Summer Warfare Annual Basic (SWAB) training at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy (USCGA). Methods : Participant s were 778 men and 286 women from four years of SWAB training. Before SWAB training, the subjects were administered a Physical Fitness Assessment (PFA) (2-minute maximal effortsit-ups and 1.5 mile run) andfunctionalmovement screening (FMS) test.Heightand weight were measured and, gender, age and ethnicity were obtained from administrative records. Training -related injuries were compiled from student medical records. The diagnosis, body part location, disposition, and limited duty days were recorded foreach clinic visit. Results:During the 8 weeks of SWAB training, 23.8% of the women and 18.4% of the men were injured at least once. Compared to the men, the odds of an overall injury

Capabilities Based Assessments Made Easy

The process prescribed in this workbook is a departure from traditional CBAs. That being said, it has been vetted through the Joint Requirements Oversight Council's (JROC) Joint Analytic Data Management (JADM) Council and was implemented for the Homeland Defense/ Civil Support (CBA). It was also nominated at the 76th Military Operations Research Society (MORS) Symposium at the US Coast Guard Academy for the Richard Barchi Prize in 2008. The process promises to speed up the time required to conduct a CBA by helping you avoid common pitfalls with lessons learned from past CBA practices, and by providing you with a 6-month license to a Microsoft Excel®-based program to help automate the risk-assessment component of the CBA. Whether you are a government employee conducting a CBA or a government contractor providing CBA support or writing a proposal, this workbook will help you devise a better approach to CBAs and better ensure success in your endeavors.

Can LORAN meet GPS backup requirements?

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is currently leading a team consisting of members from industry, government, and academia to provide guidance to the policy makers in their evaluation of the future of Loran-C in the United States. In a recently completed Navigation Transition Study, the FAA concluded that Loran-C, as an independent radio navigation (RNAV) system, is theoretically the best backup for the global positioning system (GPS). However, for Loran-C to be considered a viable backup system to GPS, it must be able to meet the requirements for non-precision approaches (NPAs) for the aviation community, and the Harbor Entrance and Approach (HEA) requirements for the maritime community. Through FAA sponsoring, the US Coast Guard Academy (USCGA) is responsible for conducting some of the tests and evaluations to help determine whether Loran can provide the accuracy, availability, integrity, and continuity to meet these requirements. A major part of assessing the suitability of Loran is in understanding the nature of Loran ground wave propagation over paths of varying conductivities and terrain. Propagation time adjustments, called "additional secondary factors" (ASFs), are used to adjust receiver times of arrival (TOAs) to account for propagation over non-seawater path(s). These ASFs vary both spatially and temporally, and unless understood and/or modeled, we lose accuracy and may not be able to guarantee a hazardously misleading information (HMI) probability of less than 1times 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-7</sup> . During the summer of 2003, the Coast Guard Academy, with flight support from the FAA Technical Center, conducted a series of tests to measure ASF variations in the vicinity of several selected airfields in Colorado, Arkansas, Florida, and California. In addition, approaches were flown at several airports in each of these areas. ASF and TOA data collected during these trials has been analyzed through post-processing to determine the Loran position accuracy during approaches. The accuracy of raw (uncorrected Loran) as well as ASF-corrected Loran positions are shown for a variety of ASF profiles. Using the BALOR ASF modeling software produced by the University of Wales at Bangor, we have also done some simulations of best-case performance analysis for receivers with little or no noise. In addition, we present some ideas for using a Kalman-filtered integrated Loran-INS receiver to smooth out Loran position errors. Finally, how all of these efforts lead toward meeting the accuracy requirements is shown

Smart Classrooms And Hybrid Courses

Many new technologies have expanded the capabilities of what educators may accomplish in the classroom. This paper points out how some of these technologies have been incorporated into the Spanish Curriculum at the US Coast Guard Academy. Specifically addressed are issues of how these technologies may be used while maintaining sound pedagogical practice, an issue which remains unclear to many, and which is continually changing with each new technological advance. The paper discusses: how the internet is being used in and out of the classroom, to what extent students are using it, what student reactions to it have been, how it enhances the student learning process and some ways in which these methods may be used in other disciplines.

Integrating Design Across the Engineering Curriculum: A Report From the Trenches

AbstractThe emphasis from ABET to integrate the design experience across the curriculum has initiated a call for action to engineering departments across the country. This challenges engineering educators to include design in a wide variety of engineering courses and to prevent this emphasis from foreshadowing the subject material of each course. A comprehensive approach is needed where the design work is not a separate entity, but rather is an additional tool which can be used to teach the fundamentals of engineering. This paper reports on the advances of one institution in responding to the call to integrate design across the engineering curriculum. The U.S. Coast Guard Academy (USCGA) has established a design philosophy that treats design education as a developmental process to be practiced during each of the four undergraduate years. To put that philosophy into practice, the USCGA has restructured the engineering curriculum to ensure that students experience design content in their courses each year. This viewpoint of design as a developmental process is consistent with the broad educational objectives of the institution. This paper presents examples of design work from courses in each year of the students' education to illustrate the variety of design problems used to incorporate design across the curriculum. The experiences at the U. S. Coast Guard Academy have been positive and indicate the design across the curriculum initiative can be implemented without drastically impacting faculty workload.

Occlusal dental caries incidence and implications for sealant programs in a US college student population.

Given the decline in dental caries incidence in preteens and young teenagers in the United States, a study of the incidence of dental caries in young adults (17-23 years) was conducted to provide a descriptive epidemiologic picture of this "new" natural history of dental caries in the late and post-teenage years. A retrospective study was performed analyzing the detailed dental records of the four-year college experience in the class of 1989, US Coast Guard Academy. Occlusal caries incidence, in the absence of associated proximal caries, was shown to be moderately common in molars (11.9%) and rare in premolars (0.8%). In contrast to previous studies' findings, demographic indicators, socioeconomic status indicators, and prior caries experience were poor predictors of occlusal caries incidence; targeting a universal sealant policy in this population therefore would be done best by tooth type rather than patient type. A preliminary cost-comparison model, projected over a 40-month period, suggests that the cost of initiating a universal molar sealant policy in this population would be 92 cents per year per student greater than the cost of restoring occlusal caries in the presence of sound proximal surfaces. This cost comparison suggests that it would be advantageous to initiate such a policy.

Fit to Lead: Prediction of Success in a Military Academy through Use of Personality Profile

The US Coast Guard Academy provides a unique setting for predictive research using psychological tests. Not only is it a “closed” setting, but all incoming students (“swabs”) take a battery of tests in the summer before their first semester. Although the senior author and her colleagues had succeeded in isolating variables that differentiate cadets who successfully complete the program from those who drop out, the current study was an attempt to use the profile data to make specific predictions concerning completion vs attrition by use of a discriminant analysis. The relative ineffectiveness of personality scales, even after considerable refinement of the variables, to predict this specific outcome is an indication of the complexity of the decision making.

US Coast Guard Academy

US Coast Guard Academy