The Eisenhower Student Experience

This school's Master's Degree program runs 10 months, generally from the first week of August to the first week of June. The program provides a number of unique opportunities to meet and learn from fellow students, faculty and guest lecturers through out the year while pursuing traditional graduate studies. As a general guideline students should expect to be in their seminar study rooms on campus by about 8am. Classes or lectures begin not long after in most cases. Students will spend most of the day on Campus, in class or lecture, or involved with various academic pursuits. It is essentially an 8 to 5 experience.

A primary fixture of this program is the seminar system. Students are assigned to small groups mixed in proportion based on service qualities of the overall student population. This provides a variety of career experiences and knowledge as a resource in general, and as a way to have discussions that lead to knowledge products requiring broad perspectives of National Security and Resourcing. Students will meet often as a seminar group to take the core curriculum. Hence, the teaching and learning experience is based on small group dynamics.

The school and National Defense University are in a unique locality to provide a wide variety of guest speakers from the highest levels of executive service in fields of national security, government and industry, as well as, those who have singular knowledge or research perspectives on subjects related to National Security or resource management. Students will attend many guest lectures in our own Baruch Auditorium and in Abraham Lincoln Hall, with opportunities for in-depth or personal interaction with some speakers. Questions and inquiry are often given time.

Besides a well paced graduate school experience there's the President's Cup. This athletic competition with our neighbors at the National War College is a tradition of over 50 years. Students compete in a number of team sports with the winners taking an individual sport trophy and the overall winner of the competition takes the President's Cup. This competition is a warm up for the Thorpe games in spring.

Finally there are a wide variety of social gatherings and outreach opportunities during the year.