{"id":66683,"date":"2008-06-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-06-19T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/first-student-to-graduate-in-uri-naval-academy-masters-degree-partnership\/"},"modified":"2008-06-19T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-06-19T00:00:00","slug":"first-student-to-graduate-in-uri-naval-academy-masters-degree-partnership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2008\/06\/first-student-to-graduate-in-uri-naval-academy-masters-degree-partnership\/","title":{"rendered":"First student to graduate in URI \u2013 Naval Academy master\u2019s degree partnership"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tDelran, N.J. native ships out to Pearl Harbor in September<\/p>\n


\n\tNARRAGANSETT, R.I. \u2013 June 19, 2008 \u2013 Michelle Aleszczyk was a three-sport athlete in high school and an honors student at the U.S. Naval Academy. In August she will become the first commissioned naval officer to earn a master\u2019s degree in oceanography from the University of Rhode Island through a new partnership with the Academy.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThis partnership is a win-win situation for everyone involved,\u201d said David Smith, associate dean of the URI Graduate School of Oceanography. \u201cWe can offer students specialty areas that aren\u2019t available at other graduate schools, and the students retain their commission in the Navy and draw their regular Navy salary. Our professors get top-quality, highly-motivated students to work with, and the Navy gets officers with experience conducting research in a discipline that meets its needs in operational oceanography.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tURI has a similar agreement with the U.S. Coast Guard.<\/p>\n


\n\tAleszczyk, 23, who grew up in Delran, N.J., enrolled in the Naval Academy after attending a one-week introductory program there as a junior in high school.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI fell in love with the place,\u201d she said. \u201cI loved the discipline, and I was especially impressed with the character of the people I met there. That\u2019s not usually something most students think about when deciding on a college \u2013 it\u2019s hard to quantify \u2013 but I was blown away by how compassionate and caring the students are.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tDuring her senior year, she developed an interest in eventually working in the Navy\u2019s meteorology and oceanography forecasting program, which would require that she earn a master\u2019s degree, and her advisor urged her to apply to URI.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cWhen I visited the Bay Campus, I got a similar feeling as when I first visited the Naval Academy,\u201d Aleszczyk said. \u201cIt\u2019s a small, comfortable program, and I got a great feeling about the students and faculty.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tFor the last two years, she worked in collaboration with URI marine scientist David Ullman studying the dynamics of the ocean circulation at the midshelf front off the coast of New Jersey. Coastal ocean fronts are important in the carbon cycle, particularly because they can act as a barrier between river run-off and ocean waters.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s an area of the continental shelf where the water has strong temperature contrasts, it\u2019s highly rich in nutrients, and it should have strong water velocities at the surface, though we didn\u2019t see much of that,\u201d she explained. <\/p>\n


\n\tAleszczyk spent long hours analyzing satellite data from NASA websites looking for what she called the \u201csurface signature\u201d of the front. She also used surface velocities from Rutgers University\u2019s high-frequency radar to better understand the structure of shelf flow in that region.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI learned a lot about scientific methods and how hard research is,\u201d she said. \u201cEverything takes three times as long as you expect it will take.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tAfter completing her thesis in August, Aleszczyk will have a brief break before shipping out to Pearl Harbor, where she will be based for the next 27 months or more, though much of that time she will be at sea as the auxiliary officer aboard a destroyer.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cAfter being away from the Navy for two years, I feel like I really appreciate it more,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m really looking forward to getting back to it.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tWhen she completes her Pearl Harbor assignment, Aleszczyk will apply to join the meteorology and oceanographic forecasting program at Stennis, Miss., which has operations in numerous locations around the globe.<\/p>\n


\n\tAnd after that?<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI\u2019m committed to the Navy until I\u2019m 30, and I\u2019ll see where I\u2019m at and what I\u2019m doing then before deciding what\u2019s next. I know I want to have a family. I might want to become an oceanography professor,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I\u2019ve got a lot on my plate between now and then.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nURI Department of Communications and Marketing Photo by Michael Salerno Photography<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Delran, N.J. native ships out to Pearl Harbor in September NARRAGANSETT, R.I. \u2013 June 19, 2008 \u2013 Michelle Aleszczyk was a three-sport athlete in high school and an honors student at the U.S. Naval Academy. In August she will become the first commissioned naval officer to earn a master\u2019s degree in oceanography from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66685,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}