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2013-10-01
Teaching students how to think, not what to think
By: Staff Major\ Yousef Juma Al Haddad
Lt. Khaleil Al Kaabi
Photos by: Ali Al Junaibi
We had the opportunity to interview Brigadier General William F . Mullen III who is in charge of the education system of the entire Marine corps, both officers and enlisted together.
He ascertained that all officers and enlisted has to be prepared to deal with problems and challenges they are going to encounter when they go back to their normal jobs. The Brigadier General expressed the university and the USA’s great respect and appreciation for the UAE, which he considers a friendly country.
Following is the interview:
When was your college established and what were the requirements for setting it up?
The Marine Corps University itself was established in 1989 to provide an overhead headquarters of all the schools, to pull them together and get everybody moving in the same direction. I’m in charge of the education system for the entire Marine Corps, both officers and enlisted. We have quite a few schools underneath us. We have the Marine Corps War College which is the equivalent to the National Defense University (NDU) and the Eisenhower School. That college was established in 1991. Below those we have the School of Advanced War Fighting; we have the Command and Staff College for intermediate officers and then Expeditionary Warfare School which is for captains. We also have enlisted education which comprises a number of different schools throughout the Marine Corps.
What is the vision and mission of the college, what are its objectives and those of the schools too?
We understand clearly that the world is getting more and more complicated every day. Everyone who comes through our doors - officer and enlisted - has to be prepared to deal with the problems and challenges they’re going to encounter when they go back out to their normal jobs. They have to be able to think and make decisions and be able to deal with ambiguity, or unclear situations. Our vision and mission are to make sure when they leave us they can do all of that. We’re teaching how to think, not what to think.
There’s no doubt your college plays a major role in the higher plans and strategies of the US. Please tell us more about this important aspect.
Some of our colleges and the School of Advanced War Fighting in particular, boast a hand-selected group of Majors that get pulled from our immediate level course for a second year. They are very involved in operational planning. They go to specific places, have specific jobs and many of our general officers want them because of the skills they have obtained here. Our Marine Corps War College is similar in many ways.
Can you tell us the percentage of foreign students?
In almost every one of our schools in the officer program it’s about 10 per cent. They’re from all over the world. From the UAE, we currently have a colonel in the Marine Corps War College and we have a captain in the Expeditionary Warfare School. They both doing very well.
What does the college actually consist of and what are its specialities?
Each area has a different focus. Our Expeditionary Warfare School for captains is about preparing them to return to be company commanders, to command as a captain, and to some degree, act as a staff officer in a battalion-size unit, the smaller units. Our Command Staff College is oriented to majors and it enables students to operate at higher levels. This includes operating with some of the combatant commander staffs and working in the joint staff in the Pentagon. It also prepares them to an extent to be commanders when they are promoted to Lt Colonel.
Our Command and Staff College has over 200 students and 28 of those are selected to go to the School of Advanced War fighting. It’s a very, very special course where they become absolute experts in planning. Other schools’ studies involve planning but the School of Advanced Warfare aims to make students experts in planning process. Graduates later work for general officers in our large units. They can help that general officer make plans and take decisions for whatever problems are being faced. Our Marine Core War College takes Lt Colonels and in some cases Colonels and trains them to operate at the highest levels in key jobs such as at the Department of Defense and Joint Staff. Many go out to joint commands, working with other services. All our officers are required to become joint-qualified officers, meaning they’ve gone to a school and worked in a joint environment.
What does the college council comprise?
We have the Marine Corps University, so we have an executive steering committee that helps me make decisions. We also have a President’s Planning Council where we pull in all the directors from the schools and we bring in this council when we want to deal with larger issues. We have an example of this at the moment because we want to go digital with everything. We want to do that across all the schools, so we take that to the President’s Planning Council for discussion and outline how we’re going to move forward with that. Each one of the schools has its own council. Some are very small such as at Marine Corps War College where they have a small administrative overhead, a director, a dean and the faculty. Our Command and Staff College is much larger and it has a faculty council that draws in the faculty from the other schools. Their purpose is to talk to me.
What is the level of coordination and cooperation between your college and the other US military colleges to upgrade academic output?
There’s a formal process and in informal process. On the Joint Staff, the J7 in particular, there is Lt General Flynn, a marine General. He has the Military Education Coordinating Council which we all participate in. We talk about different issues, everyone gives a review and we outline what’s going on at our respective colleges or universities. We discuss different challenges facing our students. And informally, I have visited all the schools. I discuss their challenges with them. My emphasis is on how to make this particular organization better by learning from what other people have done well
Does the college curriculum keep pace with the changes in the international arena? And does it accommodate struggles and conflicts such as what is happening in Afghanistan, the Iranian nuclear program and the Arab Spring?
Yes and no. Yes, because we are always making small adjustments to our curriculum so when really big issues come up we need to ensure people understand what is going on, so we do discuss these matters at various seminars. But when I say ‘no’, there are things about the operational art for the military that remain timeless. Also, we try to avoid making a lot of adjustments to our curriculum. This is especially if it’s on short notice and perhaps the duration of an event isn’t very long. We try not to alter a great deal because the students know at the beginning of the year they have a schedule and it is what they’ll be dealing with over the course of 12 months. Those are the areas being prepared to be taught so we tend to change as little as possible for the benefit of the students. But when there are bigger events we discuss them, perhaps we will have a specialist speaker come in. We also have an organization called the Mid-East Studies Group which looks very closely at such important issues in its domain.
Can you outline concepts of the studies at the college - are they limited or do they cover wider areas of security?
We hire a lot of civilian faculty. We have military and civilian PHDs. Some colleges tend to mainly have retired military folk. We have plenty of faculty in uniforms so what we’re trying to achieve is a much wider mind set by bringing in people of varied backgrounds. The reason for this is so we don’t just focus on the military way of doing things. This approach expands students’ horizons and gets them thinking about other things. It is all related to security, but we want to students to realize that when we talk about security in the world it isn’t just about the military. There are many other aspects to be such as culture, economy, diplomatic influence, organized crime and more.
Many countries around the world are keen to send students to your college to partake of the various courses there. What are the advantages for American students sharing time with students from the rest of the world?
It’s absolutely essential to what we do here. The mind-set they bring is a completely different way of looking at things. Our students love that. They delight in talking to the international students, they love learning about the different cultures out there. If there’s a small group having a discussion and it’s confined only to US military we all tend to look at things the same way. However, if you bring in people from other organizations, but especially from other countries, if provides different points of view. We would not be doing as well as we are with our students if we did not have international students as part of our curriculum. It’s vital.
What are the main perils for students that you focus on for when they graduate?
They have to understand that this world is changing and it changes very fast. One of the aspects that helps that change is technology. They need to comprehend the threat that comes from all the devices they are using to get their job done. It’s what we refer to as the cyber realm or cyber warfare. When people look at the strength of our military they’re not going to be willing to take us on directly so they’re going to find other ways to do it as people have done in the past. We have to be able to adjust to that.
We try to get everybody to learn that the education you get here does not stop here. Keep expanding your horizons - that’s the only way you’ll stay effective and efficient as a military officer.
Do you maintain contact with graduates after they leave the college?
Not as much as we would like to. We have the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation which supports us in what we do. They send out newsletters and various forms of information. We do ask the students that after they have been gone from here six months to respond to questions from us like “what was the education here like, was it good enough, did we miss anything out?” But generally we don’t get that much feedback. Some graduates will come back and visit and speak to their old professors. We’d like more.
The relationship between the US and UAE has reached a stage of maturity and what could be a model of a relationship. How can educational institutions in both countries capitalize for common interest and mutual benefit?
By an increased level of exchanges with more officers going to the UAE and more UAE officers coming here. That’s really what’s required. We need to see what you’re doing and you need to see what we’re doing. By the increased level of interaction we increase the level of understanding and that’s always a good thing.
The UAE plays a vital role in humanitarian aid worldwide. Your thoughts?
I think it’s great. The world’s a tough place and those in the UAE in particular live in a very tough neighborhood but when you go out and do humanitarian-type events people look at your differently. Here’s an example – we did not have good relations with Indonesia prior to the tragic tsunami, the tidal wave that hit them in 2004. But because we had a large presence in the region we helped them with a lot of humanitarian assistance and it completely changed the attitude of most Indonesians to the US. They now realized that all the things they thought they knew about Americans were not necessarily the truth. It’s the same with what the UAE is doing with humanitarian efforts. The more you go out there and say, “I’m a human being just like you and I care about you”, it changes things and makes the world a better place. Some say the military shouldn’t be doing it, but who else can? Who else other than the military has the ability to get there, to protect themselves and get the job done. There’s no-body else.
The UAE has recently established its National Defense College. How important is this college in supporting national security and stability and to what extent can it help train leadership from other countries?
It goes back to education. We have training and that prepares you for what you’ll have to do and you have education which prepares you for whatever happens. And as we know, what we think is going to happen rarely occurs. We have to have the ability to adjust and it would be the same for militaries around the world. Whatever your government tells you to do, you have to have the ability to go there, figure out what the problem is and how to fix it. It may not be strictly a military problem either; there may be many other facets. When you try to fix something solely with a military solution it’s probably wrong. It makes your military in the UAE and ours in the US much more effective. Our problem is we’ve had people operating in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past six, eight, ten years, who think they have all the answers. They don’t. They need to know what comes next. Many of our officers ‘didn’t know how much they didn’t know’ until they came to our school.
Many countries are keen to send students to your college. What are the benefits for the international students?
They gain exposure to the America culture. It enables them to understand so many things. There are mis-perceptions out there about what American culture really is and what happens in America. A lot of this is due to the stupid things Hollywood puts out and some people think that what they see in the movies is all there is to America. It’s not true. It would be the same if I saw a movie about the UAE. I wouldn’t know about it. You have to look at the world through the eyes of the person you are talking to if you want to know what they’re about.
Do you think international information warfare represents a major new challenge to the armed forces in general?
Yes. Definitely. Information warfare hinges on an audience. If that audience doesn’t understand what you’re saying but if you present that information in a way that they don’t agree with or they can’t understand you’re not effective at all with your information warfare. Here’s an example from Iraq – we were trying to put out information to the communities and we made up these nice professional-looking color picture-documents. But the locals didn’t like it. We started looking at how they got their information what was credible to them. Maybe it was just conveyed on a piece of paper, but it was much more effective. We have some people who think they’re very smart and that a product will work. It won’t - it must be what the people are used to and what they like. A lot of Americans doesn’t understand that or don’t agree with it – and they’re not right.
What are the difficulties and challenges that face the foreign students?
Much centers on the language. Students do have to pass a language test before they come here so of course they understand English. However, there’s understanding a language and being very, very familiar with that language. There are some difficult areas in that regard when they are here. They’ll also have to participate in discussions and write effectively in English. That can present difficulties at times. But we have people who help with all that. The language side can be difficult but the students are all doing well.
Brigadier General William F. Mullen
Brigadier General Mullen was commissioned via the NROTC program at Marquette University in 1986. He was assigned to 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines in Kaneohe Bay, HI where he served as a rifle and weapons platoon commander, and Battalion training officer.
He was transferred to the Marine Corps Security Force Battalion, Pacific at Mare Island, CA where he served as a platoon commander, executive officer and Commanding Officer.
During this period he deployed to Operation Desert Shield.
After attending the Advanced Artillery Officer course at Fort Sill, Oklahoma 1993, he was transferred to 2nd Battalion and was assigned as the Commanding Officer of Fox Company.
He participated in Operation Sea Signal in 1994.
From 1996 to 1999 he served as the Inspector-Instructor for Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 24th Marines in Milwaukee.
In early 1999 he was selected to be the Marine Aide to the President.
He joined Advanced Warfighting school in 2001, and after that reported to the Joint Operations Division of the Joint Staff, J-3 for duty in the PACOM and CENTCOM sections. He then served as the Executive Assistant to the Deputy Director for Regional Operations until 2004.
In late 2004 he was chosen to be the Operations Officer for Regimental Combat Team – 8, and deployed to Fallujah, Iraq from 2005 to 2006.
Attended the Naval War College at Newport, RI from 2008 to 2009, followed by command of the Marine Corps Tactics and Operations Group in 2009.
Since July 2012 he has served as the Commanding General, Education Command and President, Marine Corps University, as part of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command at Quantico, VA. He was promoted to his current rank on 12 Oct 12.
Brigadier General Mullen holds a BA and MA in Political Science from Marquette University, as well as an MA in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College. He is a graduate of the Airborne, Ranger, Summer Mountain Leader and Royal Marine Arctic Warfare Survival courses.
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