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Mids can apply for summer duty overseas

Starting this year, Naval Academy midshipmen will be able to volunteer to spend four weeks each summer working at American embassies and for nongovernmental organizations in developing nations.

“We are looking at opportunities anywhere overseas that is less like the United States,” academy superintendent Vice Adm. Jeffrey Fowler told the academy’s Board of Visitors on Monday. “We are not looking for them to go to Paris. We are looking to go to [places like] Senegal, to Africa.”

Naval Academy spokeswoman Deborah Goode said that sophomores, juniors and seniors would be eligible to apply for overseas duty, that the opportunity would be available regardless of the applying midshipmen’s major, and that each application would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis “to achieve the objectives of cultural awareness, regional expertise or language proficiency in appropriate organizations and settings.”

Goode estimated that from 10 to 12 midshipmen would be picked each summer and that embassy duty would be one way to satisfy a professional development requirement that every midshipman must meet.

“An embassy experience is one of the many kinds of opportunities being developed to increase the cultural awareness of our future officers,” according to a statement released by the academy Tuesday. “At an embassy, midshipmen will have the opportunity to participate with an interagency team and develop improved understanding of military service or agency capabilities and cultures.”

Midshipmen have worked at American embassies before, but only as part of language immersion programs in support of a course of foreign language study at the academy, and not as part of a more general effort to enhance cultural awareness, Goode said.