The naval services came together in October 2007 and established a new maritime strategy guiding the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard into the 21st Century. One of the primary tenets of the ‘‘Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Sea Power” is to promote cultural awareness among officers and enlisted so that service members are never placed in a situation where a lack of cultural understanding could jeopardize fragile partnerships with other navies.

With 90 percent of the world’s commerce travelling by sea and with a substantial majority of the world’s population living within a hundred miles of a coastline, cooperation between nations is vital to collective national security. With the emergence of new regional powers throughout the world, cooperation at sea is becoming more important in order to safeguard commercial lanes, defeat terrorism and promote regional stability.

‘‘As Midshipmen, we are the future of the Navy and the Marine Corps. Our presence will be felt in the officer corps for the next 20 to 30 years,” said Midn. 3⁄C Devereux Smith, who participated in the course. ‘‘It is in our best interest to develop ourselves culturally as part of our moral and mental development so that as junior officers we can, by our own example, lead and promote cultural awareness among our peers and subordinates.”

The primary mission of NL 485E was to develop a set of guiding principles or tools for the junior officer when cultural understanding becomes critical to mission accomplishment. The course was divided into four one-week long segments, taught by professors from multiple disciplines, to expose students to different intellectual perspectives.

The first week dealt with the anthropological side of culture and how cultures define themselves through traditions and institutions. Through the use of ethnography and cultural studies, students were introduced to prominent anthropologists such as Franz Boas and Bronislaw Malinowski. Taught by Professor Clementine Fujimura of the Language Studies Department, students gained a basic know-ledge of field work and how to observe other cultures in order to draw conclusions and learn how to influence decisions within a given culture.

The second part of course, taught by Cmdr. Tony Doran and Cmdr. Steve Trainor, dealt with culture from a psychological and sociological view-point. The class delved into how human be-ings define themselves as individuals, groups or societies and what role these groups play in the ever-changing whirlpool of culture. The week included a class trip to New York City where students broke into small groups in order to observe and study a particular culture within the city and how it interacts with other cultures.

During the third week, under the instruction of Dr. Joe Thomas of the Leadership, Ethics and Law Department, students developed and debated the theories of prominent historians and political scientists. Dealing primarily with the idea of competition and conflict in societies and civilizations, this part of the course built on the foundations established in the previous weeks so that the Midshipmen were able to develop and explain their views on the role culture plays in our world. At the end of the week, the class travelled to the Center for Advanced Operational Cultural Learning at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va., in order to examine how the Marine Corps promotes their cultural education.

The final element of NL 485E delved into the leadership side of culture, in particular how to effectively achieve operational culture change. Taught by Navy Capt. Mark Adamshick of the Leadership, Ethics and Law department, the last week was spent learning the principles of organizational change and how to achieve it without distancing or isolating the given organization. Through scenario-based learning and studying the concepts of organizational change, students added to their own ‘‘culture toolbox” the necessary tools to understand and influence change as a future officer.

Smith came away from the course feeling he learned a lot about the ever-changing nature of culture and how crucial it is to the military’s success.

‘‘It is no longer Capitalism versus Communism but the West versus the Non-Western countries,” said Smith. ‘‘Our success depends on having culturally aware Sailors and Marines so that we can continue to forge partnerships in order to defeat hostile nations or terrorist organizations and preserve our collective security.

‘‘The Naval Academy has taken the lead in educating the future officer corps in cultural understanding, and hopefully NL 485E is just the beginning.”