0:04 good afternoon and welcome to the way to wow show people making money i am your host kevin bemel here every week uh on wednesday 12 30 pacific time 3 30 p.m on the east coast and then you know an hour in for the uh the two uh internal time zones we can hopefully we can all figure that out um i think one day i'm gonna have to do uh you know a show just about how time zones came into being um but uh you know we're not gonna we're not gonna spend time uh on that today um really what i wanna do is is get
0:40 right to our guest uh on the show today um dr jenna i got my tongue over my eye teeth i can't see what i'm saying dr jennifer spielman um jennifer is an associate professor of history at the merchant marine academy in great neck new york that's out on long island for those of you who are from the new york area um what what we in the jewish world call the old country [Laughter] uh great neck is a is a big large large
1:15 uh um community of jewish people there um so jennifer welcome to the show welcome to the way to wow show people making money so nice to have you on the show good thank you so much for the invitation kevin i really appreciate it and i you know i should also mention um jennifer is the vice president of the society for military history and um is it another another year you'll be fleeting up to president right another year we have a two-year apprenticeship as vice president and then uh ready to take the reins uh as president for two years so i've been working towards that
1:50 and having a fantastic experience with that yeah so um that's kind of like how it works in naval aviation if you're at a squadron you're the exo for two years and then when the squadron co leaves you fleet up to the to the co position and and you get that that kind of mentoring for the two years you're in the number two slot um and and uh it's it's really uh it's really quite nice a good experience way to make it work so um so i and i you know i'll just a little side note um as a navy chaplain um one of the billets we are at
2:25 least technically eligible for is the chaplain billet at the merchant marine academy and i remember early on in my career talking to the detailer because i thought wow wouldn't it be fantastic to go to you know this this service academy that i honestly didn't really know that much about him you hear about the naval academy everybody knows annapolis um and they said well you know not too many jewish sailors at the merchant marine academy probably not the best place for us to put a rabbi you know where you'll have like four or five people and there's also a huge you know jewish community right there that that
3:01 they can access i'm like ah shoot i know the first time i was in the chapel at king's point i did not realize they have a very unique um altar which rotates so it has three different rotations depending on who's worshiping in the temple so i would i would invite the next time you're in new york to come by um because it really is quite quite a unique chapel it's very beautiful yeah i'd love to i'd love to well so now let's let's get let's get to you and you know as i as i mentioned you know in the email exchange we have talking about the the show um you know you're you're in in
3:36 academia um and i and i you know in talking to people um you know i think academia still carries a certain cachet in terms of a career um somewhat unattainable um to to a lot of people and and so i want to let's go kind of back to the beginning um and as a child what did you have professional aspirations and if so what were they yeah and what's interesting i think probably also as a federal employee i should say initially that these are of
4:11 course all my my views and certainly not the views of the federal government or the department of transportation um but you know i was reflecting and really thinking on my career you know as when you invited me to talk about mrs gay and one of the things that occurred to me is that you know as a child um i wasn't really exposed to anyone as a professor my family was not kind of in that that career realm um but what they did do for me um my my mom worked in a bank my dad was a food service director at a local high school but what they did allow me to do is really encourage me to pursue individual interests and the
4:46 thing of course i loved most growing up was reading and i am a little fuzzy even when i look back on that i it came very naturally and then all of a sudden i was somehow in an advanced reading class and then i had grandparents who were very close by maternal grandparents who were absolutely encouraging me and in all of that and so it was just um there wasn't an expectation necessarily that i would go into academics but that i would be encouraged to look at my interests and you know intellectual curiosities and anything that came up you know we would would be encouraged and i have many many memories my
5:21 grandmother i stayed with her during the summer while my mom was working and we would walk down to the library and she would you know ask me about different books and i do have such great grateful memories of my time with her because she was one of five children in the great depression and she was the only one of the five who graduated from high school at the time and she always took great pride in that and really encouraged me academically and intellectually so i just had a very strong relationship with her but then they also were very um firm believers in kind of understanding
5:56 our country's history and traveling to visit different historical sites and sort of understanding that and i grew up in central pennsylvania just outside of harrisburg pennsylvania and we would regularly take trips to gettysburg national battlefield my grandfather would take us to philadelphia and you know see the liberty bell so that was sort of a part of growing up just being aware historically um and being encouraged but not necessarily at that point like i never thought oh i'm going to go in to you know to college or anything at all like that and i thought maybe maybe teach elementary school maybe middle school you know then maybe high school
6:32 so it kind of changed as i am continuing but i do just give extraordinary credit to that kind of very nurturing intellectual environment um and in some ways the funny thing um my grandmother almost you know she did not work outside the home but she was always my biggest supporter when i sort of made different decisions she was always a fan and always encouraging me and that i'm very very grateful for that but i think she had that intellectual drive too but because of the time period she grew up in it was it was sort of limited but but she was very proud of her high school diploma yeah
7:07 interesting that that that's where your intellectual curiosity started and then historically i think that has been the case if you i know you know examining the careers of two you know very well-known army generals um dwight eisenhower and george patton both of them read voraciously um even starting as children and and much of their um uh whatever academic success they had came from that base of having read you know so many books so what kind of books did you read as as a child i was uh
7:45 devoted to the nancy drew series uh and the miss jace i i read all of her books and i remember one time and i know it's awful to say because some of these bookstores are not there anymore but um i think it was like adult was it wait walden walden books or b dalton books it used to be a little bookstore like in that mall but they always would go and of course every time we would go you know my grandma went oh do you need a new one and i would come home with my one and my mother would get very sort of upset like no don't uh you're spoiling her and my grandmother said um you never spoil a child by buying them a book so she was very adamant about that um but i loved
8:21 the nancy juice series and then i read all the little house in the prairie series you know that was you know read very quickly and then the black stallion series like absolutely devoured and i did not realize this until i moved up to new york to long island and my son you know started reading so my son's 13 now i didn't realize though that the black stallion series is set on the on the north shore of long island and that the track where the the black i guess right runs and races is belmont race track and so i just kind of excited like oh like i'm living very close to there so but i i don't know
8:56 they were some historical but there was some mystery and i just i just kept going i just never never quite stopped with that and then uh you know as i got into high school um you know more more and more kind of history interested me uh and that that was a really area where i started to kind of develop more interest and it sort of started a lot of it started with the civil war but then expanded and then by the time i graduate from college which was interesting enough of a degree in education i decided and you think i guess about certain points where you make decisions
9:31 so the initial plan was that i would get a degree in english language arts and you know teach middle school or high school and then my junior year i had a class a military history class naval history class with a female professor named carol reardon we are still to this day keep in touch and are closed and she's a former president of the society for military history so i like to think the legacy is continuing but she was a incredible role model and mentor for me and encouraged me to look to graduate school and that was really the first time i had ever
10:06 sort of thought about continuing after college i mean it wasn't just wasn't in the plan before that and she's like no no i think you know this would be a really great opportunity for you and so she was a great mentor um for me um the funniest thing of course about it was i still had no idea at that point that this was sort of a predominantly male dominated field i i enjoyed it and i i saw her as a role model you know and i but when i got to graduate school then um in philadelphia temple university i looked around the room and we had a class of 30 in that
10:41 class and i was the only female graduate student in military history and that was for the first moment it dawned on me like oh this is interesting i didn't expect this but but um you know you just kind of roll with it but the temple university i was familiar with philadelphia we had traveled there and visited there but also at the time dr russell weigley who is a very well known military historian since past but he was one of the chief advisors there and i had gone to interview and meet with him and just felt a great he was very
11:16 supportive and had a great um intellectual background but also a wonderful relationship with his graduate students and as i came to learn later on though some graduate programs were very very competitive um we're very sort of cutthroat where you know who's going to be first who's going to be last and he would have none of that it was a collaborative relationship with all the students we were working together on projects we were helping each other out everyone had different strengths and weaknesses but you know you don't always know this up front but later on in my career i began to understand what an important
11:52 role he played defining the culture there and one which could have been again as an only the only female in that kind of culture um could have been very challenging but was a very collaborative and supportive uh relationship so that's sort of the step from you know central pennsylvania to eastern pennsylvania um to to begin that program and that was just an incredible intellectual experience because at that point then you know it's not just the classroom but it's the entire city that now becomes um you know a way to learn more about history and and philadelphia was just a wonderful opportunity for me
12:27 absolutely so i want to take just a little bit of you know you you mentioned a couple of times that you thought well maybe you teach elementary school or or your high school something why and it doesn't sound like teaching at the university level or the college level was was on the you know agenda so why why you know the you know um primary and secondary school level but not you know the higher education level i mean and i'm curious to know was was that in part because you're female
13:04 or did that not really have anything to do with it yeah i think there was a mix of that i think one i i just didn't have a lot of exposure um my mother graduated high school you know she had not gone to college so there wasn't a lot of exposure with that and then i do have a very clear memory i tell my female midshipmen all the time about this i walked into the guidance counselor's office at high school and i said oh you know i'm kind of thinking about teaching should oh that sounds good we'll get your schedule set up no need to worry about calculus because you're certainly not going to need that and man i look back on that and think
13:39 not good like to assume a woman wasn't going to need those kind of math skills and i i mean maybe i would have maybe i wouldn't have but i those are the things that you don't think of in the time the guidance counselor is telling you this and you're thinking this but i think um you're looking at career possibilities uh the one subject that i was very interested in was historic preservation um but i did not have the science you have to have a very rigorous science background to go into restoration and preservation and architecture and and i i had none of that so that even though i
14:15 was interested that career doors were was closed to me and i i do tell my female midshipmen you don't know where you're going to go in the future but you want to be well prepared for any eventuality and i do have some some regrets i think about that i would have you know maybe like to gone in that direction a little bit but um you know you learn you learn from that but i think there was some issues of gender involved yeah i and my my daughter will be starting high school this coming fall and so we went and toured the school she's going to go to and and it is it is interesting um
14:50 um there was a very very heavy emphasis on college preparation and for whatever reason my daughter at least up till now has it has expressed a desire not to go to college she's much more interested in you know starting a business that kind of thing um and i you know i raised that question uh you know to the people giving the tour and and and it was like you know click on the light bulb you know that they're not everybody here may be college bound and they and interestingly enough they have a very robust robust sort of um i don't want to call it uh
15:25 technological but they have all kinds of more sort of almost trade oriented programs as well um that that are available and you know it begs the question of you know high schools in general i wonder how they're dealing with that issue now absolutely and i think i think you're right on about that because you know after world war ii we saw this great expanse of higher education and a great great need for college professors because so many more students were coming into college i i wonder now if we're actually going to see a contraction of that because of the price point which
16:00 is rising um but also as kind of younger people in my my own sense thinking about this you know thinking about what's the best path you know towards a career that they do enjoy and maybe it's not so much a traditional um you know college path so i myself for my son try to keep a very open mind about all sorts of possibilities and how you accomplish that and also recognize that you know my own sort of securities path you know in some ways i i kind of kept going you know like i didn't stop but i kept going um but i also never really was thinking this is the
16:35 job i want to do it was always more sort of like intellectually interested and let's give it a shot let's try it out and see what what happens um and then i sort of look back on this thinking oh my gosh i got like a lot of times i was in the right place at the right place at the right time um but i know that there have been you know there's it's very difficult in terms of hiring full-time hiring like today so i i don't know that i would i think there are a lot of different options today for younger people and um but i i was interested i you know wanted to to pursue that and just kind of see where where it would take me and i just sort of kept kept going because initially the plan was i would just get a master's
17:11 degree and that was a two-year 30 credit program that i would just do that and then look for a job after that and the interesting thing is you'd ask me two questions about like decision moments you know different two paths before you and how do you choose the path so i'd finish my master's degree at temple university a wonderful time i actually met a very nice uh graduate student there um my husband and uh so it's nice to kind of share we had similar interests and he was also in the history program so we kind of moved through and got engaged and i was offered a job at the pennsylvania state archives and i had done an internship
17:46 there i enjoyed that sort of um you know a little bit more public history program very much so we had a number of genealogists who come in and i work with them many of them looking at you know for civil war ancestors and you know i really enjoyed my my time there and you know so here's the offer because they did want you to have a master's degree in history so i checked that off the list and you know okay you know am i going to do this we're going to move home kind of start this new phase and then i got the letter that i've been accepted into the phd program at temple and that they had decided they had approved
18:22 funding so a teaching assistant chip so i would get some funding to continue that so the masters i sort of paid for myself but then there was funding opportunities and i thought at that point well you know don't look the gift horse in the mouth i gotta try it you know see what happens but i do laugh looking back on it too again um so the funding was fifteen thousand dollars a year and that you know seems so small at the time but it meant you know i didn't have a car living in the city like i could pay for for rent and um food and i wanted to to give it a shot so i i declined the full-time job offer with the state of pennsylvania uh and much to
18:58 my mother's dismay because she wanted me to come back closer to there i mean we're still pretty close but um and just decided to keep keep going on that so it was kind of unknown path but i felt like i wasn't ready i wanted to take the opportunity i want to see where it was going to lead me so i guess a little bit of risk risk-taking as well but i just knew that i really enjoyed that i've been having a great time part of the graduate funding was that i was in the classroom quite a bit i was grading student exams the professor would teach and then i would do small review sessions and break out you know sessions with the students but then i was also
19:34 the primary grader of all the exams and quizzes and things so but i i enjoyed it i had a great time um philadelphia is a very diverse city still still is today of course um and to have that kind of exposure and with the students and also just you know get them excited about some of the history classes and the classes that were always always full were the world war ii class and the civil war class and there was sort of a waiting list i mean because there were more students he wanted to take it than there were seats and um you know he's kind of seeing that intellectual excitement and it's just fun to be be a part of that and be involved in that and many of them had
20:10 you know you know ancestors who had served or just curious or um you know a lot of personal family stories that came out of that and they just wanted to learn more about that and connect to their past and in that way so it was a very exciting opportunity again i had no idea where it was going to go but i kept with it there were many of us in that initial class of 30 who did not graduate with the degree so they would typically have like three years of class work and then you had original research and a dissertation to write you know somewhere in the 200 to 300 page range and that typically
20:46 took another two years maybe sometimes three years to finish and a lot of people dropped off at that point because you had to be self-disciplined and you know do do your research and do the drafts and all that was sort of on you and i do give extraordinary credit my husband and i were married at the time now both going through the program together and we sort of kept each other you know moving forward and didn't want to give up on that and i know how hard that he had worked and he was supporting me so we really blessed in that regard too to kind of keep us going we had almost no money between us but we we were determined to finish it and it was a
21:21 priority for you know for both of us so we um i guess about 30 maybe there are about 10 of us who do graduate from that class of 30. so you know during this the the three years you're going through the phd program um you were also you said a teaching assistant i i assume you were teaching undergraduates uh yes right so um what where where was the um stimulus if you will for continuing on because i can imagine
21:57 that um you know so so many professions there is a uh an element of um almost boredom or not boredom is the wrong word sameness right um you know people uh people talk about how exciting for example the film business is um and then you invite them to a film set let me see how much time is spent doing what appears to be nothing it's it's it's can be mind-numbingly dull on a set so and i think most
22:33 professions have that aspect so where where did the the impetus come from to to stay engaged to keep undergraduates engaged you know all of all of that part of it yeah and so and with like the uh the schedule so what would happen is we would you know i would ta an undergraduate class during the day because they would have their day classes then um that was usually like three days a week and then our graduate classes were at night so we had classes from like five to seven or seven to nine so our classes were at night and then also on top of that to pay the
23:09 rent uh typically a lot of people worked part-time so i was working part-time actually this is a very interesting point at the philadelphia jewish archives center oh wow which has recently like very recently just moved into temple university's main library collection which is really exciting because i think they have a tremendous program um there but so i would work there probably i don't know maybe 10 depending hours a week you know but so there was kind of the work aspect of it the undergraduate responsibilities and then your own graduate work um and i again just credited so much the the kind
23:44 of leadership at temple um in the history department was very collaborative so after class you know nine o'clock at night there was a little irish pub down down the street and we would usually gather there so the other students were supporting you you were interested in what they were working on we formed a graduate student association which was a great help to kind of keep people moving forward with that actually still today it's called the barnes club and they have a graduate student conference each year where they have you know not just the philadelphia colleges but from all over the country you know to present research and to get feedback so we we came together to help
24:20 each other out again extraordinary um you know emotional and intellectual support from from my husband at that point and the fact that every day was so different and you came away from all of it thinking like wow i learned this today or i learned that today and um that that was really powerful for us so it was definitely sort of the life of the mind you know if we could pay the rent and buy the groceries that was great and it's funny because my son just had a career fair in his middle school so again like seventh graders you know 12 13 year old and the question they kept asking me was about money and i i i kind of had to
24:57 laugh a little bit because in the entire time we were in philadelphia money doesn't it wasn't really part of it it was like we were just enjoying the experience so much like oh at some point we are going to have to get a real job but and maybe we should have planned a little bit better but it really wasn't it was not the central feature and then some of the students you know at the middle school look very disappointed and they're you know that's not what they want to talk about so i'm i am interested how you know this kind of younger generation they are looking at you know what's the the financial part of this and when i say to them like i never even thought
25:33 about it they can't believe it but it's it's really actually true we that was not a major priority for us um and we just want to make sure we could pay pay the rent and all that but um it was just that in that engagement and that kind of social aspect and i to be totally honest we had finished the program and we're like okay we can't we're not going to be in philadelphia anymore so we're looking for other jobs and i i feel like tears running down my face when we laughed because it was such and i look back on that it was such a special time you know in our lives to have that um but you know you do progress in your career with with more you know decision making and things like that um but then i was very fortunate i
26:11 received an offer to teach in a college uh it was the military college of south carolina it was the citadel and this this is a state state college in in south carolina but they do have a regimental and military system in place all of the students there are in the rotc program they do not all go into the active duty military though after they graduate about a third i say about a third about a third would go into that but they were all rotc and they were in uniform and regimented and uh uh you know so i kind of entered and
26:47 entered that and that was uh it was the first time i've been i outside of pennsylvania i was head south you know and this um opportunity and the first memory i had with south carolina is they had just discovered through the funding um for clive kessler they just discovered the css hunley the confederate submarine had just been discovered and they there were several remains of confederate sailors on board and they had a funeral at magnolia cemetery complete with like every reenacting group you know in the in the in south
27:22 carolina and you know as far as i could get and there were you know women wearing black fails and funeral procession and horse-drawn cat i mean that and that's where we're like where what what's going on here it was a whole new venue but um again that the students there were tremendous and um i had not worked you know i work with kind of an urban undergraduate population and now i was going to a southern student population and they were tremendous i mean i was learning so much from them and i again very very positive memories there so that was sort of how i you know got
27:57 into that the college aspect of that and we were there for um for about nine years and spent quite a bit of time in in south carolina so how did so you went from you know um you know mid-atlantic urban mid-atlantic urban and then all now and and and civilian and all of a sudden not only are you in a comp a very different cultures the south but you're also in the military culture as well how was that transition you know which which you were making and
28:32 you're making a pr a professional transition as well right so so three transitions if you will happening at the same time yes yes and of the um i try to think the exact number now there were maybe about 125 126 faculty members at the citadel it has about a 2 000 um around 2 000 in the student body so it's a fairly small college but of 126 i would say there were about six female faculty members um at that college and that was also um you know kind of a different environment um
29:07 i think you know for me was this did the citadel admit women at that time or was this before they admitted women so they they had started just started so that was like 1991 the first female um members showed up and that was i was not their time so i was down in 2001 so that's when i started there so it had been about 10 years um however many of the faculty who had sort of been through that talked about the extreme challenges you know for the students for the female students for the rest of the student body there was there was quite a media
29:42 um tension on everything you know in and out and there were protests both supporting the female midshipmen there were protests against the female midshipmen there was an extraordinary the administration was spending um a lot of money on legal fees to deny female admission so the alumni i mean it was it was just a very very tumultuous time and so by the time i got there about 10 years later there were close to i would say about 8 female students so it had
30:18 to have that first 10 years but there was still challenges there were still a lot of challenges with that and i think you know as i had had a great female mentor professionally i was hoping that i could also provide sort of mentorship um as a female faculty member there um although i would have to say many many times i had um male midshipmen who just for whatever reason found they could talk to me about things um and so i i was hoping that would be you know a mentor for them as well and one of the issues that that came up at that particular college was
30:54 many students had had parents who would come their grandparents who had come there there was a family legacy involved and then i had students who said this is not what i want though this is what the family wants but not what i want and how do i tell them that this is not what i want and many difficult conversations there so again hoping also to keep in mind you know from my own son that you know children need to make individual decisions about where they want to go but there was a very strong um support you know the community like like i and i always tell the story and the
31:29 students have had kind of hard to believe but so every friday afternoon uh the regiment would have a parade uh in the afternoon and typically you would get somewhere around six or seven hundred members of the community who would show up to support the students and and be there at that event and so the sort of the town gown relationship down there was extraordinary because there was great support uh for the school and for its history and for the for the midshipmen um and that that you know sort of looking at that and as again the initial kind of
32:04 protest aspect um subsided as we had an amazing female midshipman who came in um you that sort of translated into great community support and that that made a big difference because even though it was a difficult and challenging program to know that the community was coming to support them and you know it had a very special place in charleston in the hearts of charlestonians there and i you know i talked about the they had a holiday concert the the regimental band and the choir and you know did a concert they had to extend the concert to three days
32:39 because there was standing room only because so many people would come to support that and that that's that was a very special aspect about that school um and not you know not all colleges have that but you could definitely see that so i think um that was a great learning lesson for me to see how important it is for for students to feel valued and um you know that the work they're doing is is really appreciated um both from their faculty members uh outsider classes and also the community at large so it was it was a wonderful wonderful experience i really enjoyed that and we were there again about about nine years and that then we had our son
33:14 at the very end of that and then you know the question about how do you move closer to family um you know how do you balance that and then of course one of the other difficult decisions professionally is you know for both you know men and women how do you balance the family work life and how do you find balance for that and at that time we had family uh in the northeast and you know you know balancing all of that it seems sort of like the right time to to come up and um you know the the federal government i always like to joke that um the federal government you know
33:49 made us an offer we couldn't refuse but we were very excited about the opportunity to to join the team at the merchant marine academy and the offer i i was extended and offered as a professor in addition my husband was also extended a tenure track position as a professor and that that's the other thing for folks who are perhaps not as familiar with the higher education there is in fact a two-tiered employment system that one is called a tenure-check professor who has job security you know health health benefits retirement uh and
34:24 that you are teaching you know consistently and then there is sort of this adjunct professor which is a more part-time professor if you have extra classes that you need filled but we're just pu per class and we won't extend to you sort of full benefits uh and that still continues today and um is a challenge i think shall we say um and so when you know that the federal government was willing to extend both you know tenure check full-time positions to both my husband and myself we felt like that was a really important
35:00 professional move and it also allowed us to balance kind of the family time with our son who's quite young he was two at the time to balance that uh in a way that you know hopefully was good for him and and for us and and also for our careers at the same time but that's a challenging piece of all this especially when you know they're quite young so and i'm i may be wrong about this but my sense of academia is for for a married couple for both um spouses to be able to you know get to get a job even in the same city let alone at the
35:36 same college or university would seem to me to be pretty unusual how were you able to i because i take it your husband taught at the citadel as well so how were you able to work that out both going to the citadel and then you know going from there to the merchant marine academy i think the technical odds are a million to one pretty much on that um so my husband had worked he had worked at the college of charleston when we're in charleston um he was there again what they call a visiting professor so he was not a full-time professor but they had so many extra students that they needed
36:11 additional classes taught and since i had the tenure check position and i had the health insurance right that was the important aspect of this um because even but you know by this time even they're like oh we're not really worried about money like like we are now like we need to have a mortgage we need to have a house and we need to have a car and we need to have health insurance um so it was fine because i had sort of been able to to have that um so he had taught at the college of charleston and enjoyed that very much um but then as you know we want to see you know both of our careers progress in advance and you know there are limitations to that so you know there
36:46 are only certain classes you're going to teach and you know that that becomes more challenging you know we had put nine years into that and we're so ready for the next step and when and again sometimes it's like you're just at the right time in the right place um it's hard to explain you know sometimes maybe you're just guided there um but at that point there were you know these hiring cycles come in waves because oftentimes they're hiring several people who are fairly young and then they kind of make you know their way through the department and to retire at a similar time and that's what was happening there's a very large turnover at the
37:21 merchant marine academy at that time period a number of professors had retired and one of them had taught american history which i taught in american military history and naval history and then the other one had taught world history and european history and that was my my husband's field so it was it was you know million to one odds but again we were like let's take let's take a chance here let's see what's going to happen uh and so we come up i got the job offer the other faculty member was retiring you know there was a job search for that um and he i started in this in july and then sort of that following june um he had applied and he
37:57 got the other position so he was he it was quite a moment i really will never never forget that moment because we couldn't quite believe it but we're just thrilled beyond belief to um to have that opportunity and actually that one of the nicest things one of my colleagues said to me and because i always do worry about this because you want to be very professional you know obviously you have that relationship but i wouldn't have even known you two were married i think that's good i think that's good because you know we try to be very much professional and sometimes we disagree we you know in meetings we have different opinions on things and
38:32 you know try to try to work on that but um you know that has given us incredible uh ability to you know continue our scholarship and kind of his historical inquiry to also you know understand that we have those two full-time jobs and i would say again this was almost 10 years in you know having after we graduated from grad school and i do talk about perseverance and dedication because there were many moments that we were like you know do we you know do we still try this you know how do we how do we work this and we we gave it 10 years and it did finally
39:08 kind of come our way but it was not always easy and it did take a long time so again so my students like wow that's you know that's that's a long time to be dedicated to something i think again just because we both really believed in how important historical identity is about you know our country our values here how do we pass that on to future generations um what happens if your historical location or site um is is lost i mean that history is lost it's never recovered again so i think we both felt pretty passionate about about trying to do that and continue to do that and
39:46 we've we've been very fortunate in that regard and students are at the richard marine academy so this is a federal service academy so we have um there's a quota system in looking at applications because they want to make sure the entire united states is represented at the school so oftentimes what happens a lot of students from new york who apply because it's closer but they don't always all get in because they're also bringing students from across the country and from california and you know from from texas and you know so that the whole country is represented there um with that and i do find you know they're coming in and they they are thinking very seriously because
40:21 they want to serve their country and we talk about you know what percentage today uh of the american population is serving in the military and i think it's around one percent and you know so they also are thinking about things in a very mature way and understanding that that sacrifice um is you know going to entail um you know not having always the freedom to to be with family and do that and um so i think we take that pretty seriously and have been able to serve our country in this capacity even though i've never been in fact they do do military myself
40:57 but i feel very proud that we've been able to work with these great young men and women to help them on that journey and every once in a while i'll get an email from from one of the grads which is great and a couple weeks ago i got from one of my former students uh they're just feeling like we just saw the the buoy for the uss monitor and you know we're just going by that we saw that i thought of your class and i hope to let you know so that's been very nice and we we do incorporate a lot of um leadership lessons in historical case studies and of course they're reading about you know different time periods and different men and women and decisions they've made and that also helps them to think about their own leadership uh and to grow a little bit i
41:33 think in that way so that's that's been a really fun intellectually fun way to look at things but you know often it is kind of yeah i can't believe so we've now been at the academy for 11 years and i'm sort of stunned by that as well how long we've been there so i i know in in my own life i live in los angeles i live in west los angeles um you know a good example is last night i was at an event a charitable event there were 1200 people there and um as far as i know i was the only veteran
42:09 in the room right um and many of the people who knew me knew you know i had been in the navy um and they find it somewhat difficult to you know cross with what we you know that that sort of military civilian divide right um and and i i see that i've seen that throughout the 14 years that you know i was in the military both you know active duty and and reserves and and it's one of my um i don't know what you would call it but i've i've worked all my career to
42:44 help bridge that divide because it's not like it was you know 75 years ago where whatever we had 16 million people in uniform at a time when there was not even you know 160 million people in the country right so 10 12 percent of people were in uniform not to mention all the people who worked for the dod and worked in defense by all that kind of stuff right so um how how did have you seen and you mentioned i think neither you nor your husband were ever in the military so how has has that um aspect impacted um
43:19 not maybe not so much your career per se but your you know you were teaching at the citadel which is also very military-oriented uh obviously the marine merchant marine academy very military-oriented as well how has that issue affected the dynamics of of your work you know as profess as a professor as you know someone who um you know mentors and counsel students would you talk about that a little bit yeah there's i think there always is a bit of a tension between sort of civil military um pool you know between between one and
43:54 the other um i think you know that the issue of certainly of uh kind of respecting people's decision uh that they're gonna serve their country and the sacrifices that entails i think that is well worth keeping in mind there are times of course i don't always you know personally agree with some of the decisions that were made but kind of understanding that again that kind of the larger concerns in terms of defense and kind of decision making especially at the academy very much like how how do you support overseas operations how you support sealift operations that you have to have a merchant range to be
44:30 able to to support you know troops that are being sent overseas and so that becomes uh you know kind of a bigger picture with that so we have tried to to be very respectful and appreciative and kind of understanding the larger mission um that we are supporting through our positions uh and then again sometimes you know personal feelings you know kind of one way or the other um you know that's not something i would necessarily bring into the classroom you know to discuss with the students they're certainly intellectual and critical and can analyze and also make um you know decisions on that in terms of like administrative um
45:05 policy and things like that um but i think you know just understanding that you know maybe while that's not a decision that you would make in terms of serving to be very respectful of those who have made that decision and we have continued to try it here and again i would think again sort of the younger level uh to talk about the importance um of what that has had in terms of our history like for those who have served and what the impact that is for us um who have not and how we maintain um the democracy in the united states and so that has been a big topic that we like to to emphasize and um it was just again
45:42 kind of looking at my son's middle school and i've encouraged our department of naval science chair um to go in for a career day as well and i talked to him afterwards about that and he said yeah i'm always surprised he said because again you know 12 and 13 year olds they've never even thought about the military as a possible career and it you know it's not sort of one way or the other it's not like you know supporting it or not support is like it's not even a thought and so he's been we've been active in trying to kind of bring that as well you know there are possibilities and there are ways to serve your country
46:17 and we do have a number of students who also serve in the coast guard uh upon graduation so kind of just looking at the variety of options open so i you know tried to balance uh the civil military aspect of that but i think again just respecting the fact that you know what we ask our military to do and the sacrifices to make um so that we can maintain the democracy in the united states i think is a really key um emphasize what we emphasize what we really try to teach with our you know the students who are at the college but also students that we encounter especially you know in the
46:53 community as well and that the there's there's not always this kind of understanding like in charleston there's sort of a larger percentage of south carolinians who were serving in the military and there was a sort of a stronger connection and i would say in new york it's a smaller percentage and there's there's not as much knowledge and kind of information about like what the academy does and and the graduates and what they're doing so we're just trying to be ambassadors for that um because we also live we live in the community but we also work here so we've tried to over the last couple years really help expand that discussion
47:30 and i i know from the service members perspective i've encountered many who were um anywhere from you know dismissive of the so-called you know civilian support the you know thank you for your service they they view that as being you know not genuine to openly hostile to to civilians and i i i oftentimes will at least attempt to counsel them you know okay we take an oath to defend the constitution and and but
48:05 are we really it's it's a piece of paper you know that we're defending or is it what that paper stands for which is our fellow citizens and how as you pointed out our democracy etc and and is the defense of our country does it have meaning outside of the defense of our fellow americans right so i'm wondering um how do the students respond to you um you know as a civilian and as a civilian who is teaching you know military history right it's like i i could imagine some of them would say
48:40 you know egregious things like you know who are you to be you know teaching this what do you know about it you know that kind of thing so really absolutely no i know that's a that's an excellent point because sometimes you um you know you have to win a little trust uh and sometimes that takes a little bit of time um but i think one of the things that surprises them and i'm very very personally sort of proud of a program that we set up at the academy it is a staff ride program to visit gettysburg national battlefield and you know kind of growing up i had a lot of exposure there what what surprised me at king's point
49:16 so we're in new york so we're about four it's about a four-hour drive when i take students there we typically will stay the weekend um at gettysburg and then come back and so i had first broached this idea so my my thought was that we would take a small group of seniors you know who are about to step into leadership positions we take a small group down and you know stop it a couple points on the battlefield and kind of talk about leadership lessons that transcend um time period right and so what was happening in these areas and who was making decisions and why were they making decisions and how you know what would you do in this particular moment
49:51 and the initial so the initial proposal i put through um was met with skepticism to be honest and some of the students are very skeptical and to be honest there were some administrators who were a little bit skeptical like i don't know this doesn't seem you know they're going to be you know officers on board these container ships and that's not really what we do and and then i had an ally to be honest in the alumni association and the alumni association the class of 1962 made a very generous donation to the academy and they wanted to see some of their funding used for professional
50:26 development and for leadership development and i said to them i think we can use this as leadership development because we're going to look at difficult decisions how they're made what were the consequences and you know do we see decisions that come up currently that are kind of similar and how do we make that so they generously funded the first trip the students were oh i don't know they used the term voluntold i don't i don't like that term but there was some persuasion right you're you're going on the weekend i mean they were happy to get off campus don't get me wrong but we don't know what we're doing what's happening what does she want us to do we
51:02 have to read a book and of course the book i selected was michael showers the killer angels which was a it's a beautiful narrative of the battle of gettysburg um from sort of a senior leadership perspective and it's historical fiction the people are factual but then we don't know exactly the conversations they were having so they had to read before they they went down and it was a um transformative moment once we got there because and i i think i i kind of sent you one of the images of one of our groups i i would typically ask i mean we take somewhere around 20 students and i would
51:38 ask has anyone ever been here before and typically out of 20 students we would have two students say oh yes you know like my parents took us there you know or my school high school raised money and we went together in washington our senior year and we sort of saw this as okay this is good but but i was actually surprised how low that number was okay so when we got there then we'll do a couple different stops and we will sort of talk about what was happening that particular day that particular time you know what did people know on each side and then how do they make decisions
52:14 and all of a sudden you could start to see you know they're thinking about this in a little bit different way and of course you know one of the favorite stories we talk about is that many uh of the poor commanders in the union army were in fact west point graduates and so they had sort of a similar way of doing things and there's a comfort level when you work with people who have a similar approach to you right but why is it important to bring someone who doesn't have a similar approach in uh and of course one of the core commanders is not a west pointer and he's in fact a democrat uh a lawyer from
52:50 new york um by the name of daniel sickles and singles of course is doing everything completely differently than everyone else's and you know why is it important to get to know everyone on your team right to have everyone at the table for lunch right and and even if you don't like someone why you need to bring them into your team and start working and seeing like what ideas like they're sharing what it is you're sharing but if you don't like someone you don't think the same way and you want to exclude them all of a sudden this can have rather disastrous results as of course happens um at gettysburg when sickles decides he himself is going to position his core and not really communicate this
53:26 to the union uh general need and so obviously they start to think about like i and i say to them who do you have lunch with are you just sitting with everyone else who's on you know the football team or the soccer team or the basketball team why aren't you sitting with some of your other classmates you know how are you going to bring them into your team how are you going to form that and then you know you can just see all of a sudden they start to really to think about like what are those decisions and what kind of consequences do they have and you know am i leaving talented people out of this equation um just because like i'm much more comfortable just to sit you know with
54:01 folks that i already know and who already think like me and maybe it's a good idea to have some diversity in that uh as well so all of a sudden you just kind of see them starting to think about things and for for me personally and professionally those trips have been really a high point for me because we come back from there and they're excited in a way they weren't before because they just they don't know what to expect and and you're thinking about things differently and talking about it and you know then we'll kind of go around the room at the end or you have to have dinner together at the end and you know i said what would you learn from this
54:36 what'd you take away from it and it's it's not so much about you know the events but all of a sudden thinking about how do i build a team um you know what are my expectations how do i communicate my expectations to a team you know what information do i have am i making um decisions on the best information i have and all of a sudden like that really starts together for them and it's exciting to see that that moment so i i appreciate the class of 62 has done great service i think we have one hearts and minds that way you all said they're like hey are you going to dr schmidlin's trip to get his
55:12 first um and that's been really a proud professional moment for me and i uh you know i knew you started this initially i am really quite sort of honored to to have been elected vice president of our society and that's a tremendous professional honor we kind of oversee that and we we do publication of our quarterly journal and our membership meetings and supporting military history um but i'll tell ya you know you also get a group of 20 20 young people together out on that battlefield and um you know that's why i keep i keep doing this and why i've really enjoyed this and i've been fortunate and
55:47 lucky um but i still love it so i think i will continue for another couple years at least and see how things uh sort out with that but that's been a real a very very proud professional accomplishment that we've been able to continue that program that's wonderful i you know unfortunately the time just zoomed by we just got a couple of minutes left i want to take a couple minutes as i typically do and see if we can kind of summarize some of the the key points that that you've brought out you know over the you know course of your professional arc one of them is is you know the early
56:23 immersion in in reading and and how that you know stimulated you intellectually opened your horizons so to speak it sounds like and and and and you have that encouragement from from your grandmother it sounds like from your parents as well um and and and how important that is for children to you know be immersed in that so i think that's that's a a key um point that you brought out i think that the second one that struck me was you know you were coming through the military history you know funnel if you will at a time
56:59 when um it was there were very few women in it i think there's probably still not a whole lot of women in military history um but it sounds like you know between connecting with the women that were there but also you know looking beyond to the men that were there as as mentors as well that didn't seem to um hamper your progress but you were you were able to um work with them and and together they enhanced your progress whether they and and this is this is kind of taking all the way to the end just
57:34 because someone doesn't uh you know isn't my same you know gender or am i saying whatever we can have mentors from many and sometimes those mentors are better they challenge us in a different way that perhaps you know someone who's more like us wouldn't challenge us so i think that's that's another key point a third was was just you know kind of your perseverance like you're going to give it 10 years you know you think 10 years now seems like forever especially when you're in your 20s you know that's like another half of your life but but i mean that that person you know they
58:09 you mentioned you will you got lucky i you know we we can argue you know perseverance versus luck but luck doesn't seem to come without perseverance most of the time right um and and finally you know you were you were really i think people think of academia as as being a place where you don't take professional risks um and and yet my assessment of your career is is there were you know at least uh three two three four maybe sort of calculated professional pivots that you took that that were
58:44 risks and and you worked very hard at them and and you know they ended up you know paying dividends huge dividends in in how much you've enjoyed your career thus far and and and how you've been able to help your students help your family um and and and i think that we shouldn't overlook that even in fields where we think well there's not a lot of risk in this i'm maybe being a lawyer or a counter or whatever though those are a sure way to success but there's still sort of points where we need to make those decisions and maybe take in the sort of road less traveled to borrow a phrase or or the riskier path um maybe
59:22 that is the better way to go because it affords us greater opportunity so have i have i missed anything um do you think in in what you've said or has that been a summary i think that's an incredible summary absolutely it's really an amazing moment to kind of look back on that 25 years you know think like wow you know here i am but you know we've covered a lot of territory and um you know exciting about where the next uh several years are going and and wonder too if maybe there's another like one final kind of risk taking uh coming up there maybe i don't know but uh we'll see we'll see
59:57 how it goes but it's been it's been um an incredible journey and you know just thinking back on the the people i've had a chance to meet the young people i've had a chance to work with and and feeling you know like energized through them and there that's that's a really neat neat thing although i do i'm you know feeling my age a little bit sometimes when i'm out on those chips with them they're like i'm going out here i'm like okay i'm going to bed but i'll see you tomorrow [Music] well jennifer i i want to thank you so much for coming on the show um just your your story is is so wonderful
60:34 and like like so many of my guests we could probably talk for another you know several hours and unfortunately the time is up but thank you and hopefully we'll maybe we'll we'll check in with you down the road and and and see you know kind of where life is taking you and your family and and your professional endeavors and and kind of get an update for you from you at some point but thank you very very much um and and uh you know just just to wrap up it's it's for me to um kind of think my muse um those of you who who have seen the show before you know that uh um i was very close to my
61:10 friend marie who uh is is uh been up in heaven now for uh a few years and uh she was the epitome of um of of a gracious lady um and and someone that i i still miss on an everyday basis and so kind of in tribute to her marie i just want to remind you darling you are still my bell so jennifer again thank you so so much for coming on the show thank you all of you for watching or joining us here on the show and we will see you next week all the best thank you thanks