Menu
Menu
BLUF: If you have a problem or a change of situation, tell your academic advisor for anything academic, and tell your adjutant for anything administrative.
RMC’s former Principal, John Cowan, called RMC a “walking constitutional contradiction.” It is Canada’s only federal university, because education is a provincial responsibility. Queen’s University has a federal Charter because it predates confederation, but RMC is constituted by Act of Parliament, and Chartered to grant degrees by Act of Queen’s Park. It is both a university and a unit of the Canadian Armed Forces. You are familiar with this sort of ambiguity because it resembles the division of responsibility between DND and the CAF, with DND under the Deputy Minister (DM), and CAF under the CDS, but both responding to the Minister. You may recall that a strong DM like Robert Fowler can encroach on the prerogatives of a CDS, creating organizational problems revealed in the Report of the Somalia Commission of Enquiry. The independence of the Academic Wing of RMC is protected by Article 5 of the Collective Agreement for the UT Classification, for whom the Principal is the senior manager. The Principal reports directly to the Commandant, along with the Director of Cadets (responsible for the Training Wing), the Director of Athletics, Chief of Staff and others. The main parts of the College that you will encounter are the Academic Wing, the Training Wing, and the College Administration and support staff.
The Academic Wing, led by the Principal, includes Vice Principals for Academics and Research, Deans for the three line faculties (the Faculty of Engineering, Faculty of Sciences, and Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities) and a Dean of Graduate Studies. “Faculties” were formerly called Divisions, but the label “faculty” emphasizes that it is actually the faculty members who constitute the organization. NEPDP is a program of the Dean of Social Sciences and Humanities. In their first year at RMC, before they belong to a degree program, cadets belong to the Deans, who appoint academic advisors. In subsequent years, students belong to departments, which are responsible for delivering the requirements for each degree. RMC academic faculty is historically about 25 percent military, or as much as 40 percent military and retired military, depending on department.
The Training wing, commanded by the Director of Cadets, includes Divisions and Squadrons led by commissioned Majors and Captains with NCM support, and the Cadet Wing leadership cadre (made up of cadets), who parallel the formal leadership structure. You will recognize them on campus by “bars” on their epaulets - two for section, three for flight, four for squadron, and one five-bar Cadet Wing Commander. You’ll also see shoulder sashes for Flight Leaders and waist sashes for Squadron leaders. Each squadron has its own coloured patch. Headquarters are red and white, and staff are diamonds. You’ll see other bits of bling that you can ask the cadets about.
The College Administration and support staff includes a mixture of CAF, DND civilians and contractors. The heart of the complex is the College Orderly Room (COR) in Currie Building, below Currie Hall. That’s were you will do your in clearance and begin the usual paper chase, or the COVID variant.
To look after you during the program, you have two main points of contact. Anything academic is the responsibility of your academic advisor, who reports to the Dean of Social Sciences and Humanities (DSSH). Anything administrative is the responsibility of the Adjutant to the CO Postgraduate and Military Faculty (CO PG&MilFac). The CO PG&MilFac is also the Director of Applied Military Science, a Colonel (Combat Engineer) who runs the Technical Staff Officers’ program, the Ammunition Technical Warrant Officer program, and others.
Without going into a lengthy history, two recent events have influenced the current organizational culture at RMC, and it may be helpful to know about them. One is the Special Staff Assistance Visit (SSAV) and the other is the Report by the Office of the Auditor General (OAG). The college is also affected by persistent worries about closure and staff reductions.
SSAV Report, sometimes referred to as the Madison Report
RMC’s culture is to focus on red-coat cadets, and you may feel invisible at times, but you are an important group. The people who will want to meet you and welcome you to the program include the Commander CDA and his Chief, the Commandant and College Chief Warrant Officer (CCWO), the Principal, Commanding Officer of Post-Graduate Students and Military Faculty (CO PG&MilFac), and the Dean of Social Sciences and Humanities. Normally these are face-to-face, either office calls or social occasions. This year we expect to have VTC meetings. Dates to be confirmed. As academic advisor, I also try to schedule social events in the first few weeks to help you get to know each other and Kingston culture. We’ll see what we can do about that.
Burns and Sinfield (2016) Chapter 1: Introduction
Because you have been promoted and selected we know you have the essential skills for success. You are organized, focused, motivated, and smart. You understand the military institution and you know how to prioritize and concentrate. We aren’t seriously concerned that any of you will fail, but you may have difficulty with some aspects. In this bridging program, skim the bits you are already confident about, and ask for help where you think you need it.
Each year I get feedback from the cohort to pass onto the next group, usually verbally. This year, I’ll give you the survey results:
Find the survey results linked here.
We will also arrange for some of last year’s graduates to meet you online for a social event and off-record discussion.
(Burns and Sinfield, 2016, 10) The main source we’ll use is Burns and Sinfield, 4th edition, Essential Study Skills: The Complete Guide to Success at University. Sage. It is geared for new students but several of your predecessors have found it very useful. It’s the one book that
Whatever your current skills and abilities, you can learn new habits and techniques which will improve your performance and make this year easier for you. If you are more relaxed about learning, you will not only learn better, but you’ll have an opportunity to learn and do more in what promises to be an exceptional year in all sorts of ways. In the Burns and Sinfield text, the ‘survival kit’ section addresses basic study skills, then there are sections on each of the components that we’ll introduce in the bridging course.
It is always easier to learn the pieces when you see how they fit into the big picture. Your big picture is the Certificate of Advanced Military Studies, with four mandatory and five elective courses. Each course has a thumbnail sketch called a course description (usually a few sentences) and an overview called a syllabus or course outline (usually a few pages). The syllabus is your big picture for the course. It includes some boilerplate about how to reach your professor, the textbooks, how you will be evaluated, and an outline of the content of the course. And we are required to include a CYA paragraph about academic integrity - so you can’t say you weren’t warned. Use the course syllabus and the instructions for each assignment to keep your eye on the horizon week-to-week or while you are working on assignments. See below links to some examples of course outlines. Others are available on the course selection page.
POE328 Canadian Political Institutions, Professor Stéphanie Chouinard
POE432 Civil Military Relations, Major Mike Fejes
HIE474 Military Technology—Machines and War, Professor , Professor Michael Hennessy
Creativity can help you study in a lot of ways. You can make up mnemonics to remember lists, draw pictures or diagrams that help make sense of relationships, brainstorm to find connections and think of ideas to explore in a paper. We’ll try some of these in the critical thinking section of the bridging course.
Effective communication is a life-skill, and it’s on our PERs. Written communication can be broken down to using the right words, in effective sentences, succinct paragraphs, and an appropriate overall structure and format for the purpose and audience. You will find that each professor and subject calls for slight variations. You’ll find separate sections below on writing and speaking.
For young adults out of high school, social and emotional development is an important aspect of post-secondary education. You may be older and wiser, but social and emotional factors will affect you. Take them into account. Lean on peers.
“Learning involves an active selection of what to learn and how to learn it, it involves self-testing and review” (Burns and Sinfield, 2016, 14). Choose what you want to learn, reflect on how you learn, and consider how you are changing as a result of learning. Consciously build the reflective cycle (plan-act-observe-reflect) into your learning tasks from the micro level (reading a section, using a web search, writing an outline) a middle level (your mid-term reviews or assignment feedback) and a macro level (how does a course or the whole experience compare with your other learning - what does it mean for you?).
(Burns and Sinfield, 2016, chapter 10 “How to Harness the Digital You” and 13.1 “Personal Development Planning and Higher Education Achievement Records*)
*HEAR or Higher Education Achievement Records are a UK thing. For Canadian students, your transcript is your academic record, and whatever you add to your CV or MPRR are the remainder of the record.
Personal Development Planning gives you the opportunity to learn specific digital skills that you can apply to later professional situations. This is particularly true of information streams, research techniques, note-taking and writing tactics, and digital management of information. This is a year to reassess your habits and tools. Since you have to develop new ways of managing your world, choose the solutions that are going to work for
Start with a reliable and effective computer. This is probably not the time to switch between operating systems. If you are familiar with Windows or Mac, stick with it for the year. How to select a computer for school: Mark Kyrnin, Lifewire; Evan Thompson, Best laptops.
A good internet connection is critical. If it is unreliable where you are, consider moving. Check the links in the chain: computer-router-modem-wiring-service provider. When you do get to the RMC campus, don’t assume that the campus wifi will work for you. We just aren’t that good. Be prepared to tether or work around.
RMC uses the learning management system (LMS) Moodle. You can access it when you have a student account, which is one reason this is on a private website. Moodle is a good LMS, but might be affected by the network problems RMC has experienced over the summer. This video illustrates how it works for students. The first minute illustrates a different process for entering Moodle, but from the Dashboard on, RMC is the same.
RMC has distance courses that are designed for online delivery, but most of your courses will be on-site classroom courses that have been adapted for distance delivery (we’re calling it emergency remote teaching). Mostly, this means that you will join a video classroom on BigBlueButton, within the Moodle environment. This video illustrates how it works for students. Sometimes professors will choose to use Zoom instead, or as a backup. This means that your courses will generally be synchronous (students all in class at the same time on a schedule) rather than asynchronous (read the notes or watch a video lecture on your own time). In my courses, I use a hybrid delivery, so that students who miss the synchronous class can prepare or catch up on their own time.
There is NEPDP office space in Brant, with college system and DWAN computers and printers. Don’t assume systems or components will work. Plan for redundancy. Look after your own security online. Ask experts and observe RMC and CAF protocols. Be aware that firewalls can interfere with connectivity and get used to working around it. ALWAYS HAVE AT LEAST TWO BACKUPS. One should be automatic and cloud-based, and the other should be with you and accessible (e.g. a plug in drive).
The way we do staff work is plagiarism. The Major writes the document, the Colonel checks it, and the General signs it. Academic work must be your own. You’ll see a note about academic integrity on every course syllabus. As I write this, the RMC site is still down, but the CMR St-Jean Site is comparable.
There are at least five different kinds of academic transgressions: plagiarism, buying or borrowing, cheating, forging or misrepresentation, and manipulated group work. There’s a tutorial on Moodle tailored to RMC if you can access it, or this tutorial from Ryerson University in Toronto is similar.
When there is a suspicion or accusation of an academic integrity violation, the professor must report to the department head. The Dean assigns an investigator who examines the evidence. A committee reviews the findings and assigns punishments. Penalties include warning, zero on assignment with a rewrite, zero on the course, or failure and expulsion for egregious cases. Academic misconduct is noted on the transcript. The military chain of command may also choose to investigate, so there can be double jeopardy. We take it seriously.
You will be automatically registered for the mandatory courses in your program: PSE301 (usually fall term), PSE401 (usually winter term), PSE454, and POE317. See the course outlines on the Courses page. You will register for the remaining five elective courses during the month of August. I will advise you on these choices. Be prepared to experience delays in receiving your textbooks for elective courses. You will be able to add courses up to the end of the second week, or drop them up to the end of the seventh week of term. This is an example of the form that you use to add or drop.
RMC has a book warehouse on campus where the books for onsite courses are stored. If you are in Kingston you can make an appointment to pick up your books at bookstores, located between the Stone Frigate and Panet House (Download the map of RMC). See email for details. If your books are being mailed to you, Neal Minnis will need a complete address, including apartment or suite number. The later the course registration, the more likely you will have to start the course without books. Be prepared to contact the professor directly for work-arounds. Some will have alternative electronic resources.
Supplies like the cost of your computer, cell-phone, pens, paper, stationary, etc. are not covered in an NEPDP budget—it is a no-cost program. My recommendation is to pay for what you need and claim work-related expenses not covered by the employer. You should also be able to claim for student status and use of your house, but I’m not a tax advisor. Watch for a changing policy about internet costs for working from home. I think this will be driven by evolving federal policy about costs of working from home for public servants.
Next: test yourself on knowledge from junior courses
This is a privately hosted personal website. RMC, DND, and Government of Canada are not responsible for its content. Last updated July 2020.
David Last, CD, PhD
Associate Professor, Political Science
Royal Military College of Canada
Call: +1(613)532-3002
