E-mail Story
Print Friendly
Send E-mail
Reprint story
Sunday, November 08, 2009
Retired Major General Takes Over at School
By Charles D. Brunt
Copyright © 2009 Albuquerque Journal
Journal Staff Writer
ROSWELL — The Army put two stars on his lapels, the Defense Department asked him to keep the first post-9/11 Super Bowl safe and national retail chains have trusted him with their checkbooks.
And, now, regents at the state's 118-year-old military prep school are counting on him to reverse declining enrollment and end what critics have labeled as lax enforcement of standards.
Retired Army National Guard Maj. Gen. Jerry W. Grizzle, who took the helm of New Mexico Military Institute on July 1 after the stormy five-year tenure of his predecessor, said he has inadvertently been training for the NMMI job all his life.
"When I read that job announcement, I just felt like I was reading my life story," said Grizzle, whose Oklahoma drawl is a dead giveaway to his roots.
Grizzle's 34-year military career, which he started as an enlisted private and ended as a two-star general, seems a natural fit for a school that believes military discipline creates an atmosphere for learning.
With a master's in finance, a doctorate in marketing and stints as a top financial officer for a handful of private businesses, including the Sonic drive-in restaurant chain, Grizzle is undaunted by NMMI's $34 million annual budget.
He honed his leadership skills as commander of the Department of Defense's Joint Task Force Civil Support, which was charged with developing terrorism response plans for major cities and public events — like Super Bowl XXXVI and the 2002 Winter Games — in the wake of 9/11.
And as a former university instructor, Grizzle said he understands curricula and academia.
"Having a doctorate degree and having taught at the four-year college level myself, I felt I was comfortable in being able to relate to the faculty and make sure our curriculum is meeting the standards we need to meet," Grizzle said in a recent interview at his office in the institute's Gothic Revival-styled headquarters.
To keep a foot in the classroom, he teaches an ethics class.
Booze and 'blood bars'
Problems at the institute, one of only five military junior colleges in the country, surfaced in 2004 shortly after retired Navy Rear Adm. David Ellison was hired as superintendent.
Just before Christmas 2004, Ellison suspended several NMMI cadets, including members of the high school football team, who were cited by police for underage drinking at an off-campus party during the Thanksgiving break. The suspensions stripped the cadets of that semester's academic credits.
Because of the suspensions, Ellison forfeited the Colts' state 3A football championship game — the team's first shot at a state title in 39 years.
The cadets and their parents sued NMMI and reached a settlement that allowed any suspended cadet to retain their academic credits, but required returning students to face discipline.
In February 2007, the institute's highest-ranking cadet quit NMMI's junior college three months shy of graduation, citing deteriorating standards and discipline under Ellison's watch.
In April 2008, two students were suspended for a hazing incident involving "blood bars," a prohibited ritual in which inch-long, bar-shaped pins with pointed metal pins — used on cadet uniforms to signify first-year students — were pressed into the chests of new students. Critics saw the incident as further evidence of poor leadership and discipline.
Then, in October 2008 — the same month the state Attorney General said that NMMI's regents violated the state Open Meeting Act by extending Ellison's contract without a public vote — Ellison announced he would resign when his contract expired.
Damage control
Grizzle concedes that NMMI's reputation and its relationship with alumni suffered under Ellison's tenure.
"I've tried not to worry about what or why that happened," Grizzle said. "He (Ellison) told me in the week that I spent with him before he left ... that he failed to build a team, either on the campus or off the campus."
"Some of the programs he implemented, while they were very valid and very good, his method of implementation aggravated some people, particularly the alumni. Once they kind of got going down that slippery slope, it was just tough to turn around," Grizzle said.
Since the 2000-01 school year, enrollment has fallen an average of 2.5 percent per year. NMMI now has about 770 cadets. Grizzle said he plans to reverse the trend by addressing the dropout rate and shifting the school's recruitment efforts toward younger men and women.
"We have six classes here (high school freshmen through second-year junior college students), so ... two-thirds of our total student population ought to be high school and one-third college," Grizzle said. "But we were actually past 50/50. The junior college was more than 50 percent of the student population for a while."
Some of the imbalance came from over-recruiting high school athletes for NMMI's junior college athletics programs, he said. The boost was often temporary because student athletes showing promise often get recruited by four-year universities during their first year in junior college, which contributes to the school's "attrition rate."
The solution, he said, is to recruit students entering high school because "usually those kids are here for a longer period of time."
For example, NMMI's top student, Luiz Martinez, has been at the school since graduating from junior high. Martinez is a Mexican national who, as top student, carries the title of Regimental Commander and the cadet rank of lieutenant colonel.
"Martinez has been here six years," Grizzle said. "He started here as a high school freshman, and from that point to today he's the No. 1 cadet at this school. That's what happens when you focus on the high schools; you build that continuity of leadership in the corps."
"The good news is, our attrition is significantly lower than it was a year ago," the superintendent said, noting there's a 6 percent attrition rate now compared to 8.5 percent a year ago.
The Honor Code
Those advantages, Grizzle said, include an emphasis on the institute's ubiquitous Honor Code, which states: "A student will not lie, cheat or steal, nor tolerate those who do."
That standard, outlined in detail in a small booklet all cadets are required to carry with them, "sets out a standard of conduct" for all cadets, Grizzle said.
"I don't think the standards have changed" under any superintendent, Grizzle said. But disciplinary measures designed to enforce the code, ranging from 50-minute marching "tours" around the campus' main quadrangle on weekends to expulsion from the institute, must foster "a gradual understanding of what's right and what's wrong," he said.
"If you bring me a 14- or 15-year-old kid that may have come from a home life where words like honor, integrity and morals are not used, known or practiced, well it's one thing for me to give you that (Honor Code) and expect you to read it and 30 minutes later hold you accountable for it," Grizzle said.
"So I think there is a point where we have the duty as educators, and within the military structure, to teach you those principles that are in that book," he said. "And once we're certain that you understand them, then hold you rigidly accountable for them."
• New Mexico Military Institute, founded in 1891, is a state-supported military institute that includes a four-year high school and a two-year junior college. It is one of five military junior colleges in the country, and the only one in the Western United States.
• Its student body, called the Corps of Cadets, has an enrollment of 770. The corps has students from 42 states, and 143 foreign students from 16 countries, including 67 from Mexico. About 18 percent of the corps is female.
• Students are held to high academic standards and an Honor Code founded on the principle that "A cadet will not lie, cheat or steal, nor tolerate those who do."
• Taking the ACT is a requirement for graduation from the high school, and graduates consistently produce higher average ACT scores than the state and national average, the school says.
• On average, 98 percent of NMMI's graduates go on to attend a four-year college or university.
• The institute sends an average of 100 cadets per year to federal service academies. Through its ROTC program, the institute commissions 35 to 40 Army second lieutenants per year through the Army's Early Commissioning Program.
• The school has produced 29 general and flag officers of the military services.
• About 17 percent of NMMI's graduates make the military their career.
• The institute provides about $2 million a year in endowed scholarships, both merit- and needs-based. It also provides athletic grants and federal financial aid.
• Notable NMMI graduates include: Norman Brinker, founder of Brinker International; Bill Daniels, cable television pioneer; Sam Donaldson, ABC News; Ira B. Harkey Jr., 1963 Pulitzer Prize-winner for editorial writing; Conrad Hilton, founder of the Hilton Hotel chain; Conrad Hilton Jr., American socialite; Paul Horgan, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author; Peter Hurd, artist; Victor Lownes, former Playboy Enterprises executive; Craig McNeil, an Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse prosecutor and contributor to the Village Voice; Hal Mumme, collegiate football coach; Anthony Principi, former U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs; Chuck Roberts, CNN Headline News; Roger Staubach, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback; Owen Wilson, actor.
For more information about the institute, visit www.nmmi.edu.
— Source: NMMI
You also can send comments via our comment form
|
|
