Tailor Made, Skylarking, and Making in the Humanities

Reacting to the symbolic features and historical artefacts that invite institutional self-reflection at the Royal Military College (RMC), I created a performance project leading to two storytelling events. Everyday campus life at RMC already offers opportunities for cultivating a meta-perspective—a higher-order awareness—of the institution, and the storytelling events called attention to such opportunities. I argue that, likewise, art-based projects in the humanities call attention to the creativity—the making—involved in the humanities more broadly. The first storytelling event, Tailor Made (2017), comprised stories focused on the uniform as a model and the body wearing it as an actual bearing out that model. Social and cultural life is made of the difference between models and actuals, and each story engaged the ways that rules, systems, and practices meet with individuals in hurtful, inconvenient, funny or messy ways. The second event, Skylarking (2018), included stories of the institutionally condoned pranks called “skylarks” and coincidentally occurred against the backdrop of a campus-wide punishment that elicited a skylark response. This event and its context showed that marking disruption with more disruption (marking failure with punishment and marking punishment with prank) is a recursion that invites higher-order thinking about existing orders.

Tailor Made, Skylarking, and Making in the Humanities

Reacting to the symbolic features and historical artefacts that invite institutional self-reflection at the Royal Military College (RMC), I created a performance project leading to two storytelling events. Everyday campus life at RMC already offers opportunities for cultivating a meta-perspective – a higher-order awareness – of the institution, and the storytelling events called attention to such opportunities. I argue that, likewise, art-based projects in the humanities call attention to the creativity – the making – involved in the humanities more broadly. The first storytelling event, Tailor Made (2017), comprised stories focused on the uniform as a model and the body wearing it as an actual bearing out that model. Social and cultural life is made of the difference between models and actuals, and each story engaged the ways in which rules, systems, and practices meet with individuals in hurtful, inconvenient, funny, or messy ways. The second event, Skylarking (2018), included stories of the institutionally condoned pranks called “skylarks” and coincidentally occurred against the backdrop of a campus-wide punishment that elicited a skylark response. This event and its context showed that marking disruption with more disruption (marking failure with punishment and marking punishment with prank) is a recursion that invites higher-order thinking about existing orders.

Student’ Knowledge and Attitude towards Infection Control at Prince Sultan Military College of Health Sciences

Background: Awareness and knowledge about prevention of infections are important to prevent transmission of diseases from healthcare workers to patients. Aim: To evaluate the students’ attitude towards infection control at Prince Sultan Military College of Health Sciences, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Study Design: Cross sectional study. Methodology: Present study enrolled 415 participants involving both genders from different allied health specialties at PSMCHS. A standardized, anonymous online questionnaire was utilized to gather the data necessary to assess students’ attitudes through answering seven statements. Informed written consent was taken. Unwilling participants were excluded. All collected information was kept confidential. Data analyzed by SPSS 25.0. Frequency and percentage were given for gender distribution and knowledge assessment through questionnaire. Moreover, F- test was applied by keeping CI (95%) with p-value of ≤ 0.05 taken as significant. Results: There was a significant difference between female and male students regarding the positive attitude towards infection control. Dental and Oral Health students scored the highest degree of agreement using Analysis of Variance (F-test). This high score was obtained because dedicates an entire course infection control while it was embedded in the other departments’ courses. Conclusion: This study concluded that a dedicated course on infection control was an effective tool in instilling positive attitude towards infection control among PSMCHS students from different specialties. Keywords: Attitude, Awareness, Infection control and Students.

Use of infographics for the development of cadets’ speaking skills at foreign language classes

The search for effective tools used in teaching English in a military college within the constraints posed by limited time resources is a top problem of foreign language learning theory and practice. The implementation of the principle based on visual aids involves the visualization of linguistic and socio cultural material at foreign language classes and fulfills the requirements of new federal educational standard to the educational process in a higher educational institution, creates the conditions of better assimilation of information studied at the lesson, and encourages cadets to speaking activities. The author gives a very detailed analysis of the infographic method, as a mean of developing students’ communication and speaking skills, relating to the field of foreign language teaching. In the present article it is considered as a graphic way to present the information that combines text material, as well as graphic elements, which provide a visual support for speaking monologue on the topic. The didactic ability of the use of infographics at practical English classes was analyzed by the author. The detailed description of the pedagogical objectives, reached by means of this method, its advantages, possibility of its use for solving educational problems at different lesson stages was given. The methodological recommendations for the purposes of organizing infografic-based activities at English classes and the plan of speaking monologue (support scheme) on infografics were proposed for use. Also, the examples of tasks based on the infographic method, which can be used at foreign language classes in a military college, were given.

Impactful Academic Supports for Students Enrolled at Military Colleges

Military colleges have historically been respected and viewed as results-driven institutions of higher learning. These colleges have strong reputations for producing both leaders and scholars. Though gaining admission to a military college is usually somewhat more formidable than the admission process at many civilian colleges, students are accepted with varying academic abilities, skills, and backgrounds. Most of these students, however, are retained, experience academic success, and graduate. The author describes distinct military college academic support initiatives that promote scholarly success among college students, from those who struggle to pass a course to those who want to turn a satisfactory grade into a better grade. Included in those initiatives are tutoring, advising, and mentoring. A case study of the establishment of the Academic Success Center at Marion Military Institute is included, along with data markers indicating the success of the center and its programs.

Soft Skills and Leader Development at a Senior Military College

Hiring managers in organizations seek college graduates who possess certain “soft skills” that enable them to be of value immediately upon entering the workforce. In response, many institutions of higher education are using and expanding high impact educational practices to not only improve knowledge acquisition and retention, but also to develop the soft skills that help make students “employable” after college. In U.S. senior military college corps of cadets, soft skills development is nothing new: it has always been part and parcel of their intensive and highly effective leader development programs. Although these programs exist primarily to produce leaders for the military—a public good—graduates contribute to the public good in other sectors of American society as well. This chapter depicts how cadets are transformed into highly effective leaders for the military, and how they contribute in other ways to the good of American society.