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Embry-Riddle and America’s Military: Marching in Step for More Than 60 Years

By Bob Ross
Daytona Beach, Fla., July 27, 2005 -- Port Charlotte, Fla., located on the Gulf of Mexico, is a big draw for military retirees who love boating and fishing. For some, though, the area brings back memories of an earlier stay six decades ago. Back then they were 20 miles away at the former Carlstrom Field, learning to pilot not fishing boats, but fighter planes.

From 1941-1945, in places like Carlstrom, the Embry-Riddle School of Aviation gave thousands of young aviators their first 60 hours of flight training before sending them one step closer to the war in Europe. Other airfields were in Clewiston and Miami and near Lake Okeechobee in Florida and Union City in Tennessee.

At some locations, the school provided complete training for bomber and pursuit planes, including combat maneuvers.

Embry-Riddle’s seaplane base in Miami was where U.S. Navy pilots trained. Among those who received seaplane ratings there was Howard Baker Jr., who later became a U.S. senator from Tennessee. The school also trained thousands of aircraft technicians for the war effort in an abandoned five-story hotel in Miami.

When the war ended in 1945, more than 26,000 men and women from the United States and Great Britain had earned their wings or technical licenses through Embry-Riddle, and the school’s safety record won the praise of every branch of the armed services.

When the Korean War began, Embry-Riddle was called on again. In a 16-month period during that conflict, the school trained more than 1,500 Air Force recruits in the fundamentals of airplane maintenance, including aerodynamics, electronics, and hydraulics.

Following the Korean conflict, Embry-Riddle continued to offer aviation-related education and training to military personnel. In the mid-1970s, Embry-Riddle, by then an accredited university, opened its first four education centers at military bases, offering its degrees to servicemen and women who couldn’t take classes on its campus, which had relocated to Daytona Beach.

The university positioned most of its Extended Campus centers near military installations with an aviation function. Taking advantage of the opportunity to pursue a degree related to their profession in a nearby location, military personnel enrolled in droves. Of today’s more than 130 Extended Campus teaching centers in the United States and Europe, 103 are located on military bases.

Shortly after the first teaching centers opened, Embry-Riddle added distance learning as an option to help on-the-go aviators, sailors, and soldiers earn a degree. Today, hundreds of web-based Embry-Riddle classes are in session, attended by students at all hours of the day and night.

Of the approximately 26,000 students who take at least one course per year through the Extended Campus, 68 percent are active-duty military personnel. The programs they choose most often are the bachelor degree in professional aeronautics and the master in aeronautical science.

The omnipresence of the Extended Campus sites and web-based distance learning allows migratory military people to continue their studies using one or both of these delivery options.

Embry-Riddle is flexible in meeting the needs of military personnel when forces beyond their control intervene. The university has deployed its teachers to Bosnia-Herzegovena, Kuwait, and Afghanistan to help students finish their semester on schedule.

More than 14,000 military personnel have earned degrees through Embry-Riddle’s Extended Campus since 1995.

In late 2000, Embry-Riddle combined its resources with those of the Army and Navy in two alliances that greatly expand the educational opportunities available to military personnel through the technology of distance learning.

In the partnership with the Army, known as eArmyU, once soldiers are approved at one of nine bases that offer entry into the program, they can continue taking online classes wherever they go in the world.

Although 29 educational institutions are taking part in eArmyU, Embry-Riddle and five other schools capture most of the enrollments. Professional aeronautics and technical management are the Embry-Riddle degree programs offered.

Since 2003, thousands of sailors have taken courses from Embry-Riddle through the Navy College Rating Program. This partnership gives sailors greater access to degree programs that qualify them for specific jobs, called ratings, and makes maximum use of military professional training and experience to fulfill degree requirements.

About 2,000 veterans and service people receive GI Bill tuition benefits for taking Embry-Riddle courses, 1,600 through the university’s teaching centers and distance learning, and the remainder on its Daytona Beach, Fla., and Prescott, Ariz., campuses. University counselors help veterans with course selections and career choices and monitor their academic progress.

Like the town of Port Charlotte, Fla., the school that taught thousands of U.S. and British military pilots and technicians during World War II has changed a great deal. Yet despite Embry-Riddle’s phenomenal growth, the university’s longstanding commitment to educating America’s military remains unchanged.

Embry-Riddle, the world’s largest, fully accredited university specializing in aviation and aerospace, offers more than 30 degree programs in its colleges of Arts and Sciences, Aviation, Business, and Engineering. Embry-Riddle educates more than 30,000 students annually in undergraduate and graduate programs at residential campuses in Prescott, Ariz., and Daytona Beach, Fla., through the Extended Campus at more than 130 teaching centers worldwide, and through distance learning.