The Academy Insider Your Guide to The United States Naval Academy GRANT VERMEER

Drum and Bugle Corps

I'm joined by Andrea Howard who is a class of 15 graduate from the United States Naval Academy and currently serves as a submarine officer. Andrea was an Arabic and Political Science major at the academy.

She is a Marshall Scholar and pursued graduate education directly after graduation.  She earned a MSc in Global Governance and Diplomacy from Oxford and a MA in Science and Security from Kings College London.

In her first episode on Academy insider, she talked all about the submarine selection process as well as life of a submarine JO in the Fleet. In this episode, we focus on her time at the academy, specifically her time within D&B, the Drum and Bugle Corps. So Andrea was a four year member of Drum & Bugle Corps. She was the Corps Commander for D&B.

She gives us keen insight into everything related to D&B.

The tryout process to the actual day to day life of D&B members, to their performances and events and everything that they do. I think everyone will get a tremendous amount of information about what D&B is, what they do, their time commitment for obligations and everything about the life of a D&B member at the Naval Academy.

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Links Mentioned in the Show

Andrea's Previous Book Recommendation


The mission of Academy Insider is to guide, serve, and support Midshipmen, future Midshipmen, and their families.

Grant Vermeer your host is the person who started it all. He is the founder of Academy Insider and the host of The Academy Insider podcast and the USNA Property Network Podcast. He was a recruited athlete which brought him to Annapolis where he was a four year member of the varsity basketball team. He was a cyber operations major and commissioned into the Cryptologic Warfare Community. He was stationed at Fort Meade and supported the Subsurface Direct Support mission.
He separated from the Navy in 2023 and now owns The Vermeer Group, a boutique residential real estate company that specializes in serving the United States Naval Academy community PCSing to California & Texas.
We are here to be your guide through the USNA experience.
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If you are interested in sponsoring the podcast, have an idea, question or topic you would like to see covered, reach out: podcast@academyinsider.com.

Rear Adm. James McNeal '86, U.S. Navy, Retired and is an expert on the Herndon Climb.

He joins Grant on the podcast and tells the story of the Herndon monument and most specifically the tradition of the climb which he considers the Naval Academy's greatest tradition.

Rear Adm. McNeal is "the expert" on this topic. He is humble, funny and a great storyteller and you will love this episode.

He has written the book The Herndon Climb: A History of the United States Naval Academy's Greatest Tradition.
A native of Granada Hills, CA, Rear Adm. James R. McNeal graduated from the United States Naval Academy with a bachelor's degree in 1986 and holds a Master of Science in Organizational Management from Chadron State College. He graduated from the Advanced Joint Professional Military Education program at the Joint Forces Staff College and is Joint Qualified System (JQS) level II qualified.

His personal decorations include Legion of Merit (two awards), the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Meritorious Service Medal (two awards) and other unit and campaign commendations. He is a qualified Surface Warfare Supply Corps officer and Navy Expeditionary Supply Corps officer.

Rear Adm. McNeal served six years active duty and twenty five years in the reserves retiring in 2017.  He now is back in Annapolis and coaches on the Sprint football staff.

Be sure to review and subscribe to The Academy Insider with Grant Vermeer podcast on Apple Podcasts or where you listen to podcasts.

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Links Mentioned in the Show

Rear Adm McNeal's Book - The Herndon Climb: A History of the United States Naval Academy's Greatest Tradition.



The mission of Academy Insider is to guide, serve, and support Midshipmen, future Midshipmen, and their families.

Grant Vermeer your host is the person who started it all. He is the founder of Academy Insider and the host of The Academy Insider podcast and the USNA Property Network Podcast. He was a recruited athlete which brought him to Annapolis where he was a four year member of the varsity basketball team. He was a cyber operations major and commissioned into the Cryptologic Warfare Community. He was stationed at Fort Meade and supported the Subsurface Direct Support mission.
He separated from the Navy in 2023 and now owns The Vermeer Group, a boutique residential real estate company that specializes in serving the United States Naval Academy community PCSing to California & Texas.
We are here to be your guide through the USNA experience.
Connect with Grant on Linkedin
Academy Insider Website
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If you are interested in sponsoring the podcast, have an idea, question or topic you would like to see covered, reach out: podcast@academyinsider.com.

Margaret "Peg" DeLuca Klein '81, Rear Adm, U.S. Navy, Retired is the Dean of the College of Leadership and Ethics at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, RI. 

A native of Weymouth, Massachusetts, Rear Adm. Margaret Klein was commissioned in May 1981 upon graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy.

Klein completed a 35-year Navy career in March 2017. As Rear Admiral Klein, she served as the SecDef’s Advisor for Military Professionalism. Klein served as Chief of Staff for the newly-created United States Cyber Command. In 2008 she served as director of operations for the Navy’s Network Warfare Command. In 2011, she commanded an American military force of five ships, 30 aircraft, and over 3,300 Sailors and Marines in combat operations in the Mediterranean Sea. She served as the 82nd Commandant of Midshipmen at the US Naval Academy, where she was responsible for 4,400 Navy and Marine Corps officer candidates. Klein flew in and commanded an aviation squadron and wing.

Klein was the 82nd Commandant of Midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy from December 2006 to June 2008 and was responsible for the military and professional development of the Brigade of Midshipmen. She was the first woman to ever hold this position.

She joins Grant on the podcast and tells the story of what brought her to the Naval Academy in 1977 only one year after the academy began accepting women. 

She shares stories from her time at the academy as a midshipman and her return to the Yard as the 82nd Commandant of Midshipmen.

Be sure to review and subscribe to The Academy Insider with Grant Vermeer podcast on Apple Podcasts or where you listen to podcasts.

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Resource List for Academy Insider Followers

Links Mentioned in the Show

Rear Adm Klein's Book Recommendations:
The Undoing Project by Michae
The mission of Academy Insider is to guide, serve, and support Midshipmen, future Midshipmen, and their families.

Grant Vermeer your host is the person who started it all. He is the founder of Academy Insider and the host of The Academy Insider podcast and the USNA Property Network Podcast. He was a recruited athlete which brought him to Annapolis where he was a four year member of the varsity basketball team. He was a cyber operations major and commissioned into the Cryptologic Warfare Community. He was stationed at Fort Meade and supported the Subsurface Direct Support mission.
He separated from the Navy in 2023 and now owns The Vermeer Group, a boutique residential real estate company that specializes in serving the United States Naval Academy community PCSing to California & Texas.
We are here to be your guide through the USNA experience.
Connect with Grant on Linkedin
Academy Insider Website
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If you are interested in sponsoring the podcast, have an idea, question or topic you would like to see covered, reach out: podcast@academyinsider.com.

Angela Bailey is the Protocol Advisor to the Commandant of Midshipmen and Brigade Social Director.

Angela Bailey once attended Ring Dance, and was impressed by the etiquette and manners of the Midshipmen. Her date informed her that Etiquette and Protocol is a part of a Midshipman’s curriculum all four years, and that they had an instructor for it all. Angela, having received formal etiquette training herself, remarked that it would be an interesting job to have, and now, years later, she’s doing exactly that. 
Angela is now the Protocol Advisor to the Commandant of Midshipmen and Social Instructor to the Brigade of Midshipmen. 
So what exactly are etiquette and protocol? Why are they things that matter among life and death military training? Grant—your Academy Insider—and Angela discuss that and more in this latest edition of the Academy Insider podcast. 
Angela shares, when you are a Midshipman, you are an “ambassador of the United States, and of the United States Naval Academy, and the United States Navy once you’re in the fleet.”
“At the end of the day, [etiquette] is about putting others ahead of yourself.”
There are military protocols that Angela and similar advisors know, such as the proper order for dignitaries to be seated on stage at an event, or how flags must be situated. 
Plebes-to-be can look forward to one “very fancy, sit down dinner” during the first set of Plebe Summer training, which is the first opportunity that Angela will have to instruct the newest midshipmen. Later in the summer, Angela gets the plebes ready to meet their new sponsor families by teaching them sponsor etiquette.
From then on, Angela meets with each class of midshipmen once a semester for the rest of their time at the Academy. 
There are many more key learnings and insight into this unique aspect of the Academy, that only Angela can share.

Be sure to review and subscribe to The Academy Insider with Grant Vermeer podcast on Apple Podcasts or where you listen
The mission of Academy Insider is to guide, serve, and support Midshipmen, future Midshipmen, and their families.

Grant Vermeer your host is the person who started it all. He is the founder of Academy Insider and the host of The Academy Insider podcast and the USNA Property Network Podcast. He was a recruited athlete which brought him to Annapolis where he was a four year member of the varsity basketball team. He was a cyber operations major and commissioned into the Cryptologic Warfare Community. He was stationed at Fort Meade and supported the Subsurface Direct Support mission.
He separated from the Navy in 2023 and now owns The Vermeer Group, a boutique residential real estate company that specializes in serving the United States Naval Academy community PCSing to California & Texas.
We are here to be your guide through the USNA experience.
Connect with Grant on Linkedin
Academy Insider Website
Academy Insider Facebook Page

If you are interested in sponsoring the podcast, have an idea, question or topic you would like to see covered, reach out: podcast@academyinsider.com.

United States Marine Corps 101

This podcast is the audio recording of a video interview with Major Lowell Krusinger.  Major Krusinger was the officer representative on the men's basketball team when I was at the academy.  He is a great mentor to me.

He attended the University of Utah where he completed his bachelors degree in English literature with the German minor and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps in December 2003.  Major Krusinger became an infantry officer and attended the infantry officer course. He reported to Camp Pendleton, California to serve as a rifle platoon commander during the battalion’s training and deployment in support of Operation Freedom in Iraq.

He was accepted into the Marine Corps Foreign Area Officer program and attended the Naval Postgraduate School earning a masters degree in National Security Affairs with an emphasis in East Asian studies in 2009. He attended the follow on Chinese language training at the Defense Language Institute and then served for one year in the People’s Republic of China. 

His assignment at Naval Academy at Annapolis in 2014 was to serve on the Commandant of Midshipmen’s staff. In addition to his regular duties, he was the men’s varsity basketball officer representative.
He takes us through the basics of the United States Marine Corps as an introduction to a series about the USMC and it's connection to the United States Naval Academy.
Video of this episode on Facebook

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The mission of Academy Insider is to guide, serve, and support Midshipmen, future Midshipmen, and their families.

Grant Vermeer your host is the person who started it all. He is the founder of Academy Insider and the host of The Academy Insider podcast and the USNA Property Network Podcast. He was a recruited athlete which brought him to Annapolis where he was a four year member of the varsity basketball team. He was a cyber operations major and commissioned into the Cryptologic Warfare Community. He was stationed at Fort Meade and supported the Subsurface Direct Support mission.
He separated from the Navy in 2023 and now owns The Vermeer Group, a boutique residential real estate company that specializes in serving the United States Naval Academy community PCSing to California & Texas.
We are here to be your guide through the USNA experience.
Connect with Grant on Linkedin
Academy Insider Website
Academy Insider Facebook Page

If you are interested in sponsoring the podcast, have an idea, question or topic you would like to see covered, reach out: podcast@academyinsider.com.

Caroline Johnson '09
 
She began her military career at the United States Naval Academy in 2005, bristling against the strict rules but loving the friends she met along the way. Upon graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Economics in 2009, she joined the elite Naval Aviation community and began flight school in Pensacola, FL. 

In 2011, she was awarded her wings of gold and designated a Naval Flight Officer, more specifically an F/A-18 Weapons Systems Officer. Finishing at the top of her class she was awarded the Paul F. Lawrence award as the #1 strike fighter graduate and recognized as the overall Top Graduate.
Caroline flew in F/A-18 Super Hornets as a member of VFA-213 the World Famous Fighting Blacklions and she embarked on the USS George H.W. Bush, deploying for 9 months in 2014. On her historic deployment, Caroline and the Blacklions flew in support of Operations Enduring Freedom and Inherent Resolve seeing action in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.

Her squadron employed the first weapons on ISIS in Iraq, conducted the first ever US strikes into Syria, and Caroline was the first woman to neutralize ISIS from the backseat of an F/A-18. At the Blacklions, Caroline completed her SFWT level II, III, and IV qualifications, she earned her Combat Mission Commander designation, and she also graduated with honors from the University of Oklahoma with a Master of Arts in Administrative Leadership.
During her final tour on active duty, Caroline returned to the United States Naval Academy, where she taught leadership and recruited the next generation of aviators as the Aviation Operations Officer. Currently in the Navy Reserves, Caroline co
The mission of Academy Insider is to guide, serve, and support Midshipmen, future Midshipmen, and their families.

Grant Vermeer your host is the person who started it all. He is the founder of Academy Insider and the host of The Academy Insider podcast and the USNA Property Network Podcast. He was a recruited athlete which brought him to Annapolis where he was a four year member of the varsity basketball team. He was a cyber operations major and commissioned into the Cryptologic Warfare Community. He was stationed at Fort Meade and supported the Subsurface Direct Support mission.
He separated from the Navy in 2023 and now owns The Vermeer Group, a boutique residential real estate company that specializes in serving the United States Naval Academy community PCSing to California & Texas.
We are here to be your guide through the USNA experience.
Connect with Grant on Linkedin
Academy Insider Website
Academy Insider Facebook Page

If you are interested in sponsoring the podcast, have an idea, question or topic you would like to see covered, reach out: podcast@academyinsider.com.