By the time Ken Ilgunas was wrapping up his last year of undergraduate studies at the University of Buffalo in 2005, he had no idea what kind of debt hole he’d dug himself into.
He had majored in the least marketable fields of study possible –– English and History –– and had zero job prospects after getting turned down for no fewer than 25 paid internships.
“That was a wake-up call,” he told Business Insider. “I had this huge $32,000 student debt and at the time I was pushing carts at Home Depot, making $8 an hour. I was just getting kind of frantic.”
Back then, student loans had yet to become the front page news they are today. Ilgunas could have simply deferred his loans or declared forbearance. He also could have asked his parents (who were more than willing to help) for a leg up. He could have thrown up his hands and gone to grad school until the job market bounced back.
Instead, he moved to Alaska and spent two years paying back every dime. And when he enrolled at Duke University for graduate school later, he lived out of his van to be sure he wouldn’t have to take out loans again.
“I had no idea what I was getting into at the time. I didn’t even know what interest was when I was 17,” he said. “I just think that’s awfully indicative of the incredibly poor personal finance education young people have at that time in their lives.”
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — This fall, the Naval Academy will become the first service academy — or university for that matter — to offer their undergraduate students the chance to major in Cyber Operations.
Pentagon leaders have established cyber security as an urgent priority to develop within the military with a focus on training leaders. The Defense Department is quick to admit it’s still trying to determine its place in protecting the nation from cyber attacks.
However, military brass has said repeatedly that the officers who will define the Pentagon’s future within cyber security will likely be the youngest set of officers to include those still in training. Cue the Naval Academy’s Class of 2016, which will be the first to have graduates with a Cyber Operations degree.
Leaders at the Naval Academy have spent five years developing the cyber classes since former Commandant Adm. Gary Roughead, who later became the chief of naval operations, challenged the academy to provide cyber classes beyond its computer science offerings.
The academy started by establishing a mandatory class that all midshipmen must take their plebe (freshman) year called Cyber 1. In their third year, midshipmen must take another mandatory course called Cyber 2, which provides more in depth instruction to include cyber policy and economics.
Naval Academy Dean and Provost Andrew T. Phillips said the goal has always been to offer a Cyber Security Studies program that went beyond writing code.“We wanted to make sure we covered the basics as well as the policies, law and economics that are associated with cyber,” Phillips said.
The Naval Academy faced a challenge in creating its Cyber Operations major at the same time the Defense Department has struggled to define its role within the realm, Phillips said.
“The services are still trying to figure out where they fit in right now so that it did make it a little harder,” Phillips said.
The service researched the many graduate-level cyber security programs that exist at university such as the University of Maryland. However, the Naval Academy’s program will be the first major at the undergraduate level.
Naval Academy leaders designed the major to continue to adapt over time much like the technology will develop and dictate changes. Many fundamentals will remain the same, but the program is also designed to ensure students stay up to date with the latest technologies, Phillips said.
“We know 30 years from now that the technology will likely be completely different but our hope is that the fundamentals remain the same and these midshipmen can fall back on those,” he said.
Students majoring in Cyber Operations will have the opportunity to complete internships over the summer with civilian software and internet companies as well as the federal agencies such as the National Security Agency, which is a 30-minute drive from the Naval Academy.
So far, about 30 students have signed up for the major. Midshipman 4th Class Molly McNamara is one such student who chose the major after taking Cyber 1 her plebe year.
McNamaara didn’t arrive at the Naval Academy completing a host of computer science classes in high school. Instead she planned to major in chemistry or pre-med.
Her familiarity with computers didn’t go too far beyond Microsoft and Facebook, she admitted. However, McNamara chose to major in Cyber Operations after learning about the wide ranging impact cyber can have on networks throughout the military and society.
Midshipman 4th Class Zachary Dannelly has a more traditional background for a student you’d expect to pick Cyber Operations as a major. He took Advanced Placement computer science in high school as well as web design classes.
He chose the major because he wants to be a part of a military field that is still being defined.
“It’s exciting to be a part of a new field. It’s almost like being the first people on submarines,” Dannelly said.
Peanut Gallery: Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia issued a wake-up call to all Christians. Full text may be found here.
“[T]he latest IRS ugliness,” he wrote, “is a hint of the treatment disfavored religious groups may face in the future, if we sleep through the national discussion of religious liberty now. The day when Americans could take the Founders’ understanding of religious freedom as a given is over. We need to wake up.”
“The day when Americans could take the Founders’ understanding of religious freedom as a given is over,” said the archbishop. “We need to wake up.”
Chaput, who leads the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, pointed to Obamacare’s sterilization-contraception-abortifacient regulation as one example. The regulation, issued by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, requires almost all health-care plans in the United States to provide coverage for sterilizations, artificial contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs to all women of reproductive age–even if the person or employer providing the insurance coverage and even if the female beneficiaries themselves do not want the coverage and believe it is morally wrong and violates their religious beliefs.
“[T]he HHS mandate can only be understood as a form of coercion,” the archbishop wrote in a recent column posted on the website of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. The column is entitled, “Religious Freedom and the Need to Wake Up.”
Last year, the Catholic bishops of the United States unanimously approved a statement describing the HHS regulation as an “unjust and illegal mandate.” The unanimous bishops said the regulation not only violated the religious freedom of religious institutions but also the “personal civil rights” of individual Americans who will be forced to comply with it either as employers or employees.
Archbishop Chaput noted that the bishops believe “basic medical care is a matter of social justice and human dignity.” That principal, however, does not empower the government to force Americans to violate their moral and religious convictions.
“But health care has now morphed into a religious liberty issue provoked entirely–and needlessly–by the current White House,” the archbishop wrote. “Despite a few small concessions under pressure, the administration refuses to withdraw or reasonably modify a Health and Human Services (HHS) contraceptive mandate that violates the moral and religious convictions of many individuals, private employers and religiously affiliated and inspired organizations.”
The archbishop noted that the administration’s disregard for religious liberty in the enforcement of this regulation is in line with its refusal to defend the Defense of Marriage Act and its advocacy in the Hosanna-Tabor case.
The Defense of Marriage Act says that a state cannot be forced to recognize a same-sex marriage contracted in another state and that for federal purposes marriage is between one man and one women. The Supreme Court is now considering the constitutionality of DOMA, and the administration has asked the court that the law be thrown out, arguing that opposition to same-sex marriage (which is the position of the Catholic Church and many other religious denominations) is the constitutional equivalent of racial discrimination.
In the Hosanna-Tabor case, the administration argued unsuccessfully in the Supreme Court that the government could tell a Lutheran school it must restore as a “commissioned minister” a person who violated the teachings of the Lutheran faith.
“Coupled with the White House’s refusal to uphold the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, and its astonishing disregard for the unique nature of religious freedom displayed by its arguments in a 9-0 defeat in the 2012 Hosanna-Tabor Supreme Court decision, the HHS mandate can only be understood as a form of coercion,” wrote the archbishop.
“Access to inexpensive contraception is a problem nowhere in the United States,” he said. “The mandate is thus an ideological statement; the imposition of a preferential option for infertility. And if millions of Americans disagree with it on principle–too bad.”
The archbishop went on to observe that abortion advocates use fraudulent language in describing their position.
“The fraud at the heart of our nation’s ‘reproductive rights’ vocabulary runs very deep and very high,” he wrote. “In his April 26 remarks to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the president never once used the word ‘abortion,’ despite the ongoing Kermit Gosnell trial in Philadelphia and despite Planned Parenthood’s massive role in the abortion industry.”
The archbishop noted that the scandal “involving IRS targeting of ‘conservative’ organizations … also has a religious dimension.”
“But the latest IRS ugliness,” he wrote, “is a hint of the treatment disfavored religious groups may face in the future, if we sleep through the national discussion of religious liberty now. The day when Americans could take the Founders’ understanding of religious freedom as a given is over. We need to wake up.”
But there was a certain man named Ananias who, with his wife, Sapphira, sold some property. He brought part of the money to the apostles, claiming it was the full amount. With his wife’s consent, he kept the rest.
Then Peter said, “Ananias, why have you let Satan fill your heart? You lied to the Holy Spirit, and you kept some of the money for yourself. The property was yours to sell or not sell, as you wished. And after selling it, the money was also yours to give away. How could you do a thing like this? You weren’t lying to us but to God!”
The Death of Sapphira by Nicolas Poussin, 1652 Louvre, Paris, France.
As soon as Ananias heard these words, he fell to the floor and died. Everyone who heard about it was terrified. Then some young men got up, wrapped him in a sheet, and took him out and buried him.
About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. Peter asked her, “Was this the price you and your husband received for your land?”
“Yes,” she replied, “that was the price.”
And Peter said, “How could the two of you even think of conspiring to test the Spirit of the Lord like this? The young men who buried your husband are just outside the door, and they will carry you out, too.”
Instantly, she fell to the floor and died. When the young men came in and saw that she was dead, they carried her out and buried her beside her husband.
Great fear gripped the entire church and everyone else who heard what had happened.
Prayer: Lord God – You know all things… there are no secrets hidden from you. Shine your light of truth into the hidden places of my heart… reveal my sin… restore my good senses – so that I might repent, turn away from my sin, and continue to follow you. I ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
The Peanut Gallery 