CENTER VALLEY, PA - Army West Point freshman Kenneth Brinson was named the Patriot League Rookie of the Week on Monday, April 4. He earned the honor following season-best throws for the Black Knights across two events. Brinson, who is also a member of the football team, performed well in his first track and field meet against Navy. He won the hammer throw with a 59.00 meter best and placed second in the discus with a mark of 50.25 meters. Read More

Dr. John Rogers and Cadets Will Watson (EE), Katie Holder (ME), Mike Kushnak (ME), and John Bellet (ME) travelled to Phoenix AZ to attend the conference and workshop. The 4th annual rehabilitation robotics workshop was held on the campus of Arizona State University. The workshop included speakers and industry exhibits. A panel of neurologists and physical therapists led a discussion about the uses and limitations of robots in rehabilitation. Following the rehabilitation robotics workshop was the inaugural Wearable Robotics Conference that was organized by the newly formed Wearables Robotics Association. The event included plenary speakers, demonstrations of robotic exoskeletons, and talks on a range of topics. The cadets showed their hardware, presented a talk, and displayed a poster about their Hip Actuator for running assistance. The USMA team competed well in an innovation challenge, but did not take the prize. First place went to the HART team from UC Berkeley that developed patient-specific musculoskeletal software to help optimize the prescription of assistive robotic devices for rehabilitation. Dr. Rogers displayed a poster about using musculoskeletal dynamic simulations to aid the design of wearable robotic devices. The four cadets expressed appreciation for the opportunity to hear from experts and to interact with their peers. This trip provided outstanding professional development for the team.

Mechanical Engineering Capstone group advised by LTC Joshua Keena successfully conducted live fire testing of their senior design project on the PKM 7.62 mm machine gun. Cadets Kenny Dailey, Logan Schmidt, and Kyle Reeves tested a blank firing adapter (BFA) and feed tray discriminator (FTD) that they designed and prototyped. The BFA and FTD allows the 7.62 mm PKM machine gun to safely and effectively fire blank ammunition. The devices were tested at a cyclic rate of +760 rounds per minute with the 7.62 mm × 54 mm cartridge. The test was supported by armorers from the West Point Supply Services Area (SSA) Facility as well as weapon system engineers from Picatinny Arsenal, NJ. Special thanks to Mr. James McTamaney for his approval for use of the test stand and arms room.

Cadet Chase Binkley, D/CME was honored on March 3, 2016 at the 59th Annual Laureate Awards, honoring extraordinary achievements in the global aerospace arena, during a black-tie gala at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC. Cadet Binkley was one of four military academy cadets who received Tomorrow's Leaders awards, honoring young men and women who have chosen career paths in the armed forces. To view winners as selected by editors at Penton’s Aviation Week, the largest multimedia information and services provider to the global aviation, aerospace and defense industries, visit Aviation Week Laureate Awards.

"As Aviation Week celebrates its 100th anniversary, we salute these fine cadets who are shining examples of tomorrow’s leaders," said Aviation Week & Space Technology Editor-in-Chief Joseph C. Anselmo. "These cadets and the Laureate Awards winners and finalists embody the spirit of exploration, innovation and vision that will inspire others to strive for broad-reaching progress in aviation, aerospace and defense through the next century.”

Harvard’s Wyss Institute researchers visited the Civil and Mechanical Engineering Department at USMA to begin pilot work on a collaborative research study on power exosuits. This research project will investigate the effects of training on the efficacy of a power exosuit during loading walking. Biomechanical and physiological measurements of energy expenditure will be collected over 8 weeks of training, to help inform future design and evaluation protocols. This prototype has been developed as part of DARPA’s Warrior Web program and is designed to assist the lower extremities during dismounted loaded troop movements. Study testing begins the week following spring leave and will continue until the end of the semester.

WEST POINT, NY - The Army West Point softball team picked up two more wins in a mid-week sweep over Yale Wednesday night. The Black Knights defeated the Bulldogs by scores of 6-1 and 2-1 which helped head coach Michelle DePolo reach the 200 career win milestone. "The team has been hitting well all year and really helping their own cause on defense," said DePolo. "We have been doing a good job using all our tools to get us on base and around, whether it's just good hitting, slapping, bunting, or just punching a ball through the infield. Even game two wasn't as productive runs wise but we often put the ball in play hard and had runners on base. I feel like this team can achieve just about anything they set out to do" The Black Knights blew the game open in the top of the second with five runs off of two home runs hit to the scoreboard. Read More

During spring break, the Department of History executed a staff ride to Normandy, France. After participating in several sessions that familiarized them with the Normandy campaign, twelve cadets accompanied Professor Randy Roberts, LTC Rick Black, and CPTs Greg Hope and Eric Smith to a variety of different locations in the Norman countryside where the Allies invaded France in June 1944.

To fully immerse the cadets in both the history and culture of the region, the cadets visited British, Canadian, and American battle sites during the trip. Each cadet prepared especially for a particular stand during the trip, adding intellectual rigor to their visit. While staying in Caen, the cadets visited Juno Beach, Pegasus Bridge, and a variety of different sites associated with British attempts to break out of the front near the Orne River. The group then moved on to Bayeux where the cadets then studied the American side of the campaign. The trip had many highlights, including a personal tour of Brecourt Manor, where E/506th made its famous assault on a German artillery battery, as well as an opportunity to lay a wreath at Omaha Cemetery commemorating the Americans who died liberating Europe.

Following their stay in Normandy, the group returned to Paris for two days to meet with veterans of the French 2nd Armored Division. There, the cadets met former Chief of Staff of the French Army General Bruno Cuche and received a tour of the World War Two portion of the museum at Les Invalides. While there, the cadets saw the tomb of Marshal Leclerc as well as the monument to Napoleon. Following this visit, the cadets then met with veterans of the French 2nd Armored Division at a lunch hosted at the Marshal Leclerc Foundation. This final visit granted cadets an appreciation of the role that the Free French played in the liberation of their country.

Harvard University President, Drew Gilpin Faust, Speaks at the First Annual Zengerle Family Lecture in the Arts and Humanities. The Department of English and Philosophy hosted the first annual Zengerle Family Lecture in the Arts and Humanities. Harvard University president, Drew Faust, delivered this inaugural lecture to a combined audience of more than 800 Cadets, staff, and faculty members. The lecture, entitled “To be a Speaker of Words and a Doer of Deeds: Literature and Leadership,” argued for the importance of a broad, liberal arts education for future officers, and indeed for all citizens. President Faust’s day-long visit to West Point also included a visit to the Library’s Special Collections, lunch with Cadets in the Cadet Mess Hall, and an interdisciplinary Cadet and faculty symposium. This event, moderated by Professor Elizabeth Samet of the Department of English and Philosophy, was the culmination of a yearlong faculty colloquium, during which faculty members from eight different academic departments met monthly to discuss Faust’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated book, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. The symposium gave interested Cadets and faculty members an opportunity to engage directly with President Faust in a more intimate setting. The event was generously supported and attended by the Zengerle family.

PL371 Introductory Sociology class ventured to White Plains to the social laboratory of the Westchester Knicks D-League basketball game. Introductory Sociology class ventured to White Plains to the social laboratory of the Westchester Knicks D-League basketball game. PL371 exposes students to theories and concepts related to the social structure, culture, and agency prevalent but often overlooked in our environment and personal interactions. The institution of sports continues to strongly influence personal behavior and group dynamics, and also reflects many of the social inequalities within our society. The basketball game provided cadets a sports venue outside their normal environment to observe these social factors and forces first hand. Each student generated a unique research project and applied the concepts and ideas learned in class during an ethnographic visit. Their topics ranged from analysis of group size and fan enthusiasm, gender, race, and age distribution and stratification in the various seating sections, clothing, occupation, income, and social status, and gender trends among the children and parents in attendance. The cadets will complement their own primary research with a literature review of peer-reviewed Sociological journal articles. Their resulting paper will include observing, collecting, analyzing, and drawing conclusions from their real world data, as well as walking through a full sequence of the research process.

Cadets in the Advanced Constitutional Law seminar taught by Professor & Constitutional Law Chair, Tony DiSarro, visited the US Supreme Court and the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. First, at the courtroom in the Supreme Court, the cadets observed oral argument in a case concerning the proper interpretation of the Sixth Amendment’s Speedy Trial Clause. Next, the cadets met privately with Justice Sonia Sotomayor in the Rehnquist Dining Room in the Courthouse. Justice Sotomayor discussed her views on being a member of the bench. The cadets also toured the Capitol building.

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WEST POINT, NY - Nine members of the Army West Point gymnastics team had their ticket punched as individual qualifiers for the 2016 NCAA Championships being held at St. John Arena on the campus of Ohio State April 15-16. The championships will begin on Friday, April 15, with the national qualifier, which consists of two pre-qualifying sessions (1/7 p.m.). The Black Knights will compete in the first session beginning at 1 p.m. The top three individual finishers in all-around and on each event during each session, who are not already qualified on a team (top three teams qualify) or as an all-around competitor, will advance to Saturday's finals.

It is the third time in the last five years that the No. 12 Black Knights have sent nine qualifiers, joining participants who competed in 2012 and 2014. Leading the way is senior Jesse Glenn, a finalist for the Nissen-Emery Award, who will be competing as an all-arounder along with freshman Cole Casanova. Glenn ranks first among the five individual qualifiers with an average of 85.963 and Casanova is second (85.90). Read More

Law majors Paige Vallejos, Mickey Briggs, and Madison Daugherty competed in the Clara Barton International Humanitarian Law Competition in Seattle Washington. Fifteen other teams from diverse law schools and the Air Force Academy participated in the competition. The judges evaluated the teams on both their knowledge of the law and understanding of the operational parameters of various humanitarian law organizations as demonstrated through their performance in six rounds of simulation-based competition. Among the many challenging issues, cadets provided legal advice and gave simulated press interviews regarding conflict classification, targeting, detention, and torture. The cadets scored high in the first four rounds, but Minnesota Law School won the competition against Harvard Law School in the final round. Throughout the competition, the cadets also spent invaluable time engaging with humanitarian law professionals from Israel, France, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

US Circuit Court Judge Denny Chin visited with cadets in the Advanced Constitutional Law seminar taught by Department of Law Professor and Constitutional Law Chair, Tony DiSarro. Judge Chin was appointed to the federal appeals court by President Obama in 2010 and serves on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan. He was the first Asian-American ever appointed to a federal appeals court. Prior to that, he was a federal district court judge, having been appointed by President Clinton in 1994. He was also an Assistant US Attorney under Rudy Giuliani in the Southern District of New York, and practiced law as a private attorney. Judge Chin had a lively discussion with the cadets about searches and seizures and the 4th Amendment. He also explained his reasons, when he was a district court judge, for sentencing convicted fraudster and septuagenarian Bernard Madoff to a 150-year prison term.

Class of 2016 Cadets Eric Fenton, Calvin Stokes, Bailey Widman, Ben Andrews, and OIC Assistant Professor LTC Matt Kemkes, represented USMA at the International Institute of Humanitarian Law's 15th Competition on Law of Armed Conflict for Military Academies in Sanremo, Italy. The competition brought 67 cadets from 19 military academies representing 13 countries and mixed them into 2 or 3 person teams acting as fictitious countries working as a coalition going to war. Over four days, the teams worked in Joint Operation Centers (JOCs), acting as legal advisors to the JOC commander to demonstrate they could effectively deal with a complex geopolitical situation. Cadets had to conduct an efficient military operation implementing the coalition's mandate, while simultaneously integrating specific instructions each team received from their own fictitious government as to their own national priorities.

Beyond having an extraordinary opportunity to explore the various nuanced dimensions of the laws of war, the USMA cadets, all law majors, had a tremendous cultural immersion experience by teaming with cadets from Japan, Sweden, France, Uganda, and Switzerland. The legal dilemmas facing the coalition tested cadets’ knowledge of treaties and customary international law, as they advised their commander on how to wage war lawfully. For example, the issues they faced ranged from determining if people fleeing from the rogue nation qualified for refugee status, to if preemptive self-defense was justified when one coalition member's satellite seemed to be targeted, to whether a computer virus could be used as a weapon, to how a detainee who allegedly knew the location of a ticking bomb should be interrogated. At the end of the competition, each cadet left the exercise with invaluable insights into working in a JOC, with an appreciation of the complexity of the applying the law of armed conflict, and with new international colleagues.

Cadets from the West Point Student Chapter of SAME attended an evening meeting of SAME’s New York City Post at the Harvard Club. At the meeting they spoke with representatives from a variety of engineering firms in the NYC area, and listened to a presentation from Mr. James Starace, Chief Engineer, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. In addition, they met with COL David Caldwell, the NYC Post President and Commander of the NY District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

There are too many scars to keep track of at this point. That's the price Carolyn Pitman has had to pay playing the game of tennis. The constant strain on the body, the quick cutting, stretching the arms and legs to get the racket to an ever eluding ball, heavy swings, they all pay their price. An ever expanding list that features multiple tibia fractures, a herniated disc, tendonitis in knees, elbow, and shoulder, back issues, and loss of feeling in her left (dominant) hand; a litany of issues for a 23-year old to go through with more surgeries on the way in the coming years. Some people might cringe just reading that list. Pitman took the bumps and bruises, the knives and the heartache, and became one of Army West Point's best tennis players. But it's a trail that was nearly never started. Read More

BOSTON - The Army West Point men's lacrosse team left no doubt it would be moving onto the Patriot League Tournament with a convincing 15-4 win over Boston University on Saturday afternoon at Nickerson Field. Army (8-3, 5-1 PL) was led by rookie Nate Jones with a career-high five goals, while Cole Johnson recorded four points on two goals and two assists. Overall the Black Knights had nine different goal scorers. Luke Poulos chipped in with two goals, while Connor Cook added two points on a goal and an assist. AJ Barretto had another outstanding day in the cage with eight stops. He made seven in the first half and just missed the shutout in the opening 30 minutes. Read More

LEWISBURG, PA - The Army West Point softball team split its doubleheader with Bucknell Sunday afternoon. The Black Knights dropped a tight first game to the Bison 1-0 in nine innings before topping Bucknell 9-3 in game two. Game one remained in a 0-0 deadlock until the bottom of the ninth inning when the Bison clinched the game with a walk off hit. Although scoreless, the game was an exciting one and featured pitcher Caroline Smith who had the hard luck loss.

Smith retired eight straight batters before the Bison (21-13, 6-2 Patriot League) made it on a base in the ninth inning. She didn't allow a hit between the fifth and eighth innings to help Army (23-14, 5-2 PL) stay in the game. The Bison had a player on first and second with no outs in the home half of the ninth. A double play from Alee Rashenskas to Emily Gray gave Army two outs, but advanced Bucknell's game winning run on third. A walk off by Midyette gave the Bison the run it needed to clinch. Read More

WEST POINT, NY - Senior Andrew Borer led the charge offensively with 30 points, as the Army West Point men's rugby team collected a 55-10 victory over No. 20 Oklahoma in the opening round of the Penn Mutual Varsity Cup on Saturday afternoon at the Anderson Rugby Complex. Army improves to 9-4 on the year, while Oklahoma drops to 13-4. Borer scored the game's first 13 points in the opening 10 minutes, with a penalty kick in the fifth minute, and tries in the seventh and 10th minutes, respectively.

Freshman Torran Raby touched down in the 18th minute to boost the Black Knight lead to 18-0 before senior Logan Weiland added Army's fourth consecutive try seconds before the halftime whistle to give the hosts a 23-0 advantage at the break. As he did in the first half, Borer began the second period with three straight scores, including a penalty kick, a try and a conversion, making the score 33-0 by the 47th minute. Read More