Outreach teaching and military readiness
Penn State partners with the
Department of Defense

By Celena E. Kusch

Penn State alumnus Lt. Col. Steven R. Peters is stationed in Charlotte, N.C., where he serves as an inspector-instructor in the U.S. Marine Corps. An example of the modern U.S. military, Peters’ battalion is spread across the country and connected by telecommunications technology. His duties are multifaceted: “I am a logistician,” he said, “and I work with all the different functions of logistics — from supply and transportation to maintenance.”

Peters, who started as a freshman business major 25 years ago, still remembers his first class in logistics. Dr. John J. Coyle, professor of business logistics, taught the course.

“Penn State was one of the few universities offering logistics,” Peters recalled. “And I remember Dr. Coyle was one of the more approachable professors I had. It was a great class. The whole time I have been in the Marine Corps, I’ve wished that I could have a chance to come back to those courses and to appreciate the logistics training I got back then.”

This summer Peters got his chance when Penn State’s Center for Logistics Research and the U.S. Marine Corps launched the first of their semiannual, two-week intensive continuing education seminars. Enrolling in the Marine Corps Logistics Education Program (MCLEP), Peters returned to campus to tap decades of Penn State progress in logistics research and education. He was not surprised that Coyle was one of the MCLEP faculty.

Peters smiled as he noted the similarities between his Penn State experiences, then and now. “This course still has the Penn State feel,” he reflected. “As soon as I got here, I just fell right back into it. Of course, MCLEP is a much more concentrated course than those I took as an undergraduate, but it’s definitely still Penn State.”

According to Coyle, the MCLEP program objectives are to provide an overview of current practices and challenges in logistics and supply chain management. The two-week curriculum focused on information technology and e-commerce, inventory management, transportation, management development, hands-on computer labs and comprehensive, on-site case study analysis.

“In today’s competitive environment,” Coyle explained, “logistics is garnering more attention as a way to improve effectiveness and efficiencies in many sectors, including the military. There are many crossovers between private and public practices, so we will offer cutting-edge commercial best practices as a model for Marine Corps needs.”

Indeed, Corps leadership has placed a high priority on this university-based logistics education. Brig. Gen. John J. McCarthy accompanied the group to Penn State and sat in on a few days of sessions to demonstrate Marine Corps support. In his welcome address to the first Marine Corps Logistics Education Program participants, he pointed out the importance of this program in the Corps’ Integrated Logistics Capability campaign to build “the kind of capability the Marine Corps wants.”

McCarthy explained, “The Corps was brought up with the idea of the iron mountain of supply, and whoever had the biggest mountain had the greatest capability. Today that model is changing. We look here to MCLEP to build the new foundation in logistics. Coming here and developing the right kind of knowledge in our logistics base are what we need to build confidence in our consumers who are the Marines out in the field. The future of the Marine Corps is in how we rebuild logistics in the next few years.”

For Peters, the benefits of the program were immediate. “I definitely see applications of what I have learned here in all areas of my work,” he said.

“The most important thing I learned is that information is replacing inventory and cost. There is a real move toward collaborating and sharing risk as well as profit and reward with all the partners in the supply chain. As we go on to apply these ideas in the Marine Corps, we will be able to reduce our inventory and cost and become more responsive to our customers out in the field,” Peters added.

Coyle noted that Penn State’s ongoing partnerships with the Marine Corps will support these education-based improvements. In fact, the U.S. Marine Corps awarded Penn State the first Marine Corps Research University contract, worth up to $42.5 million over five years, to provide research and educational services needed to transition the Corps into the 21st century.

“Since Penn State has been designated as a Marine Corps Research University, the Department of Business Logistics has taken a lead in providing programs that meet the Corps’ educational objectives. We plan to take a greater role with the Marine Corps in the future,” Coyle said.

Dr. W.L. (“Skip”) Grenoble, executive director of the Center for Logistics Research and MCLEP faculty chair, added that departmental expertise also makes the military-university partnership a good fit.

“We are very proud of the fact that our logistics program at Penn State is one of the most successful in the world,” Grenoble said. “Our large faculty enables us to cover the spectrum of issues and opportunities of interest to both commercial and military organizations.”

Speaking from the field, Peters concurred.

“So much is new in logistics, especially since the early ’90s,” Peters said. “What makes Penn State a good resource for the Marine Corps is unquestionably the expertise in logistics here. The whole time I have been in the Marine Corps, I have heard that we need to know more about logistics. I meet colleagues who have gone to all kinds of universities, but Penn State was one of the first to offer a logistics degree. Dr. Coyle has been here since the ’60s developing that program and evolving all the time. He and all the other professors who have been with us in this program are real pros.”

Of the program’s 18 faculty presenters, 12 were Penn State faculty, including Grenoble and Coyle. Their 40 students were professional logistics managers, both military officers and civil servants, in the Marine Corps stationed at bases, headquarters and independent active duty posts throughout the United States and countries of the Pacific Rim.

To coordinate such a diverse group, Continuing Education’s Conferences and Institutes brought in its own military expertise. Former Marine Rachel Graham served as the MCLEP conference planner. With her military experience, Graham recognizes that the University’s continuing education programs for the military require different strategies than the more traditional conference fare. “The military is a fluid environment. Personnel and situations can change pretty rapidly,” she pointed out. She stressed that with the growing number of Penn State initiatives for all branches of the military, these programs must make room for that kind of unpredictability.

In the last year, Penn State’s outreach-based teaching has been delivered through both Continuing Education and Distance Education/World Campus programs throughout the Department of Defense. Together, more than 200 military participants attended Penn State continuing education programs in logistics for the Air Force Medical Logistics Office (AFMLO), the Defense Supply Center Columbus (DSCC), the Integrated Logistics Capability project, the Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicle program and MCLEP.

Susan B. Purdum, senior research assistant and administrative director of the Penn State Center for Logistics Research, has been involved in most of the department’s recent military projects and claims it has been “a great educational process for me.” With a background in logistics and operations management in the commercial sector, Purdum has learned from visits to a number of military sites, including Camp LeJeune, N.C.; Quantico, Va.; the Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicle Headquarters in Woodbridge, Va.; and Columbus, Ohio.

“To gain a solid understanding of who our military ‘customers’ are and to gather content in developing a case study, several of us immersed ourselves in the military environment this past summer," Purdum explained. “We engaged in some lengthy discussions with key contacts at those sites to really understand their culture, how they’re organized and the issues they face in military logistics today. This was a tremendous learning experience for us. It gave us a better appreciation for the challenges our military face and greater capabilities in sharing our knowledge and expertise in their language.”

In an effort to meet military needs and allow logistics officers to remain at their posts while learning, both the AFMLO and DSCC programs took place at military locations. Penn State faculty conducted courses for AFMLO in Frederick, Md., and for DSCC in Columbus, Ohio.

In addition to these on-site educational initiatives, programs like the Defense Supply Center Columbus have become actively involved in distance-based programs from Penn State. Twenty-four DSCC students are enrolled in the Postbaccalaureate Business Logistics Certificate Program via videoconference. Another 49 DSCC students are enrolled in the undergraduate Business Logistics Certificate Program through the World Campus. Course instructor Chris Miller, research associate for the Center for Logistics Research, visited the group in Columbus in the fall.

John Bartosh, senior employee development specialist for the DSCC Workforce Development and Quality Office, listed affordability, convenience and increased competitiveness in the workplace as some of the benefits of these just-in-time training programs.

Susan B. Purdum, senior research assistant and administrative director of the Penn State Center for Logistics Research, teaches Marine Corps logistics officers about supply chain relationships and partnerships during the first Marine Corps Logistics Education Program. She has been active as an instructor for many of Penn State’s logistics programs for branches of the military, including the Advanced Amphibious Assault and Defense Logistics program.

“The class helps set the stage for where our agency is headed,” Bartosh said. “We are getting the best of what the commercial world is doing. We have discovered that the first course has already added to our better understanding of the supply chain. It has helped change opinions toward suppliers and shippers. We can sit back and really look at our place in the process and look at the whole picture with a broader view.”

Bartosh’s statements are part of a growing trend toward on-line educational solutions for active-duty members of the military. Between formal sessions of the MCLEP program, a Marine Corps student also expressed her interest in Penn State’s distance education opportunities. The Department of Business Logistics, one of the first Penn State programs to launch World Campus courses, has already begun plans to expand its on-line offerings.

According to Grenoble, outreach programs like MCLEP will certainly play a prominent role in the future of the Center for Logistics Research.

“There are three basic reasons why programs like MCLEP are important to the Center for Logistics Research,” Grenoble stated. “First, the discussions and exchanges which take place in educational program sessions are helpful to participating faculty members in the formation and initial testing of research ideas. Second, the ability to offer tailored and public logistics education programs is important to both forming and maintaining relationships with organizations that will assist us in research. Educational programs also allow us to broaden our base of individual contacts with participating organizations. Finally, funds from education programs are used to offset CLR administrative expenses and to generate unrestricted funds for research activities.”

The Marine Corps Logistics Education Program will continue to be held twice annually in May and December.

Drs. John J. Coyle (photo at left, standing) and Alan J. Stenger, professors of business logistics at Penn State, led U.S. Marine Corps logisticians through the MIT-developed “Beer Game,” which was part of the Marine Corps Logistics Education Program (MCLEP) they conducted for 40 Marines. The game simulates a supply chain system, including pairs of retailers, wholesalers, distributors and factory manufacturers who must compete in teams to supply beer to customers, but are prohibited from speaking to any other position in the supply chain. “Because the game prevents participants from communicating with other positions in the supply chain,” Stenger explained, “they cannot take a total systems view. By the end, it often starts to look like the ‘blame game,’ because no one knows what the other participants are doing. The structure of the game drives behavior. When each group is trying to minimize its individual inventory, it leads to suboptimization of supply.” According to MCLEP participant Lt. Col. Steven R. Peters, a Penn State alumnus, the beer game activity was “the highlight of the program.” He added that “the rest of the courses have all related back to the rather simple message of the game - communication is everything. When there’s no communication, you have stock out or huge inventories, because there isn’t information about demand up and down the supply chain. Other parts of the course have been designed to help solve those communication problems, like the sessions on e-commerce and the different tools for logistics modeling.”

U.S. Marine Corps leaders came to Penn State to show their support for the first Marine Corps Logistics Education Program. From left are Gen. Richard I. Neal, retired assistant commandant of the Marine Corps; Dr. Robert McGrath, Penn State associate vice president for research and director of strategic and interdisciplinary initiatives; and Col. Gerald Russell, USMC, retired.

Lt. Col. Steven R. Peters (right), a Penn State alumnus and Marine Corps Logistics Education Program participant, speaks with fellow Marine, Lt. Col. Raymond Regner Jr., during the end-of-program dinner for University and military leaders.